Utah Law Instills ‘Western Great Books’ At All State Universities

On March 24, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill laying groundwork for major higher education improvements after more than a century of U.S. universities undermining American moral and intellectual virtues. The law vaults Utah toward competing with Florida for the best higher education reforms that support American self-governance.

Senate Bill 334 requires “every student at Utah State University to take a full year-and-a-half course in Western civilization and an additional one-semester course in American civics,” writes Stanley Kurtz, co-author of a model bill inspiring this law. These new core courses will be taught by professors employed by a new center at Utah State dedicated to classical education and the “great books.” After approximately a year of piloting this approach at Utah State, it will be extended to every state university.

“I’m thrilled Utah State University is taking the lead to pilot a redesign of general education through the new center for civics excellence,” Cox said in a Monday signing statement. “This center will be tasked with building out a general education curriculum focused on viewpoint diversity, civil discourse and helping our students develop the analytical skills necessary to contribute in the public square. This curriculum will be a model for all our public institutions in Utah and nationally.”

A public transparency and accountability provision “requires every section of the course to post an accurate syllabus, with the instructor’s name, every required or recommended reading, a description of the subject of each lecture and discussion,” Kurtz writes. The bill passed the Utah Senate with unanimous Republican support and one Democrat vote. In Utah’s House, eight Democrats and all Republicans supported the bill.

Currently, students at most American universities take essentially no real core curriculum, depriving America’s leaders of common knowledge and their cultural heritage. Over the last century, leftists replaced core curricula in higher education and K-12 schooling with identity politics-laden courses that undermine academic excellence and promote anti-American prejudices. This is a key contributor to the decline of American Christianity and increased affiliation with the Democrat Party among those with college degrees.

Kurtz the law “will be a game changer nationally.” SB 334 specifies that the new year-and-a-half of core study will focus “predominantly” on Western great books by authors such as Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and William Shakespeare. It also allows room for non-Western literature such as by Lao Tzu and Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe. The law specifies the course will cover the achievements of ancient Israel, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, early Christianity, medieval Europe, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the post-Enlightenment.

Kurtz tells The Federalist personnel are key to making this sweeping pro-America reform fulfill its promise, pointing to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education appointments and hires as key to Florida’s dramatic education improvements. Leftist control of U.S. education for more than a century has resulted in an extreme shortage of faculty, administrators, and teachers capable of supporting core academic knowledge in an intellectually serious and non-politicized manner.

Classical schools and colleges struggle to find such teachers to meet the enormous demand from American parents for this style of education centered on moral, personal, and civic excellence. Accordingly, the success of this endeavor rests on its execution by Utah State professors. The university’s administrators and professors worked with bill sponsor state Sen. John Johnson to craft the plan after discovering it amid internal discussions about reforming their too-sprawling course offerings.

“We urge Utah’s legislators to conduct oversight of the new Center for Civic Excellence in the next years, to ensure that Utah State University’s faculty execute the spirit and the letter of Senate Bill 334,” said the NAS’s David Randall in a statement following the bill signing.

Often Republican legislatures attempting to address the politicization and anti-American drift of schooling allow academically incompetent but politically clever far-left professors and administrators to neuter their efforts. For example, Iowa passed a 2024 law demanding pro-American K-12 history curricula, but the revamp is being run by a social studies consultant who publicly supports “queering the curriculum” and anti-white racism.

Florida has led the nation in transformative education policies under DeSantis, including promoting K-12 classical education, revamping the only state liberal arts college around a “great books” core curriculum, accepting the new college entrance exam Classical Learning Test, revamping teacher certification and training toward a classical model, universal education savings accounts for K-12 students replacing the outdated voucher model, erasing diversity-equity-inclusion ideology from education, cutting costs so 77 percent of Florida college students have no debt, and more.

“Classical [education] really recaptures what’s been lost in some of the political mumbo jumbo that we’ve seen over many decades infiltrate our universities and our K-12 school system,” DeSantis said last April at an education bill signing, according to Politico.

The Utah law is a modified version of the General Education Act model legislation created by the National Association of Scholars (NAS), Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Martin Center for Academic Renewal. The model bill offers quicker possibilities for firing malignant professors who teach politicized and wasteful courses and replacing them with better professors who focus on core academics instead of DEI-laden wasteful niche topics.

“This is the boldest and most potentially consequential legislative reform of higher education in living memory,” Kurtz said in a statement. “The well-attested power of state legislatures over general education requirements should be the cornerstone of systemic reform at America’s public universities.”

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist. Her latest book with Regnery is “False Flag: Why Queer Politics Mean the End of America.” A happy wife and the mother of six children, her ebooks include “Classic Books For Young Children,” and “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media including Tucker Carlson, CNN, Fox News, OANN, NewsMax, Ben Shapiro, and Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Joy is also the cofounder of a high-performing Christian classical school and the author and coauthor of classical curricula. Her traditionally published books also include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.