Art Pope, Chairman and Co-founder of the John William Pope Foundation and Director of the Bradley Impact Fund, discussed his Foundation’s 2005 attempt to launch an interdisciplinary degree program on Western Civilization at UNC Chapel Hill. The project ended up failing under the weight of specious academic freedom charges from leftists on and off campus. Years later, the university faculty reached out again for partnership in a very different model—an independent School for Civic Life—which launched in the 2023-24 school year.
Mr. Pope encouraged anyone interested in launching a similar independent academic venture to work with the Bradley Impact Fund, whose staff and partners help vet ideas and advise on a prudent approach that will protect donors’ intent.
Peter Wood, President of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), credited NAS’s approximately 4,000 members behind the scenes within universities with exposing problems in higher ed and proposing solutions. Indeed, NAS members, with the support of members of the Bradley Impact Fund, have been instrumental in getting Confucius Institutes off several college campuses. While they continue to work to expose foreign influence on campus, they also support faculty members who have fallen afoul of the progressive regime on campus. He cautioned that the necessary defense of academic freedom must be qualified with strong restrictions on the politicization of administrations and guided by an ordered liberty that is directed toward higher goods like the pursuit of truth.
As Associate Director of the Center for American Institutions at Arizona State University, historian Jonathan Barth is helping lead a fruitful initiative to model intellectual diversity on campus and to educate students and the public on institutions that make the United States exceptional. Acknowledging the “full blown crisis in academia,” Mr. Barth cautioned against abandoning existing institutions entirely. The Center for American Institutions is seeing strong interest from both aligned and non-aligned students on campus. Before we give up on established institutions, Mr. Barth says, we should consider which policies are now working to bring intellectual diversity to campus and back them.