Panel of National Experts to Discuss Reform of Civics Education

01/21/2020
BATON ROUGE – A panel including national experts will discuss “Educating for American Democracy: Teaching Civics Today” on Tuesday, Feb. 4, at 3 p.m., in the Sternberg Salon of the French House, home to LSU’s Ogden Honors College. 

Danielle Allen of Harvard University and Paul Carrese of Arizona State University will headline the event, joined by Zevi Gutfreund of LSU and Albert Samuels of Southern University.  The panel will be moderated by Jonathan Earle, dean of the Ogden Honors College, and is free and open to the public.

Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.  Holder of Ph.D.s in both classics and political science, she is the author of six books and co-editor of two others, including “Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education” and “Education and Equality,” as well as numerous articles and reviews. A MacArthur Fellow from 2002-06 while serving as dean of humanities at the University of Chicago, she spent eight years as UPS Foundation Professor in the Institute for Advanced Study before returning to Harvard.

Carrese is the founding director of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. A Rhodes Scholar and former Fulbright Fellow, he is author most recently of “Democracy in Moderation: Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Sustainable Liberalism” and taught for almost 20 years at the United States Air Force Academy. 

Gutfreund is associate professor of history at LSU; his book, “Speaking American: Language Education and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles,” was published last year with the University of Oklahoma Press. Samuels, who earned his Ph.D. at LSU, is professor and chair of political science at Southern University. He is the author of “Is Separate Unequal? Black Colleges and the Challenge to Desegregation” and has been active in civic affairs in Baton Rouge.

The panel comes at the conclusion of a major national convening of about three dozen scholars in history, political science, and education to discuss reform of civics education in America’s K-12 schools, which will be held at LSU on Feb. 2-4, hosted by the Eric Voegelin Institute and the Office of Academic Affairs. Over a dozen Louisiana faculty members, administrators, teachers and students will be involved in that event.

“We’re very pleased LSU was chosen to host the national convening and are excited that some of the participants will be able to share their insights with teachers and other stakeholder groups interested in civic education here in Louisiana.” said Keena Arbuthnot, Joan Pender McManus Distinguished Professor of Education and Associate Vice President of Research and Economic Development, whose office is co-sponsoring the panel with the Voegelin Institute. 

The Voegelin Institute, named for one of LSU’s original Boyd Professors and a scholar of international recognition and acclaim, is a humanities and social science research institute devoted to the revitalization of teaching and understanding of the great works of civilization.

The Office of Research & Economic Development, or ORED, is responsible for supporting and promoting the research enterprise at LSU. Its mission is to “support a holistic, university-wide environment in which advanced research, effective scholarship, and economic development can thrive and support the LSU Strategic Plan 2025.”

 

 

 

Contact James Stoner
Eric Voegelin Institute
225-578-2538
poston@lsu.edu  

or

Ernie Ballard
LSU Media Relations
225-578-5685
eballa1@lsu.edu