March 25, 2026 • 16 mins
A topic near and dear to our heart ... civic and liberty. Preston talked with Dr. Ryan Owens, Professor at Florida State University.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Good morning, and welcome to the third hour show fifty
five sixty eight of the Morning Show. And I'm Preston.
He's Jose playing hurt today, fighting fighting the crowd off,
but he's passed the worst of it. He broke the
news to me, professor, that he is not contagious. So
that's good stuff. Joining us, doctor Ryan Owens, Professor, Florida
(00:25):
State University, the Florida Institute on Governance and Civics. How
are you.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm doing great? Yeah, fired up. Man.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Tell everybody that does not know you came here previously
talking about the Institute for Governance in Civics. What is it?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Yeah, great question, Thank you for that. So the institute
is something new at Florida State University. Our statutory charge
is to try to create effective citizens and responsible leaders.
So we do that through a number of different ways
of teaching, research, and programming. Okay, so we'll talk about
teaching in a little bit. Yeah, let's start with programming.
We're bringing in all kinds of national speakers to address
(01:04):
interesting issues across the country right now. So just recently,
we had Assistant Attorney General Harmeat Dillon come to talk
to a large crowd here about what the Department of
Justice is doing, how the civil rights division there works.
We've had a couple of national economic historians come here.
We had Rich Lowry, who's the editor in chief of
the National Review, come in and talk about what's happening
(01:25):
in the country today. So this is part of a
broader effort to make sure that students are exposed to
a diversity of viewpoints on campus. Right, So we're not
designated to make sure that students believe a particular thing,
but that they're exposed to all kinds of things. After all,
this is about student success.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
We want to make sure that our students once they
leave FSU or well grounded individuals who've got knowledge about
the American Foundation, free speech principles and the like, it's
going to help them get jobs. It's going to help
them be successful in their careers. Define effective well, you know,
it depends, of course, on the job. But when we
were talking about citizenship, we want to create effective citizens. Yeah,
(02:02):
we want citizens who understand that being a good citizen
in America is about, first of all, knowing where you
come from, right, knowing the underlying values of Western civilization. Right.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
That doesn't mean to the exclusion of anything else.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
But you live in Western country, you've got to understand
what the underlying roots of the foundations there are. So
you have to understand that. But the next thing you've
got to be able to do is operate in that
space with people who disagree. You know, one of the
biggest complaints I hear from employers these days is that
they have younger employees coming in who don't know how
to disagree agreeably with other co workers, and that really
(02:37):
poisons the workplace. So we need to do a better
job of making sure that students understand, you know, intellectual humility,
but also that there are people who have driving views
and that's fine, right, So that's effectiveness in terms of
being a citizen. Then you got to know the rules
of the game, right, I mean, I drove here this
morning in my pickup Right. If I didn't know how
to drive, I'm not going to be a successful owner
(02:58):
of that pickup truck. I need to know the rules
of the games. You got to know the rules of
what it means to be a citizen in America today.
So we're teaching people those things as well as skills
in things like the social sciences. You've got to understand
how to read graphs, how to work with numbers, got
to be proficient in data. So we're doing that as well.
We're hiring faculty, we're putting on research programming. We created
(03:21):
a First Amendment clinic at the law school to defend
pro bono religious liberty claimants and also free speech claims.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
So we're really active. We're doing a lot of stuff
on campus.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
And the big news now is it is a degree.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yes, Doug gone, and I'm excited about this.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, how does that? How does something become a degree course?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Well, there's a lot of internal you know, inside baseball
you got to do to get things filed and whatever.
But basically what it divals do is this, you get
an idea about.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
How you want to teach students something.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Right, we want to impart some substantive knowledge to them
about you know, being a citizen, but also having these
skills social science wise. Then you get to get other
with folks Sall right, here's the idea, Right, we want
to offer this curriculum, this set of courses.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
What are those courses involve? Right?
