DEMOCRATIC VISIONS

California State University & Polytechnic in Pomona, an R2 university nestled in the San Gabriel Mountains and Valley in Los Angeles, is one of the most important incubators of national talent in the sciences and public humanities. Cal Poly, as the university is often called, is one of only three polytechnic institutions in the California State University system and stands consistently among the top six institutions across the United States for its success in fostering social mobility. We are an institution where the American social contract and its pursuit of happiness can be witnessed in action.

The frequency of climate events in Southern California has pushed at least two generations of students into a state of profound, heightened awareness of what it means to be human on an imperiled planet. It has also compelled them to ask the big, classical questions of moral and political philosophy that can sometimes help solve the smallest puzzles of living well—the enigma of a life lived well—in an increasingly unequal, hotter world. Both statistically and materially, we nurture citizens of the future at Cal Poly: scientifically trained leaders and thinkers witness to the ambiguities of the modern technological story who we must now prepare to shape the language of America’s democratic faith.

To fight for democracy—politically and intellectually—today requires us to not only investigate the deficiencies of the original social contract and constitutional compact but also probe the militaristic, populist, and racialized energies that its contemporary global fraying has taken. At The Democracy Institute, we conduct investigations of these political forms and rhetorics in order to shape democratic and planetary priorities for coming generations.

The Institute’s work is rooted in the existential facts of human history and in the new perils of our political future. After all, never before have matters related to history and politics been so interwoven with the future of the planet than they are now. To ask "What would the world look like without us?" is neither a rhetorical question nor a speculative one today. How must our fraying social contract and civic institutions respond to this new peril? What new conceptions of life and happiness must we think of, now that the human has shown a capacity to morph into something wholly other than itself?

The Democracy Institute generates and provokes conversations on these interlinked and global questions of political thought and moral philosophy, of history and civic institutions, of theology and technology. Above all, it asks: what would a democracy without and after this new mode and epoch of violence look like? A non-violent democracy, in other words? The Democracy Institute is committed to preparing next-generation student-scholars in the art of thinking on global, transdisciplinary scale.