About

What is the Civility Industrial Complex?

Why are there so many new campus programs touting phrases like “civil discourse,” “viewpoint diversity,” and “depolarization”?

  • It’s not because students are demanding them. To the contrary, many of these programs struggle to find on-campus clients. Some resort to paying students—in money or other incentives—to show up to their classes and programming. Others fill the seats by making participation a requirement.

  • It’s not because there’s any evidence that students are reluctant to engage with diverse ideas. Organizations like FIRE have tried for years to produce such evidence, and still their own research shows the opposite.

  • And it’s not because faculty are stifling student opinions, indoctrinating them, or punishing them for their political positions. Again, the very organizations that push these notions have tried and failed to provide evidence for them.

Rather, “dialogue” and “civility” initiatives have exploded because highly partisan donors and extremist politicians are demanding them, to the tune of more than $200 million per year.

Who are the top ten foundation funders?

  • John Templeton Foundation $20,934,749

  • Arthur Vining Davis Foundations (combined) $11,269,866

  • Koch entities (combined) $10,612,635

  • The Klarman Family Foundation $7,000,000

  • Beth & Ravenel Curry Foundation $4,605,000

  • Sarah Scaife Foundation $4,482,740

  • Bradley entities (combined) $4,275,810

  • John E. Fetzer Institute $3,665,880

  • Stanton Foundation $2,398,000

  • John Brown Cook Foundation $1,950,000

You can find additional details in the “Top 23 Funder Summary” tab of our source data.

Who are we?

We are a consortium of scholars and researchers. We join the many defenders of free inquiry, democratic access, and empirical standards for truth-seeking in higher education by offering evidence of the priorities behind the Civility Industrial Complex—that is, the private- and State-funded “civic thought” centers and the booming campus initiatives focused on "civil discourse," "depolarization," and "viewpoint diversity." Our consortium is mapping the donor networks, conceptual frameworks, and political goals that underwrite these efforts.

Executive Committee

Mary Anne Franks

Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor in Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law, George Washington Law School

Author, Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment (2024)

The Cult of the Constitution (2020)

Nicole Hemmer

Associate Professor of History, Vanderbilt University

Director, Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the American Presidency

Isaac Kamola

Professor of Political Science, Trinity College

Director, Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, AAUP

Leila Markosian

Doctoral Student in English, CUNY Graduate Center

Administrative Coordinator, The Baffler

Lauren Lassabe Shepherd

Author, Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America;

Inventing the Liberal University: How a Rightwing Idea Became Mainstream (forthcoming);

Degrees of Liberation: Public History, Campus Activism, and the Fight for Educational Justice (forthcoming)

Host, American Campus Podcast

Bethany Moreton

Professor of History, Dartmouth College

Executive Committee Member, Dartmouth College chapter of the AAUP

Co-Founder, Freedom University

Series Editor, Columbia University Press Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism

Lisa Siraganian

J. R. Herbert Boone Professor of Humanities,

Department of Comparative Thought and Literature, Johns Hopkins University

President, JHU chapter of AAUP

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