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Why these particular courses. You've got to shepherd it through
the process inside the university. You've got to get approval colleges, deans, provosts,
and board of trustees and such.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
So for me, I sat here and looked at this.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
I said, We've got a lot of really good programs
on campus right now, political science, philosophy, religion, all of
these things, but in many instances, not always, but in
many instances they're not really engaged.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
With one another on some of these broader questions.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So what we want to do is make sure that
we created something where you get students who have the skills,
the empirical skills, quantitative skills to bring sophisticated tools to
answer normatively important questions. What is a republic, what does
it mean to be free? What is economic liberty? And
why is it important? So we're hoping to train students
(04:55):
who have the skills to answer important questions. That's going
to help them go in their careers to get jobs
in law, in policy, in government, in business. Right, we
want people to understand these broader notions and have the
skills to address them.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Back with doctor Ryan Owens, so asking the dumb question first,
is this a two years is a four year program?
What is this?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
This is a bachelor's degree? Okay, be a bachelor's in
Science of Civics and Liberty studies.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Who do you think would be attracted to this? I
heard you talk about the output, but on the input side,
who is this for? Who should be intrigued by this offering?
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
You know, honestly, we want everybody to be intrigued by it. Yeah,
to be quite honest with you, but anybody who's got
interests in the why questions? You know, you look around
and you see politics today, you ask yourself, why is
this the way it is right? Or how can we
prove things right? We want people who are intellectually curious, right,
why do things exist the way they do?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
What can we learn about that?
Speaker 3 (06:07):
And then how can we if it needs to be changed,
how can we work to change that?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
And So what we've got with the degree.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Program, students will come in. They're going to take a
series of required core courses and things like the First
Amendment and civil discourse in the American Political Order, and
introduction to public policy. So they're going to gain a
bunch of knowledge of substance, foundational history, philosophy, religion, that
kind of stuff mixed up. But they're also going to
(06:35):
take a course set of courses in as I said,
public policy, statistics and the like, so that they can
merge these two strands of thought together. And then they're
going to concentrate one of four areas constitutional liberty, economic liberty,
conscience liberty, and education liberty. So people who are thinking
about going into say teaching or public policy as it
(06:55):
relates to education, they're going to want to concentrate in
that education liberty. Folks who are interested in things like
perhaps religion or maybe a First Amendment law, Conscience liberty
might be something that they're interested in. For folks who
are thinking about, you know, getting engaged in business or
the economy or something that economic liberty brands. And I'll
tell you one of the things we're interested in there
is getting students and others, frankly to think not just
(07:17):
about you know, spending government checks, but checking government spending.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Right.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
We want them to think about both sides of this
of this coin. And then constitutional liberty. Right, we want
people who are interested in the constitution, right, the folks
that were thinking about going to law, Folks who were
thinking about maybe going into you know, criminology or something
like that. Right, So there's something that can appeal to
everybody because Civics affects every single person in this country.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
In the creation of this degree and it now being
a program that you can get this degree in. How
many of those courses that you just mentioned, and I
know that there's probably a myriad of others existed already
on the Florida State campus.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
There are some that already existed, and in fact, we're
working with existing departments to offer some of those courses
political science, history, econ, religion, philosophy.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
So you had to almost do an inventory of what
was out there and then say, okay, what do we
need to fill in the gaps? That's how it works.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
I think that's right.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, I mean I started off with a view of
this is what I want this to look like, and
what do we already have on the books that sort
of helping to accomplish those goals. Where can we fill
in those gaps? So we're offering a whole series of
new courses, and then this summer we're going to start
creating a bunch of additional courses as well to get
those on the books as we move forward.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
How many schools across the country are doing this?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Not many?
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I was going to say, I would think that there
aren't a lot of places that you can look around
and say, we're going to model this after blank.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Now, there are a handful of places across the country
right now that have these Civics institutes. They're all great,
they're doing fantastic work. But what distinguishes us from them
is they tend to be focused just on the humanities,
like just on history or philosophy or religion or classics.
We're bringing the social sciences into it as well, so
you know, we're training people to come in with some
(08:58):
more quantitative skills.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
We're gonna get him back here a little more frequently.
Because I'm a nerd on this stuff. I've joked and
I look, my wife's got three degrees. All right, I'm
married smart, But I myself. You can measure the time
I've spent on a college campus on a wristwatch. I
mean that, I'm not joking about that. I have great
respect and admiration for the educational process, but I also
(09:25):
have great respect and admiration for how we used to
do it compared to how we do it now. And
we were just talking about that in the break, professor,
So let's do this. Let's take people inside one of
your classes. How does it go? What are you doing?
