{"id":35793,"date":"2026-07-01T09:34:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T13:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=35793"},"modified":"2026-07-01T09:34:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T13:34:51","slug":"from-the-spring-summit-on-civics-in-higher-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=35793","title":{"rendered":"from the spring summit on civics in higher education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On April 10, the Tisch College of Civic Life, the Alliance for Civics in the Academy, and GBH (formerly WGBH-Boston) organized a <a href=\"https:\/\/tischcollege.tufts.edu\/news-events\/conferences\/civics-higher-education\">national summit on civics in higher education<\/a>. Some outputs from that summit are now public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Joanna Kenty kindly published a version of my opening remarks in <em>The Renovator, <\/em>under the heading &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/therenovator.substack.com\/p\/what-was-civic-education-and-what\">What was civic education, and what can it become?<\/a>&#8221; My whole original talk is also <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/R8lGrxvwJsk\">available as a video.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Videos of the conference&#8217;s main panels are on GBH&#8217;s webpage. These sessions discussed three major categories of civic work in higher education today: 1) community engagement, 2) curricula focused on civics, and 3) research in support of democracy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wgbh.org\/forum-network\/lectures\/keeping-community-at-the-core-three-educators-describe-their-transformational-civic-work\">Keeping Community at the Core: Transformational Engagement in Higher Ed<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wgbh.org\/forum-network\/lectures\/civics-in-the-classroom-curricula-at-u-s-250\">Civics in the Classroom: Curricula at U.S. 250<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wgbh.org\/forum-network\/lectures\/democracy-centers-research-for-the-public-good\">Democracy Centers: Research for the Public Good<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">GBH also presents the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wgbh.org\/forum-network\/lectures\/the-value-of-community-classrooms-and-civic-centers\">opening remarks<\/a> of Jonathan Holloway, a historian who is now the president of the Henry Luce Foundation and previously served as the president of Rutgers. And they present a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wgbh.org\/forum-network\/lectures\/eboo-patel-america-is-a-diversity-project\">talk<\/a> by Eboo Patel, the founder of Interfaith America, on treating diversity as part of civic education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/gbhforumnetwork\/reel\/DYFs3T4CmeM\/?hl=ar\">Instagram reel<\/a> records an interview with UCSD&#8217;s Fonna Forman during the summit. Fonna is a leader of a remarkable set of community engagements in the San Diego\/Tijuana metropolitan area, which (among other accomplishments) won the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.edu\/newsdesk\/releases\/cooper-hewitt-announces-2026-national-design-award-winners\">2026 National Design Award.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">GBH also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/gbhforumnetwork\/reel\/DYPsOnbFfKy\/?hl=ar\">interviewed<\/a> my former advisee Seona Maskara (Tufts 2026) at the summit, to give a student&#8217;s perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On April 10, the Tisch College of Civic Life, the Alliance for Civics in the Academy, and GBH (formerly WGBH-Boston) organized a national summit on civics in higher education. Some outputs from that summit are now public. Joanna Kenty kindly published a version of my opening remarks in The Renovator, under the heading &#8220;What was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-advocating-civic-education","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35793"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35822,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35793\/revisions\/35822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}