From the Newsstands: This article appeared in The Eagle’s December 2025 print edition which can be viewed here.
Students at American University are delving into dialogue as a part of The Civic Life Initiative launched by President Jonathan Alger in September 2024.
The Civic Life Initiative brings people into conversation and engages students in practicing civic life through a series of events, programs and activities, according to its vision statement.
In an interview with The Eagle, Alger said that one of his reasons for coming to American University is to build on the historic strength of the University, which was founded by an act of Congress in 1893.
The initiative was created in the summer of 2024 by the then-newly appointed Alger. He was previously the president of James Madison University, where he created a similar initiative, The James Madison Center for Civic Engagement, in 2017.
Thomas Merrill, an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs, served as chair of AU’s Civic Life Steering Committee, a group of faculty and staff from across the University.
“We saw The Civic Life as an opportunity to reaffirm the fundamental ethical outlook of the university, which is that we are a community that tries to acquire the world that is willing to question conventional wisdom,” Merrill said.
The steering committee was set to operate for a one-year term, which expired at the end of the 2024-25 academic year. While active, the steering committee worked on developing the initiative’s vision statement, which was their biggest achievement, according to Merrill.
Merrill said the initiative is not only meant for people in SPA or the School of International Service, but for the whole University.
“Self-government happens in all kinds of different places in the world,” Merrill said. “It’s not just the White House, it’s not just in Congress. It’s in your classroom, right where hopefully you’re helping shape the conversations. It’s in the dorm where you're trying to decide, ‘how do we live together?’ It's in clubs, it’s in unions.”
The work done by the steering committee has now “moved into other spaces,” according to Merrill.
The Civic Pluralism Working Group and the Curriculum Working Group will help continue informing the upcoming strategic plan. The strategic plan will be developed over the next few months as it takes recommendations from working groups and incorporates them into a “roadmap for AU’s future.” The current strategic plan is set to end this year.
The Student Civic Fellows program is a major part of the initiative that works on multiple Civic Life events. Within the larger program, there are two smaller fellowships: student fellows and faculty fellows who applied to be a part of the program.
Last year, fellows were facilitators for each of the Civic Life seminars in the spring. Fellows were put into groups with faculty members and assigned a question to lead a discussion on.
Amishai Goodman-Goldstein, a senior in SPA and a second-year student fellow, said he is excited about the initiative.
“I think it’s great that we get students an opportunity not just to take civic classes and learn about ‘here’s what it means to be an engaged citizen,’ but try to put that into practice in the campus community,” Goodman-Goldstein said.
Laila Kirkpatrick, a sophomore in SPA and the College of Arts and Sciences and a second-year student fellow, said that it’s key for people to recognize the purpose of the initiative itself.
“It’s important that people understand that the idea behind the civic life initiative is to get people to understand how to have those conversations and have it respectfully and effectively rather than just debating people,” Kirkpatrick said. “Because I think those two things can get conflated in a way that's not necessarily correct.”
At a presidential speaker series event hosted in Bender Arena during family weekend this semester, Alger announced the creation of the Democracy Innovation Lab at the Sine Institute of Policy and Politics. The lab will be led by the Sine Institute Executive Director Amy Dacey and will bring together the Sine Institute, the Civic Life Initiative and the Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement (CLDE) Coalition. The CLDE coalition works to bring civic learning and democratic engagement to make it a priority in higher education and according to their website is working in partnership with more than 75 higher education and student success organizations.
Alger said the idea behind the Democracy Innovation Lab is to provide leadership on civil discourse and dialogue across differences, both on campus and nationally.
He said that 15 years ago, when he would talk about civic life, people would tell him that a university’s job was to produce specific majors. Now, Alger said, people like policymakers and parents understand how important encouraging dialogue is, and they, “don’t take democracy for granted anymore.”
“A lot of societies are really struggling with this, with people being able to get along with people, being able to engage in dialogue across differences without vilifying each other,” Alger said in the interview with The Eagle. “If we can’t do it on a college campus, I don’t know where it’s gonna happen.”
This article was edited by Cara Halford, Abigail Hatting and Walker Whalen. Copy editing done by Emma Brown, Ariana Kavoossi and Audrey Smith.
