STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

June 1, 2026

 

Civics Is Making a College Comeback

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“President Abraham Lincoln once said that ‘as a nation of free men’ the United States ‘must live through all time or die by suicide.’ Today, the proliferation of civic ignorance poses the very sort of homegrown threat to the nation’s constitutional order Lincoln warned against.

 

“A 2024 survey found that 48 percent of college students believe the Constitution grants the president, rather than Congress, the power to declare war. Only 40 percent could correctly identify the term lengths for members of Congress when posed as a multiple-choice question, and 63 percent failed to identify John G. Roberts Jr. as the chief justice of the United States.

 

“The problem is not limited to ignorance of the nation’s history and political system. It also affects national security. People who don’t understand and appreciate their country are less likely to defend it. In fact, 57 percent of students said they would flee the country rather than defend it if it were invaded by an enemy such as Russia.

 

“Colleges and universities bear much of the blame. According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s ‘What Will They Learn?’ survey, only 19 percent of the nation’s institutions of higher education require even a single class on the country’s history and government, a number unchanged since 2012. Only 14 states mandate their public universities to include a civics course in their core curriculum.

 

“Thankfully, amid concerns that education has become overly politicized, some institutions are working to restore civics education to every college student’s course load....

 

“Private universities could learn from the example set by Baylor University, which requires a course titled ‘The U.S. Constitution, Its Interpretation, and the American Political Experience.’...

 

“Requiring a single college course will not solve the problem of civic literacy alone. But it is an attainable first step. The more trustees, legislators and college leaders treat civic knowledge as an important part of undergraduate education, the better off their students -- and the nation as a whole -- will be.”

 

Full op-ed by American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) CEO Michael Poliakoff at Washington Post.

 

Editor's note: At the What Will They Learn website, Stanford gets a D as compared to Columbia (B+), Chicago (B), Dartmouth (B), Georgetown (B), NYU (B), Penn (B), San Jose State (B), Duke (C), Michigan (C), Northwestern (C), Notre Dame (C), Princeton (C), Yale (C), Cornell (D), Berkeley (D), Brown (F), Harvard (F), Johns Hopkins (F) and Rice (F).

 

See also our Newsletter dated May 25, 2026 where we posted links to two op-eds raising questions about the COLLEGE courses that are mandatory for Stanford freshmen and suggested that students alternatively be allowed to take courses offered by the Stanford Civics Initiative and/or Stanford’s Democracy and Disagreement program.

 

See also the materials prepared by the College Debates and Discourse Alliance and in use on campuses nationwide.

 

Civic Knowledge Is Returning; Civic Formation Is Not

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“A student can identify the First Amendment while believing unpopular speech should be silenced. A student can define pluralism while refusing to engage ideological opponents. A student can master the vocabulary of democracy while lacking the disposition to live in one. I see this regularly as a professor.

 

“That gap -- between civic literacy and civic character -- is the real civic crisis facing the country, and it is not the one many reformers are now celebrating.

 

“In a thoughtful essay in the New York Times, Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen argues that the long-feared collapse of American civic education has been exaggerated. She offers encouraging numbers. A decade ago, only one in four Americans could name the three branches of government; today seven in 10 can. Thirty-six states plus Washington require civics for high school graduation. Forty-four states offer professional development for civics teachers. The decline, Allen writes, hit bottom around 2016 and has been steadily reversing since.

 

“This is good news, and Allen deserves credit for drawing attention to the gains. But her argument contains a second observation that deserves more weight than she gives it. Describing her own coalition’s deliberative work, Allen writes that ‘the practices we were developing among ourselves were examples of the civic skills we hoped to teach.’ She presents this as emerging alongside the curriculum work. But the experience may demonstrate something deeper than the curriculum itself. The skills she names -- listening across difference, forging common language under disagreement, civic friendship -- were learned in the doing, not in the syllabus....

 

“The next phase of civic renewal cannot be measured by graduation requirements or appropriations. It will be measured by whether schools, universities, congregations, and civic organizations rebuild the cultures of restraint, reciprocity, and viewpoint diversity that make democratic life possible. Curriculum reform is the easy part. Institutional reform is harder, and the one reformers have so far largely avoided.” ...

 

Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at AEI.

 

The Architects of American Renewal

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“The 250th birthday of the United States presents a unique moment to celebrate beyond flag-waving, anthem-singing and praising the wisdom of the Founding Fathers. Though meaningful, such rituals become empty without moral reflection.

 

“Which victories, exactly, are we celebrating? And what kind of nation are we calling ourselves and our posterity to be? ...

 

“People don’t rise when they are taught helplessness. They are motivated to rise when they are shown examples of what is possible.

 

“The biblical narrative offers a blueprint for this distinction. The Israelites were commanded never to forget their bondage in Egypt -- not so they would remain victims forever, but so they would never become Pharaoh to another people. Memory was meant to sharpen conscience, not keep people permanently wounded.

 

“America must remember its own Egypt in that exact spirit. The evils of slavery should never be forgotten -- but neither should they be used as a permanent indictment against the nation....

