New Law Gives Civic Center Control of Utah State’s Gen Ed

Utah’s governor signed into law a bill that creates a Center for Civic Excellence at Utah State University and requires that all general education courses be taught by faculty appointed to that center.

Senate Bill 334 requires the institution’s provost to appoint a vice provost who will then appoint all faculty teaching gen ed courses. These instructors’ appointments will be at will, on two-year, renewable contracts. The vice provost will also appoint the faculty on the center’s curriculum committee, which will develop and review all courses.

The bill was filed Feb. 25, about 10 days before Utah’s annual general legislative session ended. Governor Spencer J. Cox, a Republican, signed it Monday. The law is poised to also impact other Utah public colleges and universities. It requires the Utah Board of Higher Education to “develop a proposed core of system-wide general education courses aligned with the educational principles of this section.”

Shane Graham, a Utah State English professor, said the law “was drafted in secret and in haste and rushed through the Legislature.” He called it “an attack on our academic freedom.” He said the new administrator in charge of the center “will have a little fiefdom—he’s going to be the czar of general education.”

Republican state lawmakers and higher education leaders have established civics or civil discourse centers at multiple public universities in recent years. Critics have called them conservative centers. But the Utah State center’s control over mandatory courses for students distinguishes it from perhaps all of these earlier entities.

The new law requires one gen ed course to “focus on the founding principles of American government, economics and history” such as “equality” and “market systems.” It also requires three courses that “engage with perennial questions about the human condition, the meaning of life and the nature of social and moral lives.” These three courses require engaging with “primary texts predominantly from Western civilization,” such as ancient Israel and Greece, “the rise of Christianity,” and the Enlightenment.

Republican senator John D. Johnson, chair of the Senate Education Committee, filed the bill. He said universities now “teach students what to be offended by, but not what to fight for.”

Johnson said the law doesn’t take control from faculty. And he said, “Teaching the Constitution is not a partisan act.”

“Public universities are funded by the people; they should serve the public good,” he said. “This isn’t really about control—it’s course correction.”