About Civic Life
Is there no virtue among us? — If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of Government, can render us secure.
--James Madison, 1788
An urgent American need is the renewal of the civic virtues required by our republican form of government. Civic Life aims to meet this need.
Our goal is to help launch a volunteer-led social movement -- a civic virtues movement -- capable of influencing public opinion and strengthening the values, habits, dispositions, and affections necessary for responsible citizenship in a free society.
Our distinctive approach is based on seven operating principles:
1. We match our grassroots work with a national media project (“Free Pie”).
2. Our main goal is not civic education (teaching people), but rather civic formation (developing leaders).
3. We work with, through, and on behalf of other civil society organizations (“Civic Coalition”).
4. Our work is scalable, with ever-growing numbers of Americans able to participate in small-group, volunteer-led discussions leading to coordinated action.
5. We engage the great texts (“Civic Essentials”), beginning with the wisdom of the founders and embracing the broad American civic canon.
6. We emphasize the spoken word, recognizing the power of citizens speaking the nation’s defining statements and sharing publicly the hopes they inspire (“Speakers Corner”).
7. We bring together people (including those who disagree with one another) from across the political spectrum and across class divides.
We’ll start by launching “Free Pie” and demonstrating civic formation in one pilot community through partnerships with local organizations, such as associations of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women, colleges, libraries, houses of worship, and local chapters of Braver Angels.
Leadership
Civic Life’s founder and president is David Blankenhorn, who has a long track record of success in creating and leading civil society initiatives. Joining him on the founding board of directors are four distinguished colleagues. Hunter Baker is a senior fellow at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy at First Liberty and a former dean and professor of political science at North Greenville University. Marína Gálisová is the managing editor of .tyzden (“The Week”) in Bratislava, Slovakia, and a widely known writer on civic life in Central Europe. JoAnn Luehring directs a family foundation and is a former partner at the law firm of Roberts & Holland in New York City, where she specialized in laws affecting nonprofit organizations and advised public charities and private foundations. Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and one of the nation’s most distinguished public intellectuals.
Senior advisors include Samuel Abrams, professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; Francis Fukuyama, senior fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for International Studies and professor of political science; William Galston, Chair in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution; Michael Ignatieff, scholar and public intellectual who has held senior academic posts at Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Toronto, and Central European University; Liz Joyner, founder and president of the Village Square in Tallahassee, Florida; Linda Malone-Colon, dean emeritus of the school of liberal arts at Hampton University; Amy Olberding, professor of philosophy at the University of Oklahoma; and Martina Šmuclerová, senior lecturer at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and Ambis University in Prague, Czech Republic.
If not this, what? If not now, when?
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