If this year's election teaches anything about "yes we can," our capacities to work across differences to take hold of our collective destiny, it is that civic agency is the work of all of us.

Civic science builds on a rich history of efforts to translate scientific findings to real world settings, full of complexity, ambiguity, and open-endedness, where science cannot be "applied" in any linear or straightforward way.

In such a divisive political climate, what does it look like for higher education to take leadership in "a politics of constructive action by the citizenry across divisions to meet the nation's challenges"?

Today, once again, the nation's challenges call for a politics of constructive action by the broad citizenry, across divisions. Political leaders who struggle to rise above partisan squabbles offer important examples. Higher education also needs to help lead the way.