In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education essay, Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy poses the question: “How Racist Are Universities, Really?” In it, he argues that in these volatile times, “hyperbolic accusations” can “do more harm than good.” Are universities systemically racist? Will recent university policies designed to address claims of racial bias on campus inhibit academic freedom?

On October 12, 2020, Dr. William B, Allen joined the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University for a virtual talk on George Washington and the founding father's thoughts on slavery.

The subject of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership's 2020 Annual Constitution Day Lecture is Women’s Long Battle for the Vote: Surprises on the Road to the Nineteenth Amendment, the topic and title of Professor DuBois' most recent book. The lecture will cover the seventy-five years of the U.S.

What is education for if not to prepare citizens for meaningful civic participation in the institutions of American government and society? How can we restore healthy civic participation and discussion to American democracy? What sort of education will the renewal of our civic institutions require?

To Yascha Mounk, we are facing a global crisis. Support for liberal democracy has fallen markedly across Western Europe and North America—and this development is especially stark in the U.S., and especially amongst its youth. Populist, authoritarian parties erode the checks and balances of the rule of law, the judiciary system and free press. They discard the rights of citizens and push more people out of the sphere of politics. And they ride waves of racial animosity, promising violence, or imprisonment, for those who resist.

What is the office of the citizen in contemporary American democracy? This panel will consider the understanding of the citizen from the time of the Founding to the present. How did the Founders understand the responsibilities and duties of the citizen in the new American Republic? What knowledge did they expect the citizen to have? What duties did they expect the citizen to perform? What was and is the role of active citizenship and public-spiritedness in American democracy?

The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution states: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. This panel will address the questions: who is a citizen under the American Constitution? What rights come from American citizenship?

What does it mean to be a citizen? The claim of liberal political thought represented most directly by John Locke, is that the state is an association of individuals with natural rights who contract with one another to protect those rights to life, liberty, and property in a peaceful society. For Rousseau, the citizen in the ancient sense is no longer possible, and instead, we must look for standards in nature to form citizens of the world.

A series inviting the people of the United States to deliberate together about the ingredients necessary for civic bridge building, reviving civic knowledge and civic participation, and engaging in institutional renewal. Citizenship and Civic Leadership in America is the latest season of "The Civic Discourse Project", an annual lecture series designed to bring top minds to Arizona State University to discuss the most pressing issues of our time.