Our Mission

The Center for the American Idea educates teachers in the history and principles of the American Republic and of the Western Tradition.

Our Vision

Our American Idea Summer Institutes, Co-Sponsored Colloquia, Socratic Symposia, and Seminars offer  teachers of today a vigorous appreciation of the roots of American greatness—which includes free markets, constitutionally limited government, and ordered liberty—to pass on to the leaders of tomorrow. 

Our American Idea programs give teachers the opportunity, through a transforming encounter with the great books, to think more deeply about the subjects they teach and the relation of those subjects to the whole of knowledge and to the formation of character.  Our interdisciplinary approach to the study of economics, government, history, and literature reflects the classical understanding of man’s nature as an economic, social, and spiritual creature.  Self-knowledge and self-discipline, learning and the cultivation of virtue, have for all of the 2800 years of the Great Conversation been understood in the Western World as the keys to human flourishing and happiness. 

Teachers will be prepared to bring their students into the Great Conversation, to inspire them with their experience of the true, the good, and the beautiful, and cultivate in them the virtues of courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice.  Only thus are people empowered as free and responsible persons, able to govern themselves in the light of enduring moral truths.  Teachers will have the understanding and appreciation of the principles and history they need to pass on the torch of liberty.

The Center for the American Idea is a program of the Free Enterprise Institute.

9525 Katy Freeway, Suite 303
Houston, TX 77024