The Mellon Foundation Is Funding a Resistance Against Civics Schools

At the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), one of the influential professional associations for professors, a center on “academic freedom” is seeking to undermine the many newly created schools of civic leadership.

Over the past half-decade, dozens of universities have created “Civics Centers,” such as the University of Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education and UT Austin’s School of Civic Leadership, which aim to encourage viewpoint diversity and teach a classically oriented curriculum. Often backed by Republican legislatures, these centers have become a hallmark of higher education reform.

In a recording that I obtained, Isaac Kamola—the director of the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF)—repeatedly states his desire to delegitimize the upstart civic centers.

“I would really love to see kind of a robust research project on these right-wing centers and individuals—like, naming and shaming and discrediting and undermining the legitimacy,” Kamola said during the meeting (around the 1:34:50 mark). “I would love to strategically map who these f—ers are, and figure out what the weaknesses are, and design a research agenda that just goes through them and tries to knock them out.”

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In a meeting, Kamola expanded on the idea. “If we’re thinking about a five-year research agenda, I think unmasking, naming, and shaming, and just increasing the political costs and decreasing the legitimacy of these centers is going to be really important,” he said.

Kamola criticized how external funders seed faculty through new centers while eventually making universities pick up the bill. “The funding is only for five years,” Kamola said, describing a Charles Koch Foundation initiative. “So these centers are building out these tenured faculty at a time when, as we know, tenure is being cut all across the country.”

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CDAF appears to be part of a larger but covert “rapid response” project funded by Mellon. In one meeting, Kamola described how he suggested that Mellon set up a fully staffed organization that could fight conservative legislation. According to Kamola, Mellon took interest in the project.

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