April 10 | Tufts University, Medford, MA

The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University and the Alliance for Civics in the Academy (ACA), with support from GBH, are proud to host a national summit on the state of civics in higher education.

The summit will convene practitioners, faculty, administrators, and students from across the United States to explore, discuss and compare models of civic practice in higher education.

Summit speakers and panelists will include Amy Binder, Mary Clark, Michael Clune, Dayna Cunningham, Andrew Delbanco, Fonna Forman, Bryan Garsten, Leslie Garvin, Caroline Attardo Genco, Tetyana Hoggan-Kloubert, Peter Levine, Jessica Kimpell Johnson, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Josiah Ober, Mindy Romero, Jenna Silber Storey, Marisol Morales, and more.

The summit will bring together three categories of university-based centers and programs—including diverse representatives from each—that are influential and widespread:

1. Colleges or programs of Civic Thought or Civic Studies. These entities offer civic education courses within a liberal arts curriculum. At least 13 are new initiatives at public universities. They may also produce research and public programs related to civic life.
2. Centers and initiatives that engage higher education with communities in part to enhance their students’ civic skills and knowledge. These initiatives have roots in the Land Grant tradition (including the HBCU Land Grants) and the “Wisconsin Idea,” and many are ambitious and innovative today.
3. Democracy research centers and institutes based in universities that aim to improve democracy or civil society by generating research, tools, and events for the public.

Panel sessions will explore these three categories, while plenary discussion will compare them and provoke reflection on questions like these:

• To what extent should college-level civic education be about reading and discussing texts?
• To what extent should civic education be experiential, and which kinds of experiences are most valuable?
• Should colleges and universities be embedded in and accountable to local communities, to states, to the nation, to transnational communities, and/or to the globe?
• What does it mean to promote viewpoint diversity in each type of program? Are there other dimensions of disagreement that are also (or more) relevant than ideology?
• Is the goal of civic education to build support for the constitutional order, to subject the system to critical scrutiny and improvement, or both?

We anticipate rich discussions and constructive disagreements that will enrich participants’ views of these issues while also strengthening the intellectual community.

Please register on the summit site and check it for the full agenda and list of speakers. This information will be updated as the summit develops.