Freedom and Citizenship

Beginning in 2009, the Center for American Studies has collaborated with the Roger Lehecka Double Discovery Center on Freedom and Citizenship--a program that introduces high school students to college-level work in the humanities and prepares them for lives as informed, responsible citizens. A small group of rising seniors from public high schools come to campus each summer for a rigorous three-week seminar that examines major philosophical works on the meanings of freedom and citizenship from the ancient world to the present.

Taught by Roosevelt Montás, director of Columbia's Center for the Core Curriculum, and Tamara Mann Tweel, the John R. Strassburger Postdoctoral Fellow in American Studies, the seminar emphasizes close reading and analysis of works by Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, the American Founders, Lincoln, Du Bois, Dewey, King, and others. Several Columbia faculty have participated as visitors to the seminar, including Professors Kathy Eden (Classics and English), Eric Foner (History), Andrew Delbanco (English), John McWhorter (English and American Studies), and program director Casey N. Blake (American Studies).

In addition to attending the seminar, students work closely with undergraduate tutors and a graduate student coordinator on improving their reading, writing, and study skills. The tutors and coordinator also join the students on field trips, which have included walking history tours and a visit to the United Nations. We seek in these activities to foster a community of intellectually ambitious students that might not be available in their high schools.

After the completion of the seminar, students work with undergraduate mentors who help them navigate the college application process. They also collaborate on a yearlong project that explores an aspect of civic life in contemporary New York, making use of ideas they encountered in the summer seminar. Students have produced websites showcasing research on city government, immigration, voting rights, mass incarceration, and other issues of pressing public concern. They have also created the DDC Oral History Project, telling the story of the founding and evolution of the Double Discovery Center. The 2014-2015 Freedom and Citizenship students created a website featuring their film and radio show on mass incarceration and published a newspaper The Citizen.

The Freedom and Citizenship Program enjoys support from the Teagle Foundation, the Jack Miller Center, and other donors.