Morrisey hasn’t said who will run WVU’s ‘Washington Center’ mandated by GOP to teach western history

by Amelia Ferrell Knisely, West Virginia Watch
October 17, 2025

Gov. Patrick Morrisey hasn’t yet named a director of West Virginia University’s new Washington Center, an academic program mandated by Republican lawmakers for the campus. It’s required to teach “classical western history and culture.”

The new state law mandating the center gave Morrisey the task of appointing its director in consultation with the Senate and WVU’s Board of Governors. The appointed director must name a seven-member academic council for the center by Nov. 8, according to the legislation. The council can include only one university employee. 

Morrisey’s office didn’t respond to questions for this story. The Republican governor previously said that the legislation was a part of his priority to combat the “woke agenda.” 

“Here in West Virginia, we are going to educate, not indoctrinate,” he said in a June news release about the bill. “Students should be taught how to think, and not what to think. The Washington Center will accomplish this goal while also providing students with instruction on America’s founding and a focus on classical education.”

The legislation didn’t outline any other required dates for the center to be up and running.

“WVU and the Governor’s Office are in the process of finalizing the appointment of the director of the Washington Center. We expect to make an announcement soon, and then have the center up and running,” Shauna Johnson, WVU’s executive director of strategic communications, said in an email.

Del. Pat McGeehan, R-Brooke, who sponsored the Washington Center legislation, declined to comment, saying he’d leave a formal announcement to the governor’s office. 

His bill, House Bill 3297, passed by the GOP-led legislature in April, though some Democratic lawmakers — and WVU alumni — raised concerns about a political appointee overseeing academics. 

The bill mandated that WVU operate the “Washington Center for Civics, Culture and Statesmanship” focused on teaching constitutional studies and “great debates of Western civilization.” It will also present the “fact-based instruction on America’s founding,” according to the governor’s office.

“The center shall 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,” the measure said. 

According to the bill, the director “shall be an expert on the western tradition, the American founding, and American constitutional thought, and shall have publicly demonstrated, through speeches, publications, or presentations, a commitment to the purposes, goals, and policies of the center.” 

The director’s term will be for five years and renewable, and he or she will report to the WVU president and other university leaders. 

The director is tasked with overseeing the Washington Center, including managing and recruiting staff, overseeing its curriculum and the program’s budget. 

While the bill initially didn’t come with funding for the center’s director and faculty, the final budget bill contained $1.5 million for WVU to use on the center. 

Along with a director, the bill requires the university to have five additional faculty at the center, which comes in the wake of WVU eliminating around 300 faculty and staff jobs for financial reasons. 

The Washington Center can use existing faculty and courses to accomplish the bill’s requirements of civics instruction. 

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West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com.