 

“America was founded on ideals intentionally left unfinished. Its true greatness lies not in claims of perfection, but in its constitutional capacity for self-correction. The painful struggle to live up to those ideals takes courage, self-discipline and, above all, grace. Not the cheap, performative grace of political rhetoric that rationalizes wrongdoing or denies injustice. The costly kind that demands something of you: discipline, sacrifice, responsibility and moral courage. The kind that chooses restoration over revenge even when revenge feels justified....

 

“History is filled with examples of this radical grace in action. Consider Robert Smalls, born enslaved in South Carolina. History rightly celebrates the moment in 1862 when he commandeered a Confederate ship and sailed enslaved families to freedom. But his greatest act came later. After emancipation, Smalls purchased the house of his former enslaver, Henry McKee. Later, as a decorated war hero and U.S. congressman, Smalls cared for McKee’s elderly widow, allowing her to live out her final days in the same home where he had once been held in bondage. Smalls refused to let the cruelty of his past dictate the character of his future. That wasn’t weakness. That was radical grace....

 

“As America turns 250, the question is whether we still possess the spiritual resources to renew ourselves. Will we continue nursing our grievances, or will we choose the harder path of radical grace? America’s future depends on that choice.”

 

Full op-ed by Woodson Center founder Robert L. Woodson Sr. (1937 - May 19, 2026) at WSJ.

 

Editor’s note: Imagine the quality, honesty and relevance of student discussion that could come from an essay of this nature if it were included in the COLLEGE syllabus and readings. Imagine also if students, in a subsequent session, had to back up their initial and likely divergent viewpoints with a well-reasoned and fact-based analysis of their positions.   

 

A Sample of the Non-Tuition Fees Students Pay at Stanford

 

Last week’s Newsletter had an article about the allocation of the ASSU's student activities fees that are paid to various student clubs. For anyone interested, per this Stanford webpage, the student activities fee is $240 per quarter for undergraduates. This is in addition to the Cardinal Care Health Insurance fee of $2,744 per quarter, the campus health service fee of $271 per quarter, the $95 technology fee per quarter, the mail service fee of $42 per quarter, the one-time document fee of $250 upon admission, the one-time new student orientation fee of $525, a late study list fee of $200 per incident and variable fees for meal plans, Stanford Card Plan purchases, printing, late payments and late applications to graduate. 

 

See also “The Growth of Managerial Staff at Stanford” and related tables at our Stanford Concerns webpage showing among other things that Stanford has the highest administrative costs per student of any U.S. university.

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Other Articles of Interest

 

Stanford’s Sigma Chi Alumni Seek Historical Civil Rights Recognition

Full article at Stanford Daily: “In April 1965, Stanford Sigma Chi offered a bid to Kenneth Washington ’68, a Black student. The national fraternity had never had a Black member, and the Stanford chapter was soon suspended from the national organization. While not explicitly stated, alumni noted that the suspension seemed to be in response to having a Black member. The decision, which came on the heels of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, generated a whirlwind of advocacy and national attention.” See also a compilation of the history of this Stanford Sigma Chi matter here. 

 

Lonely on Campus -- Are Universities Failing Their Students?

Full op-ed at James Martin Center: “Given reports of student loneliness, it's fair to question whether colleges are doing enough to build real community.”

 

See also the recently posted Reader Comment about the need for better student mental health services at Stanford: “A too common byproduct of authoritarian child rearing is meltdown in college, because education breaks down and challenges a student's unquestioned loyalties in order to foster independent, critical thinking.”

 

See also a prior Reader Comment about the shortcomings in Stanford’s residential education program, including: “I personally believe there is little doubt of the direct and powerful connection between Stanford’s dystopian housing system and endemic shortages of adequate housing, and later alumni donor rates. The evidence is right in front of our noses.”

 

The Largest Study of AI Use by Undergrads Reveals Disparities in Access and Problems of Cheating

Full interview at UC Berkeley website: “Senior researcher Igor Chirikov and his coauthors recommend that academic programs find new ways of measuring students’ knowledge and abilities that can’t be faked with AI -- not an easy endeavor for programs that require deep critical thinking and skills-building over time.” 

 

Judge Requests More Information in Lawsuit Brought by Stanford Daily, FIRE and Others re Campus Speech

Full article at Stanford Daily: “The lawsuit, filed on Aug. 6, challenges provisions of immigration law that the government claims it can use to revoke visas for protected speech, including published articles.” 

 

U.S. Department of Education Reaches Consensus to Reform and Strengthen America’s Higher Education Accreditation System

Full article at U.S. Department of Education website.

 

UC Berkeley Cracks Down on Law Student Use of AI

Full article at Above the Law.

 

Building an AI Center of Excellence for Higher Education

Full article at Ed Tech.

 

Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities

at Stanford

 

Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.

 

Stanford Internship Opens Community College Students a Path to the Chip Industry

 

Making Stem Cell Transplants Safer (video, 5:30 minutes)

 

How to Concentrate in an Ever-Distracted World​

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