A new bill—SB 129–was signed into law last winter severely restricting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs in higher education in Alabama.

The bill prohibits divisive concepts of race, sex, ethnicity, and other factors which undermine the traditional concept that excellence in education is obtained by merit and hard work, not by who we are.

The answer to DEI is to restore the ingredients in higher education that endowed us with standards and strengths to build the world we all inhabit.

We need to reexamine closely the values and ethics which gave this country its distinctive character. Then, before the collective memory of those attributes fades away into some corner of our memory, we need to do something.

We, for sure, do not need to let this opportunity slip by, like a footnote to the fall of the Roman Empire, to some remote corner of our mind. We need to recapture that spirit of excellence and restore it into the twenty-first century.

I propose to establish an Alpha College at UA as the most challenging forum for teaching students the values and substance that are synonymous with a quality education. Alpha College will be a leader in reforming the tattered structures of DEI, grade inflation, and other Woke politics that have so undermined higher education across the country.

For, with some notable exceptions, today we are but a tattered and fading memory of what we once were.

The world is taking us. The signs are all around us. Most everything we buy seems to be made in China.

Our unparalleled lead in technology is eroding.

Cheating in schools is rampant. There is in fact a culture of entitlement and mediocrity where there once was excellence and pride in education and work.

We spent like profligates during the last few generations. Not so long ago we saved and invested for the long haul, not for the short-term gain.

To restore our culture, we begin by changing ourselves, one by one. I am not offering a solution for all people, for all time. Here’s the way we begin.

Establish an “Alpha College” at any university wishing to take the lead. I’m only suggesting UA since I am here. The curriculum of the Alpha College will be decided by faculty and people in society whose values and accomplishments we admire.

Alpha College will emphasize learning to practice and live by the fundamentals of our civilization just as in times past.

The first Alpha College Dean faces three different tasks: one, identify those core values which make a successful civilization; two, study past educational tracks and institutions to see which one encourage and inculcate those values; three, create a modern track for the Alpha College, one for the 21^st century incorporating not only the best of the past but also the best of today into a package for the future.

For that, I think, is what we are lacking: a vision of the future.

We need a vision that lifts us up from simply existing (a job, a home, financial security) and accumulating (wealth, power, acclaim, fame) to one that looks with hope to a future that truly lights our eyes with wisdom and pulls us forward with excitement and wonder and high expectations.

Discipline, hard work, and accountability will be cornerstones of the new Colleges.

For that we need to underscore the values that allowed us—a free people living under republican institutions—to realize our potential as human beings, and two, to fashion the new frontier before us, invoking the best from the past, and the promise of the future. Greek democracy and AI in one demanding package!

We need both tradition and the future, Shakespeare and computers, history and nanotechnology, and we need to teach these with conviction and high expectations.

What will be the Alpha College curriculum? That will be for others to determine. Alpha College will foster true critical thinking and a deep appreciation for the Western tradition (recognizing its flaws as well as its merits), but with a knowledge and respect for the other great traditions and civilizations of the world.

When—if—you get your diploma, you will come away with two major accomplishments.

One, you will be an educated person.

Two, you will be prepared to compete in the global marketplace of ideas, economies, ideologies, religions, and politics. You will know that you have passed the most rigorous and demanding curriculum in the U. S.

The challenge is for some institution—great or great-in-the-making, national or regional, large, or small—to make a reality of the Alpha College and set the model in place.

Or, perhaps, an aspiring candidate for President could absorb and reflect the vision in his or her platform.

The old King James version of Proverbs 29:18 shows us the way: “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”

As Alpha College prospers and grows, so will the University that houses it, applying its lessons for the greater good and learning of the entire institution.

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Lawrence A. Clayton was born October 5, 1942, in Summit, New Jersey. He lived in Peru for seven years. He attended Duke University (B.A., 1964), and earned his M.A. (1969) and Ph.D. (1972) at Tulane University in Latin American History.  From 1964-1966 he served as an officer in the U.S. Navy on the USS Donner (LSD-20), cruising both in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean with the 6^th Fleet.

He was on the faculty of the University of Alabama from 1972-2013. He directed the Latin American Studies Program from 1980 to 1992. He was Chair of Department of History 2000-2007 and was Interim Chair, 2009-2010. His specialties focused on Latin American history and the history of the Christian church. He is now Professor Emeritus of History. He retired in 2013.

He held two Senior Fulbright Lecturing Awards, one in 1983 to Costa Rica and one in 1988 to Peru. In 1983 he served as President of the South Eastern Council on Latin American Studies. In 1999 he held a year-long Pew Evangelical Scholars Fellowship.

Some of his publications include

• The De Soto Chronicles (Tuscaloosa, 1993). Prize winning.
• A History of Modern Latin America (3^rd. ed. published as A New History of Modern Latin America ,University of California Press, 2017).
• Peru and the United States: The Condor and the Eagle (Athens, Georgia, 1999).
• Cleared for Landing: On Living a Christian Life (2008).
• Bartolomé de las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas (New York, 2011)
• Bartolomé de las Casas: A Biography (New York, 2012).
• Work and Wealth in Scripture (Eugene, Oregon, 2015)
• The Andean Cross: A Novel (Los Angeles, Ca., 2019)
• My Christian Prism or at the Port Rail (Bloomington, In., 2019)
• Three of his books have been translated and published in Peru and Ecuador.

He is working on the script to a new movie on the Doolittle Raid of 1942; and on several book projects, including his Memoirs. The best of his OpEds published in The Tuscaloosa News and elsewhere was published in 2019, as was his first novel, The Andean Cross,

He and his wife Louise have two daughters and a son, Carlton, who is a pilot with Elite Air, Tampa. Oldest daughter Amy Alderman, M.D. (UAB) is a plastic surgeon in Alpharetta, Georgia, and Stephanie Clayton Richmond, next oldest, is Executive Vice President for Papa Murphy’s Pizza in Portland, Oregon. Both daughters have two children.

Clayton has participated since 2000 in a Christian jail ministry program at the Tuscaloosa County Jail on a weekly basis, and his wife Louise is a licensed and ordained minister who teaches a Monday evening course on Christianity and the Bible to female inmates. They attend Victorious Life Church, Fosters, Al. Clayton also writes a weekly column, The Port Rail for The Tuscaloosa News that appears on Sundays in the Op-ed section.

In November, 2015 he was inducted as a Knight Commander of the Imperial Order of Charles V, in the Alcazar Palace, Segovia, Spain. In 2018, he was inducted into the Royal Hispanic American Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters in Cadiz, Spain.