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Well? Hopefully it goes really well. Right, yeah, i'd say so.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
I'm teaching a class right now on the Supreme.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Court's current term.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
What we do is we take six or seven cases
that are currently before the United States Supreme Court, and
by current I mean yet last night I talked from
five point thirty to eight o'clock PM and we talked
about a case that the Supreme Court heard the day before.
So this is contemporary, current stuff and it's a seminar.
So what we do is one week the students will
come in. They will have been assigned to read the
parties briefs in the case and all the relevant precedents
(10:13):
that are cited in there. So it's a fair amount
of reading to do for an undergraduate course.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
We will discuss the case, the briefs.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
You know, what are the party's arguments, the cases that
they cite, and you know which ones help them, which
ones don't.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And that's an extensive discussion.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
And I have the students take positions with which they disagree,
so I make sure that in some cases, if there's
a conservative perspective, that I have some students argue that,
and then the next week if that same cohort, if
there's a liberal perspective, I make them take that, so
that they're learning to see through different lenses. So one
week we'll read all the briefs all the cases. In
the next week we listen to the world arguments at
(10:51):
the states at the US Supreme Court, and then the
final class of the semester, we actually go to the
state Supreme Court and they sit and do mock oral
arguments at.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
The So it's a not in front of the justices.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
But correct So we have students who will sit in
the justice's seats as justices. I've been doing this for
maybe fifteen years now, and occasionally the justices will pop in.
They'll still watch for a little bit and sort of thing.
So it's a really neat experience for the students. They
take away from it because you know, they get sort
of role play. But what is fascinating about this is
students are learning what's going on contemporaneously. They're engaged in
(11:26):
legal discussions where they're forced to take opposing sides in
the same cases, so they get, you know, what the
other side is arguing and they've got to write a lot.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
They read and they.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Write a lot, and they have to express themselves verbally.
So they're getting all kinds of different skills training. And
I'll tell you one student of mine came up to me,
this is a few years ago now, and he said,
you know why, Professor Owens, when we started this case,
I was one hundred percent opposed to the position that
you know, such and such had on this. I still
don't think that that person is morally right, but I
(11:57):
understand legally why that person has a claim to make
what she did. And hallelujah, right right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I don't care. That's fine. You believe what you want
to believe.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
But the whole purpose of this is to get you
to understand what the law is, why the law is
the way it is, and to make reasoned arguments.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
That way you talked about writing, and that stands out
to me. How much remedial work do you find yourself
kind of sort of having to do.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Kind of sort of a lot?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, a lot.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
And this is one of the things that I certainly
tell my students when they come in. I say, you know,
we're going to do two things here. Number one, I'm
not going to allow laptops in the class unless you've
got a medically designated reason to do it, because studies
show time after time after time that you learn better,
more effectively when you actually handwrite things.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Who has said that before? I can't even imagine where
I've heard that.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Go ahead, and the second thing I say is be
prepared to write and to have me rip up your writing,
because that's just how you learn. Yeah, and you know
it's gonna feel terrible at first. You're gonna think I'm
an ogre, and you know, maybe I am, but I
know that in the long term, this is about student success,
and if you come out of this program knowing how
to write, by God, you're going to have an advantage
over all of these other students that are coming out
(13:04):
these days that can't write as effectively as our students do.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Additionally, I would then add to that that the ability
to take critique and translate that into Okay, I'm going
to better myself through this critique. That's a coping mechanism.
