When I last looked at this in July, WVU’s new Washington Center for Civics, Culture, and Statesmanship had a total of 1 student enrolled. Well, as of Monday that number has ballooned:

The state-mandated Washington Center for Civics, Culture, and Statesmanship debuts for its first semester on campus Tuesday.

Six of the previously announced 23 classes remain for students to enroll in. 

“The Office of the Provost confirms five enrollments in six courses for the Washington Center,” Shauna Johnson, executive director of Strategic Communications, said in an email to The DA. 

In July, The DA reported the number of classes available dropped from 23 to 18.

Five seats are filled across the six class offerings. The offered courses are Decline of the West, Evolution and Human Nature, Modern Political Thought, Washington, The New Right and Woke. 

Wait—what? The Trumpiest state in the union can’t muster more than 5 students for these flagship classes? How could that be? Who could not want to be part of this class:

Well, evidently everyone:

In an interview with The DA on Monday, WVU President Michael Benson said low enrollment is due to the center being in its early stages. 

“The Washington Center, it’s only been around for a few months,” he said. “I’ve never been in a state where we had a mandated state-funded entity like this, so this is all new for me, too. But I think it’s a matter of the director, Dr. Miller, getting out and about, talking to people, talking about the course offerings.”

West Virginia House Bill 3279 was signed by Gov. Patrick Morrisey on April 30, 2025, and Patrick Miller was appointed director of the center on Oct. 29, 2025. 

The civics center is state-mandated, meaning the University must house it to comply with the law. The University received $1.5 million in surplus funding for the center.

Who would have thought that state-mandated propaganda wouldn’t be popular?

Last time I wrote about this I said I’d be curious to find out who is teaching these classes, and now we know, so let’s meet the professors.

First up, Josiah Lippencott–he’s a graduate of Hillsdale College. It’s a college for wingnuts so of course he is teaching “Decline of the West”:

Seems like a good use of taxpayer money, huh?

Patrick Miller is making the big bucks as the head of the center and as one of its faculty members. He’s a nutburger:

Miller said he feels he was “born” to take on the role. 

“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,” Miller said. “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.”

He’s teaching 2 classes and has, checks notes, 1 student in each class. I don’t think that’s what “vocation” means, unless your vocation is to teach dumbasses how to be stupider and more racist, all 2 of them. 300,000 of our WV taxpayer dollars are enabling his lunacy.

This guy teaches “Woke” and “The New Right”:

Also:

Then there’s Eric Hewett. He cofounded and ran the Paideia Institute which focused on classical history and related subjects. And evidently it had a real problem dealing with anyone who wasn’t a straight white man (examples here).

Aren’t we lucky our Temu Trump carpetbagging governor is such a Trump bootlicker? A bunch of kdds in WV aren’t going to have the clothing vouchers they need for the new school year, but somehow he found $3 million for this wingnut coddling center. Such is the burden of the unbearable whiteness of being.

I’ll leave you with this: