JSNE Compilation
Published December 1, 2025
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New charter school in Douglas County adopts cirriculum authored by the founder of John Adams Academies. Dean Forman received his “PhD” from a Utah-based right-wing think-tank later closed by the Utah Division of Consumer Protection
Blog Summary:
Dean Forman is the founder of the Califonia-based John Adams Academies. He is the author of the American Classical Leadership Education cirriculum. The Colorado Charter School Institute approved John Adams Academy–Douglas County in June, 2025. JAA Douglas County has adopted Forman’s American Classical Leadership Education cirriculum.Forman claims to have received his PhD from from George Wythe University in Philosophy and Constitutional Law. George Wythe University has never been an accedited university or college. The college was heavily influenced by the ideas of W. Cleon Skousen, a figure known for his fringe conservative and anti-communist political views. His work has been shunned by some mainstream conservative institutions and the Mormon church.Despite prominent supporters such as Mitt Romney and Glenn Beck, George Wythe U. will go down in history as a failed institution, wracked with financial problems and saddled with bad publicity for awarding degrees students never really earned.The Utah Division of Consumer Protection negotiated a settlement, and “the university” ceased operations by August 2016.
Local Background Articles about John Adams Academy
March 6, 2025. Colorado Times Recorder. Servant Leaders: A Closer Look at John Adams Academy, A Proposed DougCo Charter School Championed by Conservatives.
June 19, 2025. Colorado Times Recorder by Suzie Glassman.
State Approves Classical Charter School In Douglas County Despite Heavy Christian Influence, Low Salary and Enrollment Projections
Dean Formans Bio (John Adams Academy Website)
https://www.johnadamsacademy.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=2033351&type=d&pREC_ID=2109641
Dr. Forman completed his undergraduate education in Family Financial Planning and Counseling at Brigham Young University. 1982.
He has also completed a Master’s Degree in Retirement and Estate Planning from the College for Financial Planning and earned his PhD from George Wythe University in Philosophy and Constitutional Law. Dr. Forman served on the Roseville Joint Union High School District Governing Board from 2000 to 2004 and as President of the Governing Board in 2003/04. He served as Board Member and President for CORE Academy, a charter school in Placer County from 2006 to 2009. He also currently serves as Founder, and Board Chairman of John Adams Academies, Inc.
When Dr. Forman isn’t working at his profession or volunteering at the Academy, he’s dedicated to sharing the principles of an American Classical Leadership Education® on his personal blog, Leading a Revolution in Education, where readers can benefit from the truth, virtue and wisdom of the past.
The Freedoms Foundation recognized Dr. Forman for his efforts in founding John Adams Academy with the George Washington Honor Medal in 2012. In 2013 he was also honored with the Distinguished Service Award from the BYU Alumni Association.
Small Utah college with big political ties is going under
Wythe University • Conservative school burdened by money woes is working with state on structured shutdown.
By Matt Canham The Salt Lake Tribune
October 21, 2015 6:13 pm
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=3082759&itype=CMSID
Guided by mentors, not teachers, students dive into the “Federalist Papers” and swim in Plato’s ideas. They wrestle with the role of government and thrust and parry over the boundaries of public corruption.
The education at George Wythe University is unorthodox and undoubtedly conservative, pushing a small-government vision, and has roots in the teachings of Cleon Skousen. In Republican-dominated Utah, it’s no surprise this small, unaccredited college has received the support through the years of many state lawmakers, Gov. Gary Herbert, former Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, Mitt Romney and commentator Glenn Beck.
Despite the prominent supporters, George Wythe U. will go down in history as a failed institution, wracked with financial problems and saddled with bad publicity for awarding degrees students never really earned.
The Utah Division of Consumer Protection has negotiated a settlement requiring the university to cease operations by August 2016, an exceedingly rare move by the government entity that oversees unaccredited schools. It could have simply shuttered the university at any time during the past few years, but didn’t out of concern for students still in the middle of the program.
The university’s current leaders heap praise on Consumer Protection for the way it has handled this mess and agree it is time for the George Wythe brand to die.
Baggage • “How would you like to go to a school that had this kind of baggage?” said Julie Earley, a George Wythe graduate and former board member who is now the acting registrar. It’s a volunteer position she has held since 2012, largely because the school doesn’t have the money to pay her.
Earley and the rest of George Wythe’s leaders are seeking a graceful exit for the university. They have conducted an internal audit of degrees awarded by the school, identifying those in violation of Utah rules, largely because past administrators granted “life experience credits” +beyond what’s allowed.
The school is seeking to revoke a handful of the most egregious degrees and is contracting with outside academics to review the audit.
In the 23 years this small school has been around it has awarded 286 degrees. Seventy-four of the 99 degrees from its early years are problematic. Since the George Wythe Foundation took over in 2001, only 16 of the subsequent 187 degrees were problematic, according to the audit.
The board’s plan is to jettison the bad degrees and keep those fairly earned by students, restoring legitimacy to any degree carrying the George Wythe name. Then the current leaders hope they can attract another school to merge with the university, giving students a way to prove their educational credentials and get transcripts if they want to go to graduate school at some point.
“That,” Earley said, “makes it a much happier ending.”
Bad degrees
Earley said the school’s problems began and ended with the university’s founders, Oliver DeMille and Shanon Brooks, and Consumer Protection investigator Liz Blaylock confirms the financial mistakes made by these men have acted like a 2-ton anchor around this tiny rowboat of a university.
Brooks and DeMille, who were jettisoned by the George Wythe board in 2009 and 2010, blame the Great Recession for George Wythe’s money troubles, and Brooks said the school never recovered because of the ineptitude of current leaders.
“It is human nature to shift the blame to others in a time of crisis. The closure of George Wythe University seems to be no exception,” said Brooks, who after his ouster from the George Wythe board created Monticello College, a similar school in rural Monticello, Utah. Monticello College is also overseen by Consumer Protection and ran afoul of charitable contribution rules earlier this year, agreeing to a $1,500 fine.
DeMille, meanwhile, sells books about his educational model.
“We were not experts in the field of educational start-ups and we made plenty of mistakes,” allowed Brooks, “but we steadily grew from an idea to a notable college over a period of 15 years.”
Beginnings
George Wythe University is named after the nation’s first law professor, a mentor to Thomas Jefferson. DeMille, Brooks, and a few others created the school in 1992, with the idea of teaching from the classics the Founding Fathers studied and the writings they created.
It distinguished itself from other “Great Books” colleges by infusing its curriculum with the teachings of the late Cleon Skousen, a former FBI agent, Salt Lake City police chief and author, who intertwined his Mormon faith with libertarian views. He became a significant figure in far-right politics, including a posthumous resurgence promoted by Beck’s TV and radio programs.
Every George Wythe student was required to read Skousen’s “The 5,000 Year Leap,” and the conservative thinker regularly visited the classes taught in those early years at a Duck Creek ski lodge at the top of Cedar Mountain in Iron County. While Skousen’s interest in the university would soon wane, it would be years before administrators phased out his works from the curriculum, saying they were not academic works.
The university was operating as an offshoot of the Coral Ridge Baptist University in Florida, so students received degrees in biblical studies, even though the education wasn’t particularly religious in nature. Students who attended classes had to plow through lengthy reading lists before joining deep discussions led by professors called “mentors.”
Many George Wythe students rave about the education they received, first at Duck Creek and then in a space under a dentist office on Cedar City’s Main Street.
Neil Schiffman, who is now a financial planner in Riverton, graduated with a degree in statesmanship in 2010.
“The education and the professors were fantastic,” he said. “The debates really stretch your belief system.”
However, Connor Boyack, who founded the libertarian think tank, LIbertas Institute, and has taken a few distance courses from George Wythe, called it “in essence, a glorified book club.”
The university broke away from Coral Ridge in 2001, creating its own charitable foundation to run the school and new protocols that limited the amount of life-experience credit offered. DeMille and Brooks still led the university, though they now answered to a board, made up largely of past graduates.
Brooks wanted to move the school, or at least set up a second campus, in Monticello, on donated land. He then sunk much of the school’s roughly $250,000 endowment into the project, telling the board that the move was necessary for the school to eventually get accredited and allow students to get federal loans and financial aid.
The rosy financial picture painted by the founders changed suddenly in early 2009, Earley recalls, when Brooks warned that the school may have to close.
The board removed Brooks from his job as president and eliminated the role of chancellor, shifting both founders to spots on the board. DeMille, suffering from health problems, played a minimal role, while Brooks was asked to lead the school’s annual fundraising gala
Glenn Beck and Mitt Romney endorsements
That event took place at the state Capitol in May 2009, and Brooks was able to get Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, to introduce Glenn Beck, who entertained the crowd dressed in tuxedos and gowns.
“We are all united in moving forward the cause of liberty,” Romney said, “and building men and women of virtue and wisdom, diplomacy and courage, which is part of the mission statement of the university itself.”
The event was a nice party, but it didn’t make a profit.
A week after the gala, the school’s last such event, Brooks resigned. The university cut all ties with DeMille shortly thereafter.
The financial problems soon caught the attention of Consumer Protection, including a host of questionable loans Brooks signed off on without board approval. The division required the university to sever all ties to Brooks to maintain its registration.
The university’s next president, Shane Schulthies, a former Brigham Young University professor of physical education, suggested it was time to close the school. While the board rejected an immediate shutdown, Earley said the wind down began in 2011. But Blaylock, the division investigator, noted the school accepted new students as recently as 2013, after it had shuttered its Cedar City office and moved to Salt Lake City, taking space in an office complex on South Temple.
The division has levied fines due to problems with registration and charitable contributions through the years, including two board members who didn’t make themselves available for a personal credit check as required. The board said that was a simple oversight, quickly corrected. The division collected little of the fines for fear it could trigger the school’s collapse. In 2014, the division agreed to accept $1,000 of a $20,000 fine and then last month, the division signed off on a new agreement giving the university one more year before it had to close.
Administrators have regularly met with Consumer Protection to work on the tiered “teach out.” The graduate programs were closed first and then the undergraduate program stopped accepting students.
Last class
The university, which has no president, now has 30 students enrolled, with undergraduates paying an average $4,600 for tuition and books each semester.
They meet in a mock business boardroom with leather chairs around a dark wood table. At its head is a TV wired for online courses. Prints of famous paintings of George Washington and other Founding Fathers line the walls. There’s also a bust of Cicero, the famous Roman philosopher, a painting of Mother Teresa and large replicas of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
Here the remaining George Wythe students take courses in everything from government to biology, trying to wrap up their statesmanship degrees before the school goes dark.
In recent years, George Wythe students have held a mock legislature, the most recent took place in May in the Capitol. State Sen. Dan Thatcher, R-West Valley City, arranged for 26 students and four mentors to take over the Senate floor. They spent the day debating bills the real Utah Legislature rejected or found controversial.
“What I saw were engaged and enthusiastic students who were doing more than surface discussion of the news. They were actually trying to understand policy,” said Thatcher, who had no inkling that the school would soon be no more.
At the end of the day, Gov. Gary Herbert addressed the students. It was not the first time. He has occasionally has attended George Wythe events in past years, saying he likes the school’s emphasis on the Constitution.
“I liked what they were doing, what they stood for,” Herbert told The Salt Lake Tribune. “I’m disappointed in the fact that they aren’t finding success in the marketplace. … But the marketplace should determine winners and losers.”
George Wythe administrators, no fans of big government, believe the state should play a role in saving future unaccredited schools.
They are proposing legislation that would make it a felony to give out a fraudulent degree. It is now a misdemeanor. They would also require an unaccredited school to keep an off-site secure copy of a transcript to avoid tampering and make sure that at least three other schools would accept transfer credits.
“We don’t want anyone else to have to go through what we have gone through,” Earley said. “It is never fun cleaning up someone else’s messes.”
Romney Aided Fringe Utah College Founded by Right-Wing Conspiracy Theorist
In 2009, the GOP candidate introduced Glenn Beck at a fundraiser for a school that promoted the work of a conservative “nutjob” eschewed by the Mormon church.
Mother Jones…October 11, 2012 David Corn Stephanie Mencimer
In 2009, Mitt Romney, who is now trying to campaign for president as a moderate, lent his star power to an unusual charitable project: celebrating right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck to raise money for an unaccredited Utah-based college, which was founded by acolytes of the late W. Cleon Skousen and promoted the work of this fringe conservative figure. Much-touted by Beck, Skousen was an anti-communist crusader, a purported political philosopher, a historian accused of racist revisionism, and a right-wing conspiracy theorist. He contended that the Founding Fathers were direct descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, claimed that a global cabal of bankers controlled the world from behind the scenes, and wrote a book that referred to the “blessings of slavery.” Skousen, who died in 2006, taught Romney at Brigham Young University.