That and a critical thinking set of skills that kids
just aren't getting, whether it's at home or in elementary
and high school anymore. They're just not getting it.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Yeah, I think that's right. We need to do a
much better job teaching students in the K twelve level
how to write, There's no doubt about that. But I'll
tell you another class that we are going to offer
next year is something called Debating Contentious Civics Issues. And
so what we're going to do is we're bringing speakers
in every week basically usually Tuesdays at noon, they come
in and they'll give a talk, either in the student
(13:52):
union or something else. Students will be required to come
in and hear those speakers, and then on Thursdays in
the class period, they're going to debate what they heard, right,
and you know which side do you think had the
better argument on why? Let's discuss these things. So it's
a way to get students to attend to hear things
that they might otherwise not hear, but then afterwards think
(14:13):
about it, debate, learn how to disagree agreeably, learn how
to make points that are not just ad hominem attacks
that are a little bit more deep than that, so
that eventually when they come out of university right and
they go into the public, they can have the same
discussions with other people and recognize just because you disagree
with me, doesn't mean you're an idiot, right, And just
(14:34):
because I believe this doesn't mean I'm right.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Does the existence of this new degree in Civics and
Liberty studies? Is this an expression of the new interest
or is this taking advantage of the interest that is there?
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Well, it's a little bit of both.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
I think anybody who has eyes open and can take
in today's contemporary environment knows that we got serious problems.
We have leader death, leadership deficits, we have just deficits
and knowledge about civics, and we've got extreme polarization. How
do we address those things? I think this Civics degree
program is a way to try to address all of
those things. So we're excited about this. We know we're
(15:15):
gonna have hundreds, if not thousands of students come circulate
through this program.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
As I've indicated before, I really think that the sun
is rising over Florida State University with this and other
things it's doing. Folks who are interested in this, of course,
you know, they can go to our website IGC dot
f SU dot edu to find out more. We're on socials.
We're really firing on multiple cylinders here.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
And we're excited.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I can't wait to see the first graduates of this degree.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
They're gonna be awesome.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
They're gonna be We're gonna be so proud of these people,
and you're gonna want to hire them. Anybody out there
who's running a business, you know, who's got an internship program,
you're gonna want these students because these are gonna be
fantastic students.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
The first the first graduates of this program walk how
far from now?
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Well, it's a two year deal, right, so we'll get
them basically when they're junior is and them do two
years with us. It's about forty five credits, I believe
it is total. So two years from now, we're gonna
be pumping them out nice. Yeah, man, you're gonna see them.
It's gonna be as like the clouds open and the
angels sing.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
With all of this.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Thanks for coming in. I appreciate you, and I appreciate
what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Go pat go yeah man? All right? Joining us a
professor doctor Ryan Owens, Florida State University, Florida Institute for
Governance and Civics
Good morning, and welcome to the third hour show fifty
five sixty eight of the Morning Show. And I'm Preston.
He's Jose playing hurt today, fighting fighting the crowd off,
but he's passed the worst of it. He broke the
news to me, professor, that he is not contagious. So
that's good stuff. Joining us, doctor Ryan Owens, Professor, Florida
(00:25):
State University, the Florida Institute on Governance and Civics. How
are you.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm doing great? Yeah, fired up. Man.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Tell everybody that does not know you came here previously
talking about the Institute for Governance in Civics. What is it?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Yeah, great question, Thank you for that. So the institute
is something new at Florida State University. Our statutory charge
is to try to create effective citizens and responsible leaders.
So we do that through a number of different ways
of teaching, research, and programming. Okay, so we'll talk about
teaching in a little bit. Yeah, let's start with programming.
We're bringing in all kinds of national speakers to address
(01:04):
interesting issues across the country right now. So just recently,
we had Assistant Attorney General Harmeat Dillon come to talk
to a large crowd here about what the Department of
Justice is doing, how the civil rights division there works.
We've had a couple of national economic historians come here.
We had Rich Lowry, who's the editor in chief of
the National Review, come in and talk about what's happening
(01:25):
in the country today. So this is part of a
broader effort to make sure that students are exposed to
a diversity of viewpoints on campus. Right, So we're not
designated to make sure that students believe a particular thing,
but that they're exposed to all kinds of things. After all,
this is about student success.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
We want to make sure that our students once they
leave FSU or well grounded individuals who've got knowledge about
the American Foundation, free speech principles and the like, it's
going to help them get jobs. It's going to help
them be successful in their careers. Define effective well, you know,
it depends, of course, on the job. But when we
were talking about citizenship, we want to create effective citizens. Yeah,
(02:02):
we want citizens who understand that being a good citizen
in America is about, first of all, knowing where you
come from, right, knowing the underlying values of Western civilization. Right.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
That doesn't mean to the exclusion of anything else.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
But you live in Western country, you've got to understand
what the underlying roots of the foundations there are. So
you have to understand that. But the next thing you've
got to be able to do is operate in that
space with people who disagree. You know, one of the
biggest complaints I hear from employers these days is that
they have younger employees coming in who don't know how
to disagree agreeably with other co workers, and that really
(02:37):
poisons the workplace. So we need to do a better
job of making sure that students understand, you know, intellectual humility,
but also that there are people who have driving views
and that's fine, right, So that's effectiveness in terms of
being a citizen. Then you got to know the rules
of the game, right, I mean, I drove here this
morning in my pickup Right. If I didn't know how
to drive, I'm not going to be a successful owner
(02:58):
of that pickup truck. I need to know the rules
of the games. You got to know the rules of
what it means to be a citizen in America today.
