By SUSAN JONES
Pitt Chancellor Joan Gabel is among the initial 13 college leaders to sign onto the Campus Call for Free Expression initiative from the Institute for Citizens & Scholars.
For the Campus Call, the college leaders have committed to re-emphasizing the principles of critical inquiry and civic discourse on their campuses and to help students work together to find solutions to complicated, divisive problems.
“Campus Call is an important initiative designed to amplify the role that institutions of higher education play in ensuring that today's young people become more engaged, civic-minded and empowered citizens,” Gabel said. “I am proud to join a broad range of engaged colleagues in this important work at such a pivotal time in American democracy.”
Campus Call is part of a wider initiative — College Presidents for Civic Preparedness — of which Pitt is also a member. The mission of the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, which has its roots in the Woodrow Wilson Fellowships founded at Princeton University in 1945, is to cultivate talent, ideas and networks that develop young people as effective, lifelong citizens.
Each campus will decide what shape the Campus Call takes at their school. Gabel has not said what Pitt’s participation in the project will look like, but the provost’s office has already named this the Year of Discourse and Dialogue.
The selection of the theme follows protests in the spring surrounding three events on campus featuring conservative speakers and anti-transgender rhetoric.
“We hope to probe the ways to harness the power of differing views and perceptions to enrich our campus community,” former Provost Ann Cudd said in announcing the “Year of” theme.
“Higher education as a whole has been at a forefront of engagement around respecting divergent viewpoints — and the right for various viewpoints to find opportunities for expression,” Cudd said. “As a public university, we must and do uphold the principles of protected speech and expression. … Let us continue to travel along this critically important path together as a community of learners.”
Rajiv Vinnakota, president of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, told the Associated Press that there are two main reasons to focus civic education on college students. For many, their colleges will be the most diverse community that they’ve ever experienced and students have the potential to shift social norms as they enter public forums and start to participate in politics. He hopes that the collective commitment of these schools to fostering critical thinking and the exchange of ideas around contentious issues will encourage other institutions to join them.
In addition to Pitt, the participating schools include some other well-known names, such as Notre Dame, Cornell, Duke, James Madison, Rutgers, Wellesley and the University of Richmond, and some smaller schools: DePauw in Indiana, Claremont McKenna in California; Wesleyan in Connecticut; Benedict, a historically Black college in South Carolina; and Rollins in Florida.
Some of the schools have already announced programs to further the initiative:
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James Madison University is partnering with the Bipartisan Policy Center to hold a free expression training for every incoming first-year and transfer student.
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Rutgers University’s president will teach a course on citizenship, including free expression, through the lens of public institutions.
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Claremont McKenna College is building on its Open Academy with a four-year comprehensive learning program for students to acquire critical skills in difficult conversations.
The Knight Foundation provided a $250,000 grant to the institute to convene the 13 presidents and eventually other university staff in a series of conversations over a year and a half.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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