LIBERAL STRATEGIES LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE

“Liberal Strategies” is not a pedagogical paradigm, even less a curricular tactic. It is an invitation to think about our civic contract at large. To probe not only how we must now go about preparing the next generation of leaders in the professoriate but also ask, fundamentally, what it is that we now need to be prepared for in the Humanities. What is it, in terms of method and values, that we want a paradigmatic shift in within our institutions and beyond? 

 

This question is a crucial part of how we shape our civic and moral arc, how we broaden the American and democratic conversation, and how, above all, we conceptualize what an enduring civic experiment might look like.

The Democracy Institute's Liberal Strategies Leadership Initiative (LIBSLI) is aimed at beginning a sustained and systemwide conversation on regenerating global humanities and General Education curriculum across the most popular campuses of the California State University (CSU) system.​ Dedicated to preparing the next generation of faculty leaders, LIBSLI hosts speakers at CPP whose voices have helped reframe the national conversation around democratic citizenship and liberal education. LIBSLI also hosts workshops and conferences on Liberal Strategies, with the purpose of reframing California’s American Institutions and Ideals Requirement as a vehicle for liberal and civic education of the future, built around the transformative texts and ideas of justice that have shaped the modern democratic experiment.

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For students across the Humanities and STEM, the return to liberal education might be a trajectory-bending experience. For faculty, we believe, this is now a moral and strategic imperative. Given the sheer scale of the CSU system and the demographic breadth of the student-citizens whom it touches, LIBSLI’s impact promises to be enduring and transformative statewide, helping us innovate and sustain a humanities curriculum of genuine depth and rigor.