The Chase Center’s mission is to conduct teaching and research in the historical ideas, traditions, and texts that have shaped the American constitutional order and society.
The Center’s mission is further explained:
- Educate students by means of free, open, and rigorous intellectual inquiry to seek the truth;
- Affirm its duty to equip students with the skills, habits, and dispositions of mind they need to reach their own informed conclusions on matters of social and political importance;
- Affirm the value of intellectual diversity in higher education; and
- Affirm a commitment to create a community dedicated to an ethic of civil and free inquiry, which respects the intellectual freedom of each member, supports individual capacities for growth, and welcomes the differences of opinion that shall naturally exist in a public university community.
Furthermore and specifically regarding curriculum, the Center is enjoined to offer instruction in all of the following:
- The books and major debates which form the intellectual foundation of free societies, especially that of the United States;
- The principles, ideals, and institutions of the American constitutional order; and
- The foundations of responsible leadership and informed citizenship.
Lastly, the Chase Center will offer university-wide programming related to the values of free speech and civil discourse and expand the intellectual diversity of the university’s academic community.