Civic Education in the Academy

The author presents the need for a renewed commitment to civic education in higher education in the United States. While many have identified and touted the need for civics in public schools, the author focuses on what can be done in higher education to promote the cause of democracy in a nonpartisan manner. The need to be more proactive in the dissemination of civic education, not only for children but adults as well, was quite evident during the 2020 presidential election and beyond. With a great deal of political polarization at the present time, it is essential that higher education play a key role in the maintenance of democracy in the United States. Democratic institutions need to be preserved and education is still the optimum way to promote diversity, civility, and empathy for fellow citizens. Not much has changed in this regard since the ideology of the common school movement of the nineteenth century. The challenge, however, is to promote civics in a society that has recently experienced an attempt to overthrow the results of a democratic election as well as the repudiation of science during an ongoing global pandemic.