Scholars and a lawmaker clashed over the merits of state-led efforts to reform civics education at the college level during a forum held Wednesday at Howard University.
“The state should not be dictating higher education,” Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at George Washington University, told attendees of a higher education form convened by the Education Writers Association. “That is the job of actual people with qualifications,” Franks said.
Franks made her remarks during a panel discussion about “civics centers” that now dot the higher education landscape. As of 2025, there were at least 45 centers at 41 institutions in 25 states, many of them legislatively mandated centers at public universities.
“Academics want to paint this as a ‘left-right issue.’ It is not a left-right issue. Don't fall for that,”
Ohio Sen. Jerry Cirino, a Republican, told the education journalists, “This is about, how do we make higher education better in our respective states? How do we make sure that we’re delivering the best preparation for careers to our students?” Cirino continued. “How are we teaching them how to think, not what to think? And how are we dealing with so many other massive changes that are going on in our society right now, and AI is certainly one of them.”
Franks shot down the notion that state-led efforts to reform civics education are nonpartisan. She noted that Cirino and co-panelist Paul Carrese, a professor of in School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, lamented that “the whole reason why we have some civic centers is because there's too much leftism in universities.”
Franks also questioned why the kind of civics education being pushed by the right doesn’t deal with state-sponsored violence being used to squelch campus protests.
“One of the foundational aspects of our constitutional democracy is our right to protest peacefully. And overwhelmingly, as I'm sure people in this room know, the encampments, the Gaza protests were overwhelmingly peaceful,” Franks said, giving a subtle nod to protests that Howard students have staged on campus in recent years.
“They were met with very non-peaceable responses,” Franks said of Gaza protests. “This is when the universities decided that they were going to call in, militarize police officers and others to brutally assault students while they were engaged in peaceful protests.
“And this is on a scale that we have really never seen, except for maybe in the 1970s or in the Vietnam War protest.
“If we mean something by civics education, and we don't mean talking about the travesty that occurred during those times, when student protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, were brutally assaulted, when faculty members were brutally assaulted, when people were deported, and they were being targeted for deportation by the Trump administration, then I don't really know what the purpose of civics is.”
Franks also said people shouldn’t ignore the politics and ideology of the people pushing for civic centers and questioned why – if civics education in the U.S. is so poor – they don’t do more to solve the problem at the K-12 level.
Carrese, the ASU professor and director of the Center for American Civics at the university, said the purpose of the civics centers is to carve out space to foster more dialogue across ideological lines. He noted that some of the nation’s oldest universities, such as the University of Virginia, emphasize civics in their mottos. He lamented the lack of basic knowledge among America’s students.
Franks questioned the effectiveness of the civics centers since they’ve been around for about a decade.
“What is the actual proof that they're doing any good in society? Are we now less polarized? Do we have more democracy?” Franks asked. “Are we more informed as a public because of these civics centers? And can we point to any kind of improvement?”
Cirino, who is pushing legislation that would require students to take courses at the civics centers created by legislation he also sponsored, said the programs need “time to grow.” Asked if he would favor requiring ethnic studies, he said he’d be open to the idea.
Jamaal Abdul-Alim is a longtime education writer who resides in Washington, D.C. He occasionally teaches journalism and has completed fellowships at the University of Michigan, Columbia University and New America.
