Most of my time is spent planning for the launch of our report on k-12

civic education, The Civic Mission of Schools. At a press conference

on Thursday, it will be "received" by John Bridgeland, Advisor

to the President and Director of USA Freedom Corps, in the presence of

the presidents of The Pew Charitable Trusts and Carnegie Corporation of

New York, and others. So there are millions of practical details to attend

to.

Meanwhile, my colleagues and I filed an interim report with the Kettering

Foundation, describing our progress on a project involving journalism

and political theory. We’re trying to figure out how each discipline

might learn from and benefit the other. As an experiment, two graduate

students (under the direction of a philosophy professor and a journalism

professor) are creating a Website presenting ideas from political theory

in a format useful to working journalists. The idea is to learn what kind

of philosophy would be practically relevant—and what journalists

should learn from philosophers. The students have decided to focus the

Website itself on war and democratic theory. The central issues to be

addressed are (1) the uneasy relationship between national security and

civil liberties in a democratic society; (2) freedom of information, and

especially press access to information in time of war; and (3) the implications

of a professional military for the health of a democracy.