Grant Summary
$270,000 over 36 months to support a program focused on the theme of freedom and citizenship in ancient, modern, and contemporary thought, and to support DDC's college preparatory programming. Select students will participate in an intensive three-week summer seminar developed by faculty in Columbia's American Studies Program; workshops on writing, oral presentation, and other skills; and a collaborative web-based project during the subsequent academic year. Students will examine a range of major literary, philosophical, and political documents, including selections from Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, John Locke, the Federalist Papers, Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, WEB Du Bois, John Dewey, Ralph Ellison, and Martin Luther King, Jr. During the academic year the program also serves a larger cohort of students with lectures and mini-courses taught by Columbia faculty that build on the themes of “Freedom and Citizenship” and introduce students to the promise of liberal-arts education by demonstrating how different disciplines approach common inquiries. This partnership will serve approximately 180 students in total.