So we're teaching people those things as well as skills
in things like the social sciences. You've got to understand
how to read graphs, how to work with numbers, got
to be proficient in data. So we're doing that as well.
We're hiring faculty, we're putting on research programming. We created
(03:21):
a First Amendment clinic at the law school to defend
pro bono religious liberty claimants and also free speech claims.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
So we're really active. We're doing a lot of stuff
on campus.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
And the big news now is it is a degree.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yes, Doug gone, and I'm excited about this.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, how does that? How does something become a degree course?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Well, there's a lot of internal you know, inside baseball
you got to do to get things filed and whatever.
But basically what it divals do is this, you get
an idea about.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
How you want to teach students something.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Right, we want to impart some substantive knowledge to them
about you know, being a citizen, but also having these
skills social science wise. Then you get to get other
with folks Sall right, here's the idea, Right, we want
to offer this curriculum, this set of courses.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
What are those courses involve? Right?
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Why these particular courses. You've got to shepherd it through
the process inside the university. You've got to get approval colleges, deans, provosts,
and board of trustees and such.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
So for me, I sat here and looked at this.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
I said, We've got a lot of really good programs
on campus right now, political science, philosophy, religion, all of
these things, but in many instances, not always, but in
many instances they're not really engaged.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
With one another on some of these broader questions.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So what we want to do is make sure that
we created something where you get students who have the skills,
the empirical skills, quantitative skills to bring sophisticated tools to
answer normatively important questions. What is a republic, what does
it mean to be free? What is economic liberty? And
why is it important? So we're hoping to train students
(04:55):
who have the skills to answer important questions. That's going
to help them go in their careers to get jobs
in law, in policy, in government, in business. Right, we
want people to understand these broader notions and have the
skills to address them.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Back with doctor Ryan Owens, so asking the dumb question first,
is this a two years is a four year program?
What is this?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
This is a bachelor's degree? Okay, be a bachelor's in
Science of Civics and Liberty studies.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Who do you think would be attracted to this? I
heard you talk about the output, but on the input side,
who is this for? Who should be intrigued by this offering?
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
You know, honestly, we want everybody to be intrigued by it. Yeah,
to be quite honest with you, but anybody who's got
interests in the why questions? You know, you look around
and you see politics today, you ask yourself, why is
this the way it is right? Or how can we
prove things right? We want people who are intellectually curious, right,
why do things exist the way they do?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
What can we learn about that?