On May 30, 2009, George Wythe University (named after the first law professor in America, who was a teacher of Thomas Jefferson), held a fundraising gala at the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City. Beck, who was then riding high as a Fox News host, was the special guest, tapped to receive the school’s annual “Statesman Award.” Romney introduced him.
In a video message—obtained by Mother Jones—that was recorded for the event, Romney praised Beck and this school, which the US Department of Justice has called a “diploma mill.” He hailed George Wythe University and its supporters for “building statesmen” and “moving forward the cause of liberty and building men and women of virtue and wisdom, diplomacy, and courage.” He introduced Beck as a “man who is really making an impact in our entire country today.” Romney noted that Beck’s “approach is refreshing” and that he “tries to focus his message on action…on learning the principles of freedom and liberty, on standing up and making your voice heard, on reading and applying the wisdom of our nation’s founders to the challenges of today.” Beck, he asserted, was “a statesman in his own right.”
Here’s the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJKAp6eYN24
15,453 views Oct 11, 2012
On May 30, 2009, George Wythe (named after the first law professor in America, who was a teacher of Thomas Jefferson), held a fundraising gala at the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City. Beck, who was then riding high as a Fox News host, was the special guest, tapped to receive the school’s annual “Statesman Award.” Romney introduced him.
At the time of the fundraiser, Beck had established himself as a champion of the far right who peddled extreme and conspiratorial views. In the weeks prior to this event, he had declared that President Barack Obama was “clearly” a socialist who had “surrounded himself with Marxists his whole life,” and Beck had told listeners of his radio show that Obama will “surely take away your gun or take away you ability to shoot a gun.” Yet Beck was a towering figure on the right and a favorite of the emerging tea party movement. It was not odd that Romney, anticipating another presidential run, would seek to win his favor and proclaim him a “statesman.” His endorsement of George Wythe (pronounced “with”) University was more curious.
The school was founded in 1992 by Oliver DeMille, along with two other Skousen associates. DeMille is described in a 2007 university catalog as “a popular keynote speaker, writer, and business consultant” who earned a master’s degree in “Christian Political Science” and a doctorate in religious education at the unaccredited and now-defunct Coral Ridge Baptist University. In 1992, DeMille published an over-the-top tract, The New World Order: Choosing Between Christ and Satan in the Last Days, in which he and his coauthor wrote:
The term “New World Order” means the same thing today—abolishment of Christianity and the adoption of Satan’s plan—whether spoken in lodges and meetings of secret societies or on national television by George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. This does not mean that Bush or Gorbachev are Satan-worshippers, but they have accepted his plan—that governments should use force to make people live correctly.
The book also noted:
During the coming year the secret combinations and the governments they control will do a number of things to build a Satanic New World Order. President Bush and many Congressmen, who are controlled by the secret societies, will attempt to further this cause and to continue the curtailment of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.
DeMille’s book endorsed an assortment of conservative conspiracy theories, including the notion that the “Establishment” was going to turn the United States into a socialist state, disarm the American military and put it under United Nations control, and merge the country with Mexico, Canada, and other Latin American countries. (According to an official history of GWU, DeMille later considered the publication of this book a mistake.)
In the program for the 2009 Beck-Romney fundraiser, DeMille’s welcome message sounded the alarm: “The figurative redcoats are at our door as threats to our liberty, prosperity, and sovereignty are no longer ideological or symbolic, but very real and immediate.” One way to preserve liberty, he noted, was to donate to George Wythe University.
The school was established in a hunting lodge in southern Utah purchased by William Doughty, a Skousen devotee who also wanted to create a self-sufficient alternative community for conservatives who believed that the Constitution was being dismantled by the US government. The initial plans called for a center devoted to Skousen and his writings and a constitutional theme park populated by Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry impersonators. Skousen and his family donated more than $100,000 and gave their blessing to Doughty’s fundraising efforts.
