Reviving Liberal Education to Save Liberal Democracy

May 7, 2026 - 23:20

The decline of liberal democracy as both a fact and a value has followed the decline of liberal education. If we want to revive the first, we must resurrect the second. The two "liberals" are the same word, referring to political liberty as understood by ancient Athens, republican Rome, and the American Founders. This is not libertarian freedom from constraint but collective self-government by civic equals. Its opposite is tyranny.

Liberal education prepares individuals for citizenship. For generations, this was a governing idea in American higher education. In 1945, Harvard published "General Education in a Free Society," a plan for the emerging era of mass political participation. But citizenship has been in long-term decline on campus, replaced by mere utility and salaried servility, veiled at selective schools beneath the language of "social justice" that turns students into activists rather than citizens.

An activist is a soldier in a cultural war. A citizen is a member of a political community who recognizes responsibilities to others. Activism divides into us versus them. Citizenship unites. Activists see opponents as enemies to be defeated. Citizenship demands toleration, acknowledging that even those you hate most possess an equal share in the political collective.

Restoring citizenship to undergraduate education requires two things: what to teach and how. The "what" is general education, the knowledge every student needs regardless of their major. This includes American, Western, and global literature, philosophy, and history. These compose the basic grammar of our common thought and culture. It is incredible that students can graduate college without studying the American founding.

One third to one half of an undergraduate career should be devoted to general education. If that prevents double-majoring, so be it. If it means engineering departments cannot mandate 20 courses, good. And if students claim they cannot read, that is nonsense. If we demand they study chemistry and calculus before college, we can insist they read.

Liberals need to reclaim the great books from both the right and left, from populists who think "Western civilization" means superiority and from those who use "dead white male" as an insult. The university must also recognize that the humanities ask different questions than the sciences, questions about meaning and value that cannot be answered empirically.

Literature offers not answers but vivid ways of posing questions. It presents divergent perspectives without choosing between them, showing the validity of all sides. This is an essential liberal idea. The world is not heroes and villains. It is people, always flawed and always having their claims.

As for the "how" of teaching, the seminar classroom trains students in citizenship. Students learn to disagree respectfully, listen, consider arguments, and change their minds. But this requires faculty who know how to teach, which most do not. Colleges must start seeing themselves as teaching institutions. Graduate students need extensive training in teaching. Faculty should meet regularly to discuss teaching. Most research should simply stop at the majority of schools, with professors devoting their time to teaching instead.

These suggestions require enormous changes. But now is the time to think big. Higher education has overhauled itself before, at moments when it recognized it had ceased serving the nation's needs. This is that kind of juncture. This is the scale at which we need to act.