Speaker 3 (06:07):
And then how can we if it needs to be changed,
how can we work to change that?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
And So what we've got with the degree.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Program, students will come in. They're going to take a
series of required core courses and things like the First
Amendment and civil discourse in the American Political Order, and
introduction to public policy. So they're going to gain a
bunch of knowledge of substance, foundational history, philosophy, religion, that
kind of stuff mixed up. But they're also going to
(06:35):
take a course set of courses in as I said,
public policy, statistics and the like, so that they can
merge these two strands of thought together. And then they're
going to concentrate one of four areas constitutional liberty, economic liberty,
conscience liberty, and education liberty. So people who are thinking
about going into say teaching or public policy as it
(06:55):
relates to education, they're going to want to concentrate in
that education liberty. Folks who are interested in things like
perhaps religion or maybe a First Amendment law, Conscience liberty
might be something that they're interested in. For folks who
are thinking about, you know, getting engaged in business or
the economy or something that economic liberty brands. And I'll
tell you one of the things we're interested in there
is getting students and others, frankly to think not just
(07:17):
about you know, spending government checks, but checking government spending.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Right.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
We want them to think about both sides of this
of this coin. And then constitutional liberty. Right, we want
people who are interested in the constitution, right, the folks
that were thinking about going to law, Folks who were
thinking about maybe going into you know, criminology or something
like that. Right, So there's something that can appeal to
everybody because Civics affects every single person in this country.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
In the creation of this degree and it now being
a program that you can get this degree in. How
many of those courses that you just mentioned, and I
know that there's probably a myriad of others existed already
on the Florida State campus.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
There are some that already existed, and in fact, we're
working with existing departments to offer some of those courses
political science, history, econ, religion, philosophy.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
So you had to almost do an inventory of what
was out there and then say, okay, what do we
need to fill in the gaps? That's how it works.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
I think that's right.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, I mean I started off with a view of
this is what I want this to look like, and
what do we already have on the books that sort
of helping to accomplish those goals. Where can we fill
in those gaps? So we're offering a whole series of
new courses, and then this summer we're going to start
creating a bunch of additional courses as well to get
those on the books as we move forward.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
How many schools across the country are doing this?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Not many?
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I was going to say, I would think that there
aren't a lot of places that you can look around
and say, we're going to model this after blank.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Now, there are a handful of places across the country
right now that have these Civics institutes. They're all great,
they're doing fantastic work. But what distinguishes us from them
is they tend to be focused just on the humanities,
like just on history or philosophy or religion or classics.
We're bringing the social sciences into it as well, so
you know, we're training people to come in with some
(08:58):
more quantitative skills.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
We're gonna get him back here a little more frequently.
Because I'm a nerd on this stuff. I've joked and
I look, my wife's got three degrees. All right, I'm
married smart, But I myself. You can measure the time
I've spent on a college campus on a wristwatch. I
mean that, I'm not joking about that. I have great
respect and admiration for the educational process, but I also
(09:25):
have great respect and admiration for how we used to
do it compared to how we do it now. And
we were just talking about that in the break, professor,
So let's do this. Let's take people inside one of
your classes. How does it go? What are you doing?
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Well? Hopefully it goes really well. Right, yeah, i'd say so.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
I'm teaching a class right now on the Supreme.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Court's current term.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
What we do is we take six or seven cases
that are currently before the United States Supreme Court, and
by current I mean yet last night I talked from
five point thirty to eight o'clock PM and we talked
about a case that the Supreme Court heard the day before.
So this is contemporary, current stuff and it's a seminar.
So what we do is one week the students will
come in. They will have been assigned to read the
parties briefs in the case and all the relevant precedents
(10:13):
that are cited in there. So it's a fair amount
of reading to do for an undergraduate course.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
We will discuss the case, the briefs.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
You know, what are the party's arguments, the cases that
they cite, and you know which ones help them, which
ones don't.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And that's an extensive discussion.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
And I have the students take positions with which they disagree,
so I make sure that in some cases, if there's
a conservative perspective, that I have some students argue that,
and then the next week if that same cohort, if
there's a liberal perspective, I make them take that, so
that they're learning to see through different lenses. So one
week we'll read all the briefs all the cases. In
the next week we listen to the world arguments at
(10:51):
the states at the US Supreme Court, and then the
final class of the semester, we actually go to the
state Supreme Court and they sit and do mock oral
arguments at.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
The So it's a not in front of the justices.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
But correct So we have students who will sit in
the justice's seats as justices. I've been doing this for
maybe fifteen years now, and occasionally the justices will pop in.
They'll still watch for a little bit and sort of thing.
So it's a really neat experience for the students. They
take away from it because you know, they get sort
of role play. But what is fascinating about this is
students are learning what's going on contemporaneously. They're engaged in
(11:26):
legal discussions where they're forced to take opposing sides in
the same cases, so they get, you know, what the
other side is arguing and they've got to write a lot.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
They read and they.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Write a lot, and they have to express themselves verbally.