The constitutional utopia never materialized. Doughty came under investigation for allegedly bilking investors and donors out of $1 million. (No further action was ever taken against him.) But George Wythe University held on and continued to advance the work of Skousen, a conspiratorialist in his own right, who advocated extreme views across a wide range of subjects.
In a 1962 book, Skousen denounced homosexuality and noted, “Every boy should know that masturbation may be the first step to homosexuality.” In his 1970 book, The Naked Capitalist, Skousen asserted that a sinister “secret society of the London-Wall Street axis”—which included the Council on Foreign Relations—controlled the world and manipulated global events, financing revolutions and aligning itself with “dictatorial forces” to preserve its power. In a 1970 article, Skousen, who was active with the John Birch Society, claimed that criticism of the Mormon church for prohibiting African Americans from its priesthood was nothing but a communist conspiracy against the church. (He also recorded a spoken-word album for the John Birch Society on the dangers of LSD.) In The Five Thousand Year Leap, a supposed history influenced by Mormon theology and published in 1981, Skousen contended that the Constitution is rooted in the bible. (Beck has heavily promoted the book to his listeners and viewers and wrote the introduction to a new edition.)
In 1979, the Mormon church issued a directive distancing itself from an organization started by Skousen. Five years ago, the conservative National Review referred to Skousen as an “all-around nutjob.”
Still, until 2010, George Wythe University taught Skousen’s work as part of its core curricula, alongside such classics as Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and Tom Paine’s Common Sense. Freshmen were assigned The Five Thousand Year Leap and The Making of America, which came close to idealizing slavery, as in a passage in the book quoting a 1934 essay: “If the pickaninnies ran naked it was generally from choice, and when the white boys had to put on shoes and go away to school they were likely to envy the freedom of their colored playmates.” While promoting The Making of America, Skousen called for eliminating a host of federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency; for selling off national parks; for ending the direct election of US senators; and for weakening the separation of church and state.
In a 2007 radio interview, Romney said that he had not read The Making of America, but that it was “worth reading.” Romney cited another Skousen book to explain Mormon theology regarding the second coming of Christ. In another radio interview that year, Romney recalled taking a class at BYU on the Bible taught by Skousen, whom he called “a brilliant man and a wonderful story teller.”
George Wythe University has never been accredited, and for most of its history, its leadership has been comprised of people who earned their academic credentials from other unaccredited schools. (Andrew Groft, a recent president whose degrees came from George Wythe, was caught in a prostitution sting shortly after leaving the school.) For years, the school handed out generous “life experience” credits toward a Ph.D. in a host of different specialties. One of the school’s most famous doctorate recipients is former Michigan congressman Mark Siljander. He served for a couple of years as a George Wythe trustee and earned a Ph.D. in international business from the school after writing a 10-page dissertation and attending no classes. In 2010, Siljander pleaded guilty to charges he had been an unregistered lobbyist for an Islamic charity with terrorist ties. In his sentencing memo, the Department of Justice labeled George Wythe University a “diploma mill.” (Siljander was pardoned by Donald Trump in 2020)
Since its inception, the school has suffered financial difficulties. In recent years, it has been plagued with declining enrollment. Shortly before the Beck fundraiser, the university reported that its enrollment was half of what it had been the previous year, with only about 150 students. More recent money troubles have stemmed from ill-advised real estate deals in an effort to build a much larger campus. The high-profile endorsements from Beck and Romney did not do much to place the school on better footing. The gala itself, according to school officials, “failed to net any gains.”
GWU has recently closed its doctorate program, and this spring announced that it was abandoning ambitious plans for the new campus. Its main building in Cedar City is for sale, and the school is now operating out of an office suite in Salt Lake City. Enrollment is down to a mere 60 students.
There are conflicting accounts as to how Romney came to endorse George Wythe. Shanon Brooks, a former GWU president and head of the committee that organized the 2009 gala, tells Mother Jones, “I believe that the video was secured via members of his family who had a connection with him.” But Andrea Saul, a Romney campaign spokeswoman, says, “Glenn Beck asked Gov. Romney to introduce him, and the governor agreed to do it.” By this telling, Romney, as he was eyeing his next presidential bid, endorsed a conspiracy-promoting school of iffy standing to score points with a conspiracy-minded conservative icon—and ended up making common cause with crackpot thinking shunned by the Mormon church and the National Review.