M I S S I O N

The Race, Education and Democracy Lectures and Book Series aims to create a location for a sustained, public conversation about the purpose of education in a multiracial and multicultural democracy. It aims to create a place for individuals to critically examine what should happen in school, if schools are to be places where a new common culture, predicated on difference, is created and recreated.

This Series aims to provide a location for individuals to examine what is required of schools, the country and its citizenry, if the young are to be educated for self-government, in an age where increasingly it is the media that defines what is real, who is of value, and which groups of people are full members of the nation. 

Few would deny that racial ideology and its sophisticated and nuanced contemporary manifestations loom large as a serious threat to our democracy, and to the possibility that schools can be places where a new common culture is created and recreated. 

This Series aims to affirm, in our contemporary times, the historic and inextricable link between education and the possibility for a robust democracy. It is important to remember that historically, even as education and democracy were thought to be linked, there was a limited view of who were full members of the democracy.

Over the years, the struggles of ordinary people have resulted in expanded notions about who are members of our democracy. However, even as this redefinition has and continues to occur, the linkage between education and democracy has all but disappeared from public discourse.  Education, particularly quality education, has come to be seen and pursued as a commodity available to those with adequate resources rather than as a common good, essential to definitions of “we the people.”

The Simmons College/Beacon Press Lectures and Book Series aims to create a public conversation and book series that foregrounds the relationship between education and the democracy, operating with a broader vision of who are members of the democracy, while unapologetically introducing race in to this discourse.