The Center for the Humanities at Tufts and the Center for Public History will offer a discussion on “The University and the Democratic Imagination: Civic Studies and the Black Intellectual Tradition” at 4:30 pm on Oct. 5 with Hollis Robbins, Brandon Terry, and me. Please join us!

Robbins is a scholar of American and African American literature and my favorite writer these days about AI. Terry is an authority on African American political thought.

“The broader seminar gathers scholars from within and beyond the Boston area to explore the resources of the Black intellectual tradition and the practice of public history for supporting academic freedom and advancing democracy within and beyond the university.”

I suspect we will pick up some themes from Robbins’ piece, “My AI thinks Civics is Black Studies,” and my response, “Is Black Studies Civic Studies?” More generally, this may be an opportunity to think about what people should read and discuss to be good citizens, particularly in the USA. I would make a case that we should all reflect on the history of Black thought and respond to it, but I also believe that other canons are valuable. So our conversation can explore what kinds of thought citizens need, what makes a “tradition,” how academic freedom and the university relate to democracy, and the particular resources of the Black American tradition for democracy in the USA and around the world.

Those are my questions, but I’m sure the other speakers will have additional ones.