NEW DIRECTOR – Patrick Lee Miller took the podium Wednesday to introduce himself as the founding director of the new Washington Center for Civics, Culture and Statesmanship at West Virginia University. Pictured, from left, are House Government Organization Committee Chairman Chris Phillips, R-Barbour; House Majority Leader Pat McGeehan, R-Hancock; Gov. Patrick Morrisey; Miller; and WVU President Michael Benson. -- Steven Allen Adams

CHARLESTON — Gov. Patrick Morrisey and West Virginia University President Michael Benson introduced the public to the founding director of a new Legislature-created center focused on educating students about civics and Western civilization.

Patrick Lee Miller is an associate professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, with expertise in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, the philosophy of Plato and Friedrich Nietzsche, and psychoanalysis as pioneered by Sigmund Freud. He will be the first director of the Washington Center for Civics, Culture, and Statesmanship at WVU.

“Dr. Miller is an accomplished scholar and a passionate advocate for restoring excellence and balance to higher education,” Morrisey said during a press conference Wednesday at the Governor’s Reception Room at the State Capitol Building. “He believes deeply in the values that make America exceptional, and he’s committed – along with the team he’s putting together — to teach students how to think critically and independently, and to help them develop the intellectual humility to listen, to learn and to grow.”

House Bill 3297 – introduced by House Majority Leader Pat McGeehan, R-Hancock, and passed by the West Virginia Legislature earlier this year – created the Washington Center, charged with teaching students about “classical Western history and culture and American constitutional thought.”

“The people of West Virginia, through their elected representatives, chose last spring to establish the Washington Center,” Miller said. “Do you know that feeling that you were born to do something, but you don’t know what? I have lived with that feeling since I was a boy. I kept learning what I felt I would need someday, but I never knew what it was for until I heard about the Washington Center. I knew immediately that for me, this was it.

“I will devote myself to it with that sense of purpose, that feeling of vocation,” Miller continued. “I hope to live up to the trust that the men here have shown in me. Above all, I hope to give the people of this state what they asked for: a place where the young of West Virginia can learn about our civilization and our country in an atmosphere of respect, and even of reverence.”

Miller has two master’s degrees and one doctorate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as degrees from McGill University and the Psychoanalytic Institute of the Carolinas. HB 3297 requires the center’s director, who will serve for a renewable five-year term, to be an expert on the Western tradition, the American founding and American constitutional thought.

“(Miller) comes from a long lineage of the Western tradition, from some of the most prestigious scholars,” McGeehan said. “I am very confident that he will carry on that legacy of the Western classic tradition into the Washington Center with not only his leadership, but also with the professors he will choose to hire into the center going forward. … I can’t speak highly enough of Dr. Patrick Lee Miller.”

Morrisey held a ceremonial bill signing for HB 3297 in June, with the law going into effect on July 11. It empowers Morrisey to appoint the center’s director in consultation with the president of WVU and the advice and consent of the state Senate. The Legislature allocated $1.5 million in the general revenue budget for the current fiscal year for the center.

The director has authority over recruitment and hiring of faculty, terminating the employment of staff, tenure decisions for the center’s faculty, budget and expenditures, and holding conferences. The director is charged with overseeing and developing the center’s curriculum in consultation with the university, as well as appointing a seven-member academic council.

“‘I’m so pleased that WVU now gets to host this Washington Center, where we will have the chance to engage in debate,” Benson said. “I really look forward to Dr. Miller’s leadership in setting a tone for WVU becoming a leader in having those debates, having those discussions, and leading, as the governor said, in some really important ways as we celebrate what’s so great about this country.”

Creating the Washington Center was one of several initiatives by Morrisey and Republican lawmakers this year to combat “woke” ideology in higher education from the political left, along with banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and services on college campuses.

“Earlier this year when we established the Washington Center for Civics, Culture, and statesmanship, we emphasized that we wanted to renew our commitment to civic education,” Morrisey said. “We said we wanted to teach students how to think, not what to think. And we wanted to ensure that the values that made America great are taught with honesty and pride.

“Too many universities today have lost sight of what higher education is supposed to be about,” he continued. “We’ve seen it across the country. Many of them have become echo chambers for political ideology; where dissenting opinions are not only discouraged, but they’re punished. As your governor, I assure you I will not tolerate that type of political indoctrination on my watch.”

According to an Oct. 24 article on City Journal – a publication of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank – similar “schools of civic thought” have been created at the University of Florida, the University of Tennessee, Ohio State University, the University of Texas, Arizona State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

These programs all focus on civic education, American political tradition, constitutional theory, economics and philosophy, with an added emphasis on the positive aspect of Western civilization and thought.

“We should revere this civilization. In my view, it is the greatest and like it or not, our country is the leader of it,” Miller said. “We need to renew it in that spirit. My vision is to train students in the Western tradition, starting with ancient Greece and Rome, through the framing of the U.S. Constitution and up to the present crisis.”

Miller said the “crisis” he was referring to was multifaceted, including recent political violence like the assassination in September of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk during an event at Utah Valley University.

“To talk about its precise nature and its causes, this is not the time for that, but … what I hope to do is to tell a history of how we got here so that the students can understand that,” he said.

“There’s a lot in common between the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus in Roman history,” Miller continued. “That was the beginning of the decline of the Roman republic. What that set in motion was a series of reactions and counter-reactions that just got exaggerated more and more over a century until they ended up with the Emperor Augustus. So, that’s one period that my center is going to have students scrutinize very carefully to see what we can do differently.”