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Dear friend,

As 2026 begins, here at the Jack Miller Center we are looking both to our history and our future. To our history, on this 250^th anniversary of American independence, to the principles and political tradition of the American Founding. To our future, to the ongoing civic renaissance on college campuses across the country.

For over two decades, the Jack Miller Center has invested in university professors who believe in educating for citizenship. As that movement begins to truly flourish, especially at public universities, our institution has been receiving more and more attention from the media. Most recently, for example, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a profile ([link removed]) of the Jack Miller Center and our influence in higher education. The piece highlights our role as a talent pipeline for emerging schools of civic thought and leadership and the impressive jobs many of our fellows pursue.

To be clear, we do not mean that we pick and choose candidates for open positions. All of our university partners—including schools of civic thought and leadership—are independent institutions that make their own hiring decisions. Our role is to support early and mid-career scholars of the American political tradition as they build their professional network and develop their skillset to become the best teachers, researchers, and institution builders they can be.

For years, disciplines such as history and political theory have been underfunded and neglected by campus bureaucracies; we understand our job as providing genuine support to fill in the gaps. The talent pipeline we’ve helped to build is not designed to subvert universities or undermine scholarship, but rather to support them and open the door to talented young Americans who want to spend their careers teaching about the history, documents, and ideas that animate our country.

We believe that higher education needs to be about something more than treating students like customers or as ideological recruits for a culture war. Higher education—all forms of education, in fact—ought to be about understanding our shared humanity more deeply, including the citizenship in a great republic that binds us all together as Americans. That is why we are finding ways for serious scholars of American history and politics to help educate the nation’s K-12 civics and history teaching force, and we are doing our part to grow the national civics movement through the National Summit on Civic Education. You can see coverage of these Jack Miller Center initiatives in a recent article that appeared in the online magazine EdSurge, entitled “Civics Takes Center Stage in 2026.” ([link removed])

If you would like to learn more about the state of civics in higher education, I recommend reading the Hoover Institution’s year-end landscape analysis ([link removed]) of American civic education and Heterodox Academy’s major report ([link removed]) on civic centers. Both will give you a good sense of just how much good these new institutions can do. Also be sure to check out George Will’s recent article ([link removed]) entitled “These universities are reviving higher education’s civic seriousness.”

Here’s the best news in all of this: the tide is turning. Americans want to see civic education restored, and the marketplace is responding. Just last week, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced over $75 million in grants ([link removed]) , many of which went to JMC partner professors. The work we have been doing for decades with our scholar network is paying off in a major way—we’ve helped them develop entrepreneurial skills that make this growth possible. Now it’s up to us to keep moving forward.

The American Experiment has endured for 250 years because generation after generation committed to preserve the principles of our Founding through civic education. It can only last another 250 if we do the same today. This is our moment for civic renewal, and I invite you to join me and the Jack Miller Center in that noble task.

Support the Jack Miller Center ([link removed])
Sincerely,

Hans Zeiger
President, The Jack Miller Center
3 Bala Plaza West, Suite 401
Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004
253-905-8160 cell phone
[email protected]

About the Jack Miller Center

The Jack Miller Center is a nonpartisan educational venture to advance the work of scholars who teach and study the ideas, documents, and history we hold in common as Americans. We seek to grow the talent pipeline of university educators who teach the American political tradition, to forge new models for university-based training of K-12 civics and history teachers, and to build a diverse coalition of Americans to ignite a civic education renaissance.

To learn more about our work, visit jackmillercenter.org. ([link removed])

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The Jack Miller Center
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