The Bucknell Program for American Leadership and Citizenship (BPALC) is a faculty association at Bucknell University, designated by the university to receive external donations, and to hold events on campus, with the goal of promoting thoughtful and informed campus dialogue in the liberal arts tradition. Its efforts have garnered some controversy on the Bucknell campus, as well as support, reflecting increasingly polarized U.S. politics.[1] [2]
The group was formed in the 2017-2018 academic year in response to a perceived growing lack of socially and politically diverse programming, curriculum, and faculty-staff views at Bucknell, a Baptist-founded institution in central Pennsylvania, but with a campus culture deemed by BPALC founders to be dominated increasingly by values of the secular-progressive Left. BPALC started with help and inspiration from Prof. Robert George at the James Madison Program at Princeton University, and knowledge of other burgeoning university-related groups around the country dedicated to "viewpoint diversity" and informed dissent. It was supported during its first two years by discretionary funding from Bucknell President John C. Bravman, as an effort to promote viewpoint diversity on campus, in accord with Bucknell's mission statement supporting "diverse perspectives," and then by alumni donations.
BPALC currently consists of six faculty affiliates, from all three of the university's colleges and a variety of political and cultural views, with some alumni and student affiliates, and is directed by English Professor Paul (Alf) Siewers, who is also a Deacon in the Russian Orthodox Church, an da former William E. Simon Research Fellow of Religion and Public Life at the James Madison Program.
Begun in the 2017-2018 academic year, BPALC's first events included a symposium on the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution, since made into a book collection, and a colloquy between George and Prof. Cornel West on the value of a liberal arts education. Videos of past events can be found at its website. The group was co-founded by Siewers and Bucknell Sociology Prof. Alexander T. Riley, who has since left BPALC to pursue other research and writing projects. BPALC has also encouraged development of what it considers to be curriculum reflecting an inclusive "great books" approach to renewal of the liberal arts, such as a course at Bucknell on "The Bible as Literature," which had previously been eliminated from the university course catalogue.
Currently the group is supported by grants from the Open Discourse Coalition (ODC), a Lewisburg-based foundation spearheaded by Bucknell alumnus Kenneth G. Langone (class of 1957 and co-founder of Home Depot), and founded by Bucknell alumni including Charles Mitchell, President of the Commonwealth Foundation. The Open Discourse Coalition is a separate organization from BPALC, funding grants for programming emphasizing under-represented informed views and dialogues on campus. Bucknell Emeritus Professor and former Goldman Sachs Vice President William Gruver is ODC Teaching Fellow, and the ODC plans to offer its own non-credit seminars for Bucknell students taught by Gruver, among other programming. Siewers is an ODC Faculty Fellow but not involved in the foundation's governance.
BPALC's programming has been the focus of controversy sparked by some Bucknell faculty and staff, who objected to the anticommunist views of scholars at its Bolshevik centennial symposium, and statements by various other BPALC speakers made before their campus visits, but especially to events featuring Manhattan Institute fellow Heather MacDonald and Hoover Institution fellow Shelby Steele, which offered critiques of ideas of diversity and systemic racism now influential among many Bucknell faculty and staff. BPALC events often emphasize a dialogue format between different points of view, such as that between Steele and Prof. John W. Fountain of Roosevelt University on systemic racism, and between writers Rod Dreher and Andrew Sullivan on issues of tension between religious and sexual identities in US culture today. In addition, the BPALC 2018-2019 series on the 50th anniversary of the 1960s featured speakers from both the Left and the Right, and was also made into a book collection.