The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University and the Alliance for Civics in the Academy (ACA), with support from GBH, are proud to host a one-day national summit on the state of civics in higher education on Friday, April 10, 2026 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Tufts University’s Medford/Somerville campus. 

The summit will convene practitioners, faculty, administrators, and students from across the United States to explore, discuss and compare models of civic practice in higher education.

Please register here.

The agenda is now largely set:

Continental Breakfast & Poster Presentation 8:45 a.m. – 9:15 a.m. | Breed Memorial Hall

Welcome

9:15 a.m. | Breed Memorial Hall

• Caroline Genco, Provost & Senior Vice President, Tufts University
• Dayna Cunningham, Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Dean, Tisch College at Tufts
• University Jonathan Holloway, President & CEO, Luce Foundation
• Peter Levine, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Lincoln Filene Professor, Tisch College at Tufts University

Panel 1: Community at the Core: Transformational Civic Partnerships

10:00 – 11:00 a.m. | Breed Memorial Hall

Some institutions are deeply engaged with their neighboring communities. These partnerships provide opportunities for civic learning while generating knowledge and other public goods.

• Fonna Forman, Professor of Political Science & Founding Director of the Center on Global Justice at the University of California, San Diego
• Leslie Garvin, Executive Director, North Carolina Campus Engagement
• Amber Wichowsky, Associate Professor of Public Affairs & Leadership Wisconsin Endowed Chair for the Division of Extension, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Moderator: Peter Levine, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Lincoln Filene Professor, Tisch College at Tufts University
  

BREAK | 11:00 – 11:15 a.m.
Panel 2: Civics in the Classroom: Curricula at U.S. 250Some institutions have developed curricular programs for civic education, ranging from courses to majors and even schools.11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.| Breed Memorial Hall

• Michael Clune, Professor, Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, The Ohio State University
• Tetyana Hoggan-Kloubert, Chair of Adult and Continuing Education, University of Augsburg,Germany
• Bryan Garsten, Professor of Political Science and Humanities; Faculty Director, Center for Civic Thought at Yale University
• Moderator: Josiah Ober, Constantine Mitsotakis Chair in the School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford UniversityLUNCH | 12:15 – 1:15 p.m.

Remarks on Pluralism | 1:15 – 1:30 p.m.Eboo Patel, Founder and President, Interfaith America

Panel 3: Democracy Centers: Research for the Public GoodSome institutions are home to centers that study and aim to improve democracy. Among other functions, they involve students in their research, and they may study civic education.1:30 – 2:30 p.m. | Breed Memorial Hall

• Jessica Kimpell Johnson, Director of Research, Karsh Institute of Democracy; Manager of the JohnL. Nau III Lab on the History & Principles of Democracy, University of Virginia
• Amy Binder, SNF-Agora Professor of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University
• Mindy Romero, Founder and Director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy (CID), University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy in Sacramento
• Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Founding Director of the Center for Governance and Markets;Professor, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs
• Moderator: Leela Strong, Newhouse Director of the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), Tisch College at Tufts University

BREAK | 2:30 – 2:45 p.m.
Panel 4: Where Do We Go from Here? Critique, Comments & Responses 2:45 – 3:45 p.m.

• Andrew Delbanco, President, The Teagle Foundation; Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies, Columbia University
• Jenna Silber Storey, Ravenel Curry Chair in Civic Thought; Senior Fellow in Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies, American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
• Additional panelist(s) to be added
• Moderator: Stefanie Sanford, Chair of the Board of Trustees, Institute for Citizens & Scholars

Closing Remarks 3:45 – 4:00 p.m.

Peter Levine, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Lincoln Filene Professor, Tisch College at Tufts University

Reception

Please join us for informal conversation and refreshments at this reception hosted by the Civic Studies Program at Tufts University.

4:30 – 6:30 p.m. | Tamper Café (340 Boston Ave, Medford)

At last week’s conference on Democratic Resilience at Boston College’s Clough Center, the star speakers were Steven Levitsky (a co-author of the bestselling How Democracies Die and a forthcoming book on democratic resilience around the world); Daron Acemoglu (the 2024 Nobel laureate in economics, whose forthcoming book is entitled “What Happened to Liberal Democracy?: Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity); and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat.

Each gave a long and rich talk that was basically a history of democracy in the past quarter century. Their narratives were quite different, as were their prognoses and recommendations, but they had one point in common. All three argued that elites across the world’s democracies have performed extraordinarily badly.

Levitsky decried elites’ weak efforts at combatting populist authoritarianism and their willingness to comply with authoritarians, as well as the uninspiring agendas of the center-left parties in almost all democracies. Acemoglu listed “sins of omission” (failing to address serious economic problems) and “sins of commission” (imposing unpopular policies). Douthat highlighted three spectacular failures: the so-called “War on Terror,” the response to China’s economic rise, and COVID policies, which he described as too stringent to be accepted and yet too weak to defeat the pandemic. In the discussions, people also referred to the corrupt and interconnected elite that appears in the Epstein Files.

I think all three speakers cited accurate facts and chose trenchant examples. Yes, it’s ironic that senior professors from Harvard and MIT and a New York Times columnist would decry “elites” before an invited audience at Boston College, but this does not mean that they were wrong.

For me, one puzzle is why elites should perform badly at the same time across the world, particularly if their predecessors generally performed better. Such a pattern seems to require a deeper explanation.

One hint came from Acemoglu, who mentioned that leaders after World War II could “pick the low-hanging fruit” by introducing public services that had not been provided before. Maybe it is simply harder to innovate in a popular way after your country has already launched things like public schools and welfare programs.

I am also a little puzzled why entrepreneurial pro-democratic politicians have not developed popular and effective policy agendas anywhere–if such agendas could exist.

In any given country, one can blame the specific elites. For example, people to the left of Barack Obama claim that the Democratic Party has been captured by neoliberals. But it is harder to explain why no party offers a successful alternative to populist authoritarianism.

The other limitations of these accounts is that I don’t know what to do as a result. Elites probably are at fault, but what does that leave us to do? My own contribution to the conference was certainly more modest and less original, but it has the advantage that it gives you and me an assignment: we should join and strengthen voluntary associations.

Now is hardly the first time in modern US history when elites have faced widespread criticism. In 1971, The New York Times published the leaked Pentagon Papers, some 7,000 pages of secret documents about the Vietnam War. Among them was a memo from an Assistant Secretary of Defense (John McNaughton) to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. McNaughton wrote:

I think the [current draft strategy document for the Vietnam War] underplays a little bit the unpopularity of the war in the US, especially with the young people, the underprivileged, the intelligentsia and (I suspect) the women. A feeling is widely and strongly held that “the Establishment” is out of its mind. The feeling is that we are trying to impose some US image on distant peoples we cannot understand (anymore than we can the younger generation here at home), and that we are carrying the thing to absurd lengths. Related to this feeling is the increased polarization that is taking place in the United States with seeds of the worst split in our people in more than a century. (May 6, 1967)

This passage seems so timely in 2026 that I wonder whether US democracy has ever been free of irresponsible elites, and how we have managed–more or less–to rebound.

On Friday, I’ll be speaking on a panel about “Educating for Democratic Resilience” at a conference on Democratic Resilience at Boston College’s Clough Center. Here are some notes:

All my work is based on the theory that democracy is more resilient when many people belong to self-governing, autonomous associations. That was Alexis de Tocqueville’s insight, subsequently developed in different ways by John Dewey, Hannah Arendt, and others, and tested in recent decades by illustrious social scientists like Elinor Ostrom (who won the Nobel Prize for her work on this topic) and Robert Putnam.

I believe in it–not as an article of faith, but as a useful model. It does not always turn out to be right empirically. Democracies depend on many things, not simply on associations; and not all associations support democracy. But the model often explains phenomena that we observe in the world. More importantly, it often generates practical insights that we can use to act. Basically, by strengthening associations, we can improve the condition of our democracy. This is one of the main levers that we can pull.

Here is just one example of an empirical finding. The most recent available American National Election Study (2020) asked several items about civic participation, including this one: “During the past 12 months, have you worked with other people to deal with some issue facing your community?” That is a measure of Tocquevillian civic participation.

The ANES also asked several items relevant to the resilience of democracy. For instance, it asked whether “Much of what people hear in schools and the media are lies designed to keep people from learning the real truth about those in power.”

When controlling for education, age, gender, race, and ideology, respondents who participated in groups were much less likely to hold a hostile view of media and schools. Conservatives were more likely to be hostile, but when I included ideology in the model along with civic participation, ideology was no longer significant. In other words, irrespective of ideology, people who work with others to address local issues are more likely to trust schools and media.

From my perspective (which is contestable, obviously) approving of Donald Trump is a problematic sign. A person may vote for him for various reasons, but appreciating him as a leader suggests a lack of support for democracy. In the 2020 ANES, people who worked with others on community issues strongly disliked Trump. As expected, conservatives were more likely than liberals to approve of Trump. However, once I controlled for participation in local groups, conservatives felt no differently from liberals about Trump.

These are selected statistics, which should never be persuasive on their own. However, they illustrate the common patterns that are central to the work of Ostrom, Putnam, and others.

What does this model mean for education?

To form and sustain groups requires practical know-how. Traditionally, the most common way to obtain such knowledge was by growing up around successful organizations, but such experience has become rare as civil society has shrunk. Although US schools still teach American history and civics (with a focus on government), they do not regularly teach how to manage effective groups. Meanwhile, changes in the economy and media have created new challenges for voluntary associations, so that traditional know-how may no longer suffice.