So they're getting all kinds of different skills training. And
I'll tell you one student of mine came up to me,
this is a few years ago now, and he said,
you know why, Professor Owens, when we started this case,
I was one hundred percent opposed to the position that
you know, such and such had on this. I still
don't think that that person is morally right, but I
(11:57):
understand legally why that person has a claim to make
what she did. And hallelujah, right right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I don't care. That's fine. You believe what you want
to believe.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
But the whole purpose of this is to get you
to understand what the law is, why the law is
the way it is, and to make reasoned arguments.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
That way you talked about writing, and that stands out
to me. How much remedial work do you find yourself
kind of sort of having to do.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Kind of sort of a lot?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, a lot.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
And this is one of the things that I certainly
tell my students when they come in. I say, you know,
we're going to do two things here. Number one, I'm
not going to allow laptops in the class unless you've
got a medically designated reason to do it, because studies
show time after time after time that you learn better,
more effectively when you actually handwrite things.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Who has said that before? I can't even imagine where
I've heard that.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Go ahead, and the second thing I say is be
prepared to write and to have me rip up your writing,
because that's just how you learn. Yeah, and you know
it's gonna feel terrible at first. You're gonna think I'm
an ogre, and you know, maybe I am, but I
know that in the long term, this is about student success,
and if you come out of this program knowing how
to write, by God, you're going to have an advantage
over all of these other students that are coming out
(13:04):
these days that can't write as effectively as our students do.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Additionally, I would then add to that that the ability
to take critique and translate that into Okay, I'm going
to better myself through this critique. That's a coping mechanism.
That and a critical thinking set of skills that kids
just aren't getting, whether it's at home or in elementary
and high school anymore. They're just not getting it.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Yeah, I think that's right. We need to do a
much better job teaching students in the K twelve level
how to write, There's no doubt about that. But I'll
tell you another class that we are going to offer
next year is something called Debating Contentious Civics Issues. And
so what we're going to do is we're bringing speakers
in every week basically usually Tuesdays at noon, they come
in and they'll give a talk, either in the student
(13:52):
union or something else. Students will be required to come
in and hear those speakers, and then on Thursdays in
the class period, they're going to debate what they heard, right,
and you know which side do you think had the
better argument on why? Let's discuss these things. So it's
a way to get students to attend to hear things
that they might otherwise not hear, but then afterwards think
(14:13):
about it, debate, learn how to disagree agreeably, learn how
to make points that are not just ad hominem attacks
that are a little bit more deep than that, so
that eventually when they come out of university right and
they go into the public, they can have the same
discussions with other people and recognize just because you disagree
with me, doesn't mean you're an idiot, right, And just
(14:34):
because I believe this doesn't mean I'm right.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Does the existence of this new degree in Civics and
Liberty studies? Is this an expression of the new interest
or is this taking advantage of the interest that is there?
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Well, it's a little bit of both.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
I think anybody who has eyes open and can take
in today's contemporary environment knows that we got serious problems.
We have leader death, leadership deficits, we have just deficits
and knowledge about civics, and we've got extreme polarization. How
do we address those things? I think this Civics degree
program is a way to try to address all of
those things. So we're excited about this. We know we're
(15:15):
gonna have hundreds, if not thousands of students come circulate
through this program.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
As I've indicated before, I really think that the sun
is rising over Florida State University with this and other
things it's doing. Folks who are interested in this, of course,
you know, they can go to our website IGC dot
f SU dot edu to find out more. We're on socials.
We're really firing on multiple cylinders here.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
And we're excited.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I can't wait to see the first graduates of this degree.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
They're gonna be awesome.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
They're gonna be We're gonna be so proud of these people,
and you're gonna want to hire them. Anybody out there
who's running a business, you know, who's got an internship program,
you're gonna want these students because these are gonna be
fantastic students.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
The first the first graduates of this program walk how
far from now?
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Well, it's a two year deal, right, so we'll get
them basically when they're junior is and them do two
years with us. It's about forty five credits, I believe
it is total. So two years from now, we're gonna
be pumping them out nice. Yeah, man, you're gonna see them.
It's gonna be as like the clouds open and the
angels sing.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
With all of this.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Thanks for coming in. I appreciate you, and I appreciate
what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Go pat go yeah man? All right? Joining us a
professor doctor Ryan Owens, Florida State University, Florida Institute for
Governance and Civics
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