Arizona’s public universities are sidestepping state civics requirements, substituting ideologically driven coursework for mandatory instruction in American history, government and economics, according to a new report.

The report by the Goldwater Institute reveals all three of Arizona’s public universities – Arizona State University (ASU), Northern Arizona University (NAU) and the University of Arizona (UA) – are failing to comply with the Arizona Board of Regents’ American Institutions (AMIT) mandate.

AMIT requires students to receive a rigorous education in the nation’s founding principles, constitutional structure and basic economics.

Instead, Goldwater says, the state universities are offering courses to students on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and classes hostile to the U.S. under the guise of “civics.”

“Arizona’s public universities are failing students by allowing niche courses steeped in DEI to satisfy the state’s robust history and civics requirements,” said report author Timothy Minella, Goldwater Institute’s director of higher education.

At ASU, students can currently satisfy the civics requirement by enrolling in “Theatre and U.S. Democracy” or “Social Welfare, Work, and Justice in the US,” for example.

The report concludes neither course can plausibly cover the mandated constitutional content.

“In this course, students will study and discuss how the founding documents of U.S. democracy have shaped and influenced the theatre, as well as how theatre artists, organizations, and movements have articulated, imagined, revised, and transformed our understandings of the United States,” said the syllabus for “Theatre and U.S. Democracy.”

One goal of the course is to consider “the way the blockbuster musical Hamilton re-imagines history with a decidedly 21st [century] lens.”

Another course, titled “Anthropology of American Democracy,” requires students to examine what it describes as American empire-building.

The course assigns readings from Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World.

The book argues instead of protecting host nations such as Germany and Japan, U.S. military bases overseas “provoke” China and Russia, according to its publisher.

At NAU, courses including “Sociology of Chicanx and Latinx Communities” and “Indigenizing Museums and the Art World” are listed as fulfilling the civics and history requirement.

Polls have shown consistently that the term Latinx is not embraced by U.S. Hispanics.

But the report saves its most scathing criticism for UA.

“UA has failed to implement anything resembling the AMIT requirement,” the analysis notes.

And even when UA has considered the AMIT curriculum, it has a decided left-wing sociological slant, the institute said.

An economics professor at UA, Mark Stegeman, who has served on general education committees for years, warned in a December 2025 op-ed in the Tucson Sentinel the university’s implementation plan was a “car crash in the making.”

Thousands of students are facing a graduation requirement built around courses that do not yet exist, he charged.

Worse, the committee tasked with vetting course proposals is controlled by a history professor who lives outside Arizona and teaches almost entirely online, Stegeman said.

Weeks before publication of the Goldwater report, UA’s faculty general education committee began approving courses for the AMIT requirement.

Goldwater obtained the syllabi and found UA had largely repackaged previously reported DEI coursework under different nomenclature.

“Students will explore complex problems through both personal reflection and analysis of (often hierarchical) dynamics between and within groups, constructing arguments informed by different human experiences and cultural or disciplinary viewpoints, and connecting systemic issues to group- and individual-level behaviors,” said the new course description.

The institute characterized the outlines as “more sanitized academic language” of the previously approved programs, which included specific “Diversity and Equity” attributes as a mandate in the teaching.

Finally, none of the approved courses make a credible attempt to teach basic economic literacy as the state’s standards explicitly require, the report said.

The omission reflects a pattern of systematic avoidance of the content and skills mandated by the state’s education board.

Minella said if the universities don’t fully comply with state requirements, Arizona lawmakers should step in.

The institute said the Arizona Legislature should exercise oversight authority and consider withholding a portion of university appropriations until the institutions bring their civics courses into compliance with board standards.

The report also endorses a proposed state constitutional amendment, HCR2044, which would prohibit mandatory DEI coursework in Arizona public university general education programs.

“Students at Arizona public universities deserve a serious education in the principles of our constitutional republic,” concluded the institute in the report. “By demanding the faithful implementation of general education in American civics, state legislators can ensure that students are prepared to lead our country into the future.”