Dewey 90 Years Later Conference
Rollins College and the Institute for Citizens & Scholars will host John Dewey 90 Years Later: How the Liberal Arts Strengthen Democracy, a national conference examining urgent issues in higher education, on February 24 and 25, 2025, at the Rollins College campus.
The two-day conference will feature a series of panels that examine critical challenges confronting democracy, liberal arts education, and free inquiry in the U.S.
"We are at a critical juncture in American higher education, and at Rollins we are uniquely situated to address these issues. It is a storied tradition that the Dewey Conference convenes leaders and experts in higher education to discuss the importance of a liberal arts education and embrace the importance of higher education in the reproduction and nurturance of democracy.”
Legacy
John Dewey chaired Rollins’ first national curriculum conference on the liberal arts in 1931. One of the principles emerging from the Dewey colloquy is that the purpose of a liberal arts education is for “the organization, transmission, extension, and application of knowledge” for democratic citizenship. In the Dewey colloquy tradition, Rollins’ 2025 symposium will examine the importance of the liberal arts for advancing pluralism, tolerance, diversity of viewpoint, fair contestation, and representative inclusion—all of which strengthen democracy.
About the Institute for Citizens & Scholars
The Institute for Citizens & Scholars cultivates talent, ideas, and networks that develop young people as effective, lifelong citizens. Citizens & Scholars unites the left, right, and center to develop breakthrough solutions that create stronger citizens in our country, and brings these solutions to life by forming strategic partnerships with an intentionally diverse group of young people, scholars and education leaders, and civic and business leaders—including the 27,000 world-leading Fellows in the C&S network. Together, Citizens & Scholars is on a mission to ensure that Americans everywhere are civically well-informed, productively engaged, and committed to democracy.