The weakness of associational life has been evident recently. For example, when Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, informal groups popped up almost everywhere. They often attracted people who had never been involved in politics before. Stereotyped in the media as suburban white women, these citizens were informally named “The Resistance.” About a half-million of them attended the Women’s March in Washington on Jan. 21, 2017, with another 5 million marching in their home communities.

But the Resistance proved evanescent because the nascent groups mainly encouraged their members to support famous, large national organizations. About 350,000 people donated to the ACLU in just one weekend during Trump’s first month as president. People also shared and encouraged each other to follow news from national outlets, and digital subscriptions for The New York Times and The Washington Post tripled under Trump. A bit later on, many people gave money and time to Democratic Party candidates.

But this generosity and energy did not build local associations. Most–although not all–of the nascent groups faded away. As Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks observed, many committed and skilled activists emerged, yet we have “no established, organizational infrastructure that can facilitate sustained collective action across a multiracial, multiclass constituency.”

I believe one reason is that too few Americans understand the nuts-and-bolts of associations. An initial meeting often draws many concerned people, who may use the time to express strong feelings and to share ideas, some of which are excellent. But nothing concrete is decided. The second meeting draws some of the same people along with many newbies and recapitulates the first discussion. By the third meeting, most people are too frustrated to continue. The group needed an agenda, a committee of accountable, volunteer leaders, a decision-making process, and a budget.

The resistance in Minneapolis this winter may suggest a more optimistic story. In January, The Atlantic’s Robert F. Worth reported that local groups there had trained 65,000 residents in nonviolent civil resistance since the previous month. That is evidence of impressive organizational muscle.

Thomas Friedman recently celebrated the Minneapolis movement as “neighboring.” He quoted a local business executive who described its decentralized and participatory structure. “There were hundreds of leaders of this movement,” he said, “and I don’t know a single one of their names.” Geneva Cole argues that Minnesota groups that launched or expanded in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 have become strong enough–both as organizations and as a network– that they were able to accomplish disciplined mass action this winter.

That is a promising sign, but in general, associations remain too weak, and too few Americans have the necessary practical skills. Schools and colleges should devote more attention to the nuts-and-bolts of effective groups.

I would also love to teach older adults how to do those things, but it’s unrealistic to offer civic education to millions of older people. An alternative is to make processes easier so that groups can focus on the substance of their work.

After all, associations depend on documents: recruitment emails, agendas, minutes, job descriptions, and budgets, among many others. Say what you will about Large Language Models (LLMs), but they can quickly draft documents. I’ve launched an experimental helpdesk that uses an LLM that is trained on specific documents about voluntary organizations and instructed to respond to queries in specific ways.

The target user of this helpdesk is a newcomer to civic life who is highly concerned about a current problem: I call these people “Alarmed Complete Newbies” or ACNs. The helpdesk encourages them to find and join groups that already exist. If users needs to launch a new group or help to strengthen an existing one, the AI nudges them to request useful documents, which it then drafts for them.

The goals of this project are, first, to enable people to make progress together even if they never learned how to manage voluntary groups; and, second, to learn principles and skills from this experience.

The helpdesk is just an experiment, not a panacea. The underlying idea is that democracy and local communities will be stronger once more groups of concerned people gell into effective organizations that collect time and money from their own members, use their own resources to build their own capacity, make collective decisions, and act effectively. People must learn how to do those things. That is what I mean by “education for democratic resilience.”

Web designers use the phrase “social proof” for visible evidence that people are visiting and using a website. Without signs of life, a website looks about as inviting and reliable as an urban street without any pedestrians.

For almost two decades, my main social proof came from Facebook. I had installed a counter that showed how many times people shared any post or “liked” or commented on anyone else’s share. The maximum number of engagements for any single post reached almost 6,000 immediately after the 2016 election, but every post showed at least a few. Although I could not directly see most of the Facebook activity (which occurred on strangers’ pages), I think these statistics were accurate.

Early this month, Facebook stopped sharing engagement statistics. I have switched off the counts, which would look like zeroes even though people are still sharing my posts on Facebook. People often comment there or on LinkedIn, but those discussions are invisible here.

One suggestion would be to move to Substack, or at least cross-post there. But I have been blogging for so long (since January 2003) that I have seen various platforms come and go–and some have gone bad. I’m glad that I have kept plugging along on my own website.

I’ve added a line of code that shows the total number of visitors to this homepage since 2023 (currently: 327,001). It appears on the right-hand navigation bar. I’m hoping that it indicates some life without just looking braggy. I could present visitor data for each post, but that would require more complicated coding, and I’m not sure that it would add anything. Suggestions are welcome!

(This is also an opportunity to remind you that you can subscribe to get a free weekly email with my recent posts. The subscription link is at the bottom-right of this page.)