Our Institute of Civic Studies last summer ended with a very spirited public debate about the Obama Administration’s Civic Agenda. Our “text” was candidate Barack Obama’s promise: “I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am President of the United States. This will not be a call issued in one speech or program; this will be a central cause of my presidency.” The questions we addressed included: What did Barack Obama mean? What should he have meant? What has the Administration done so far on this issue? What should it do? And what should we do? The speakers were:

• Alan D. Solomont (keynote), Chair, Corporation for National and Community Service
• Harry Boyte, University of Minnesota
• Archon Fung, Harvard University
• Marshall Ganz, Harvard University
• Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, President and Founder, AmericaSpeaks
• Xolela Mangcu, University of Johannesburg
• Carmen Sirianni, Brandeis UniversityC-SPAN (a US cable channel) recorded the event and aired it this morning. The full video and some transcribed text is here. (Unfortunately, C-SPAN’s video is not embeddable on my blog.) We hope to create a short, edited version of this program, which is more than two hours long.