A recent episode of Parent Empowerment with Mandy Drogin offered a pointed look at the University of Texas at Austin’s new School of Civic Leadership and the broader fight over what American students should be taught about Western civilization, religion, economics, and the nation’s founding ideals.
Guest Justin Dyer, dean of the school, outlined the project as a deliberate return to the original mission of public higher education: preparing citizens for self-government.
“In too many places in American higher education, you get a kind of anti-civic education, anti-Western civilization and anti-American values,” Dyer said. “Texas decided we were going to do something about that.”
The School of Civic Leadership was created after UT regents directed the university in 2023 to build a school focused on the Western tradition, American constitutional history, and leadership in a free society. Dyer said the school has already launched a civics honors major, with planned majors in Great Books and strategy and statecraft, along with a classical education certificate.
Much of the conversation centered on teacher preparation. Drogin argued that classical education is expanding rapidly in Texas through charter schools, private schools, school choice, and the Bluebonnet curriculum but warned that there are not enough teachers trained in the Western tradition to meet demand.
Dyer agreed, saying the need could reach “tens of thousands of new teachers” in coming years. The proposed classical education certificate would be open to students across UT, including those studying subjects like history, biology, chemistry, theater, math, or science.
Drogin highlighted that colleges of education have become a central battleground in the fight over the direction of American schooling. The dean’s proposed classical education certificate appears designed as a practical answer to that problem. He said it’s a way to prepare future teachers not only with subject knowledge, but with a deeper grounding in classical literature, Western civilization, American constitutionalism, and the philosophy of education itself.
The underlying concern was clear: if the institutions that train teachers are steeped in critical theory, low expectations, or hostility toward America’s inheritance, then reforming curriculum alone will not be enough. The next generation of teachers must be formed differently.
Dyer described the philosophical divide in education. He contrasted education aimed at truth and freedom with what he called a modern tendency to view everything through power struggles.
“Rather than pursuing truth as a means to freedom, it looks like you are viewing the world in terms of power dynamics,” Dyer said. “It’s all a power struggle. There is no truth.”
Drogin connected that critique to Marxism, critical race theory, gender theory, and what she called the “deconstruction” and “demoralization” of American society.
Dyer offered a more restrained but still sharp warning: the danger, he said, is cynicism about the past and the belief that patriotism, religion, and moral principles are merely masks for power.
“It’s not that the past is perfect,” he said. “But it’s that there is a real truth, that the wisdom of the past is worth conserving.”
The episode also explored religion’s role in Western civilization. Asked which book most influenced the West, Dyer answered plainly: the Bible. He emphasized that understanding the Bible is essential not only for religious reasons, but for historical and civic literacy.
The school is also launching a program on Jewish and Western civilization, with courses on Genesis, Exodus, and the Five Books of Moses.
Dyer said demand for the school is already strong, with waitlists not only for enrollment but even for information sessions attended by high school students and families from across the country.
The conversation closed with Dyer invoking Ronald Reagan’s warning that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
“To have self-government, we have to educate the next generation,” Dyer said. “We hope that we’ll be part of that solution.”