More than two years and $27 million later, the UF’s Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education is welcoming its first wave of course majors and minors in 2025.
The center will debut two minors in the spring, “philosophy, politics, economics and law,” or PPEL, and “great books and ideas,” or GBI, which will expand into full degree programs by Fall 2025.
The center’s academic offerings aim to stand out from other programs offered at UF by blending multiple disciplines under one roof, an approach its faculty describes as both unique and rigorous.
“These are high-protein degrees,” said Robert Ingram, a humanities professor and associate director of the Hamilton Center. “If you take a class here, you're not going to be taught to think only like a historian. You're going to think like a humanist, broadly trained.”
The PPEL program combines four distinct fields — philosophy, politics, economics and law — into an integrated curriculum that examines their intersections in shaping the modern world.
“What we're trying to do is have an academic unit that has a lot of different disciplines, not siloed off, but rubbing shoulders with each other in the hallways and in the classroom,” Ingram said.
This approach differs from CLAS departments, which are separated by discipline. Political science, philosophy, economics and classics are all managed by different academic unit chairs.
The program draws inspiration from the University of Oxford’s “philosophy, politics and economics,” or PPE, degree, established in the 1920s. Numerous British Prime Ministers, including David Cameron, Edward Heath and Liz Truss, and other global leaders, including the 59th president of Peru Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and the U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, received a PPE degree. It’s a symbol of intellectual and political training, according to Ingram.
“The joke in Britain is: PPE is the degree that rules Britain,” Ingram said.
Similarly, the GBI program takes cues from institutions like the University of Notre Dame, which offers a Liberal Studies program grounded in classic texts and enduring ideas. According to Hamilton Center director William Inboden, the GBI program examines themes like human nature, spirituality and the transition from empires to nation-states, asking, “What are the ideas that have gone into different civilizations?”
The Hamilton Center is set to become UF’s 17th college, as mandated by House Bill 5001, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022. Murky origins have tainted its establishment, with concerns about the legislation and motivations behind the center itself, but faculty at the center emphasize its academic goals. Both Ingram and Inboden, who were hired less than two years ago, say their guide for the center is to follow the law, which calls for a college of classical, civic and western studies.
“We want students who are taking our majors to get three things: knowledge, skills and values,” Inboden said. “We designed these majors with two other factors in mind.” He explains that they take into consideration what new opportunities UF students would value and what would help them get meaningful employment.
While the center is bound by its legislative mandate to focus on Western civilization and civic education, Inboden said this framework allows for broad intellectual exploration.
“The legislative mandate is more of a floor than a ceiling,” he said. “It gives us the latitude to bring our own expertise and look at opportunities for Florida students that aren’t currently being offered.”
Valentina Rosa, a 20-year-old UF political science senior, said she did not know about the center until recently looking over its website. She was intrigued by what it said it had to offer as a pre-law student, yet she still had concerns.
“The curriculum seems to focus exclusively on Western education and ideals, which kind of overlooks the diverse perspective we explored in my [political science] classes,” Rosa said.
The political science degree program at UF allows Rosa to study other cultures’ political environments — one being Latin American and Caribbean governments. Through her degree program, she gained global and multicultural perspectives, but doesn’t see how programs at the Hamilton Center can offer the same things, she said.
Rosa has taken comparative politics, American politics and international studies courses nearly every semester at UF. She said she has never felt that the classroom environment cultivated by her professors has fallen short of inclusiveness and respect.
“I've never felt like even if I had something controversial to say, I wouldn't be welcome,” she said.
The Hamilton Center is developing three additional majors and minors to complement PPEL and GBI. At a September Board of Trustees meeting, Inboden presented these as history, statecraft and strategy; American foundations, institutions and law; and science, technology and society, tentatively. The finalized majors will be officially announced in 2025.
Contact Vera Lucia Pappaterra at vpappaterra@alligator.org. Follow her on X @veralupap.
