Search

The Public Culture Project

Page

The Public Culture Project, housed in Harvard’s Division of Arts & Humanities, aims to revivify our shared public life by placing existential, moral and even spiritual questions at the center of our public conversations. We want to mine the deep insights...

Ian Marcus Corbin

Person

Ian Marcus Corbin is the Director of Harvard’s Public Culture Project, a philosopher on faculty in Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School, and a Faculty Member at the HMS Center for Bioethics.  He serves as a Senior Fellow at...

The Public Intellectual in American Life

Event

America has sometimes been described as a pragmatic, anti-intellectual society. But in fact, from the Puritans to the Founders to the New York intellectuals and the Civil Rights movement, many major movements in American life have drawn language and...

Belonging in the Modern World?

Event

America, we are reliably told, is coming apart. Individuals are drifting off into isolation, or, just as bad, clinging to toxic forms of tribalism that rely on exclusion and enmity towards the other. Why is this happening? What are the deep cultural...

From Academic Freedom to Defending Democracy: Our Task in 2026

Event

Although universities have conducted their affairs within monarchies and even dictatorships, modern higher education has often flourished by being part of an ecosystem defined by broad freedoms of inquiry and speech. In 2026, these freedoms are...

How is digital technology shaping the human soul?

Event

Digital technology is transforming how we think, write, and connect. Does it stifle creativity and wonder, or open new paths for meaning, community, and faith? Join speakers Nataliya Kos'myna, Brandon Vaidyanathan, E. Glen Weyl, and Moira Weigel as they...

Dean Sean Kelly's message for the Fall Newsletter 2025

Page

Dear Friends, We’re entering the moment in the semester when encouragement matters most. At the start, energy and enthusiasm carry us forward like a powerful wave. Now, as the Fall begins in earnest, the current changes: midterms arrive, the weather cools...

Religion in the American Story

Event

All around us are signs of anomie, loneliness and pessimism, driven by economic, technological, cultural and political realities. America went through a similar period of upheaval and discontentment in the early 19th century, and that period gave rise to...

Do Liberals Want a Beautiful World?

Event

Salad chains, consultant-speak, Parks & Rec. Is this really the world that liberals want? Or, is there a more beautiful vision of what kind of world we could build together, what all of this liberty is for? This question is increasingly urgent, as self...

Arts and Humanities on the Edge

Event

It is no secret that enrollment in arts and humanities courses is down, all across academia. Professors have been laid off, and whole departments have been eliminated in the past several years, as universities market their education as explicit career...

AI and the Future of Higher Education

Event

Higher education has been “in crisis” for decades. Some observers have sounded the alarm about skyrocketing tuition, decreasing economic return on investment, a loss of open-ended inquiry to ideological rigidity, widening socioeconomic gaps between those...

Perspectives on Performance with Miguel Gutierrez

Event

am i a body or a thing In this talk, Miguel Gutierrez will discuss the development of his choreographic work and the tension between visual representa tion and affect. He will focus on how he approaches archive, reconstruction, intentional corruption...