Alumni and others contribute over $12 BILLION annually to our colleges and universities. On the other hand, most traditionalist and classical liberals do not participate, thinking our colleges are hot houses of “wokeness” and political correctness. The impression has grown that, to an alarming extent, colleges and university do not provide their students with a true diversity of important ideas necessary for a civilized and free society.

The estate of Harry Hogan helped initiate the Council for the Improvement of Collegiate Education and Management (CICEM-USA.org). CICEM’s only core program is to encourage gift subscriptions for college students to six publication Harry was a longtime subscriber (Modern Age, First Things, Humanitas, Claremont Review, Chronicles of Culture and The American Conservative).

Beyond that one program, CICEM is designed to provide a simple, convenient platform to facilitate friends and alumni of a college to provide a diversity of traditionalist and classical liberal ideas to college students at that college. Thus, the first step is one or more pledges totally a minimum of $1,000 to cover gift subscriptions. After that, a minimum of five alumni or other friends may form a CICEM College Council for a specific college. Then, with interaction between the Council and students (and, hopefully, a supportive faculty member or two), members of the College Council and other Contributors may, at their discretion, support other educational activities on that campus. (While the CICEM Board must approve these programs, the criteria are primarily overall coherence with the CICEM Mission and compliance with 501c3 requirements.) Additional programs may include gift subscriptions to additional publications, books, speakers, support for student publications and attendance at off-campus educational programs.

CICEM is a 501c3 charitable organization. It can and is happy to accept tax-deductible charitable contributions for its administrative needs, but it’s main focus is to facilitate support for educational activities that go entirely and directly to benefit students exposing them to ideas that are often excluded from typical college curricula. Those ideas are often labeled conservative, traditionalist, religious, libertarian, patriotic, European, old-fashioned, etc. — all of which are to dismiss without serious consideration, which is the very essence of “wokism”.

CICEM is small, lean and frugal and intends to remain so, even while it has ambitious hopes. As a result it is initially looking to form College Councils in relatively small, but better known colleges with a liberal arts bent, but it welcomes interest and support from alumni and friends of any and all institutions of “higher learning”. (The very large mega-universities, will need, we assume and hope, a larger total of pledges.) CICEM itself does not fund programs, so it encourages College Councils to cooperate with many other worthy organizations with overlapping purposes, whether national or based on only one campus.

We welcome comments and suggestions from any and all toward the furtherance of this mission.