April 10, 2024

Dear Colleagues:

University life in April always brings a whirl of end of the semester activities.  This year at CSU, April also brings a terrific lineup of speakers for CSU’s Year of Democracy. This month, CSU will offer more than a dozen events for a university-wide initiative launched last fall to advance conversations around what it means to participate in a democracy where our conversations, voices, and votes matter.

Three nationally-known speakers remain on the lineup this month: Robert Putnam, Ron Daniels, and Donna Brazile. Please see the addendum below that details each of these three remarkable speakers coming to CSU.

I strongly encourage you to attend their talks if your schedule can at all permit. I truly believe it is our responsibility as educators and stewards of this institution’s academic enterprise to support this important initiative especially given the state of our nation and the world.

As an institution of higher education, we have much riding on the ability of democracy to live up to its principles, and we have a duty to prepare our students to be responsible citizens in a global society respectful of human rights, fundamental freedoms, and every person. I am proud to be at an institution committed to strengthening democracy and civic engagement, and grateful to all our leaders, faculty, staff, and students who have worked on this thematic year.

Sincerely,

Marion K. Underwood
Provost and Executive Vice President 

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Please join me in taking advantage of the opportunity to hear one or more of these remarkable speakers:

• Robert Putnam – April 12, No prior registration is required, 1-2 p.m., Lory Student Center University Ballroom.

Robert Putnam is providing the closing keynote for the CSU Democracy Summit. His talk is titled: The Erosion of American Democracy and the Upswing . Dr. Putnam is the Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, having retired from active teaching in May 2018. In 2006 Putnam received the Skytte Prize, the world’s highest accolade for a political scientist, and in 2013, President Barack Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal, the nation’s highest honor for contributions to the humanities, for “deepening our understanding of community in America.” One of his most acclaimed books is Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

• Ron Daniels – April 18, To register for the Presidential Conversation, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m., LSC Never No Summer Ballroom, click here. To register for the faculty luncheon, 12:15 – 1: 45 p.m., LSC University Ballroom, click here.  Space is limited.

Ronald J. Daniels has served as the 14th president of Johns Hopkins University since 2009. He co-authored the book What Universities Owe Democracy which greatly resonated with me, and I found it hopeful, inspiring, and practical. Inside Higher Ed called the book, “An exceptionally well-timed and compellingly argued book … ” and noted  President Daniels wrote the conclusion to the book just weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol Building.

President Daniels focuses on the following actions needed by universities to advance democracy and help reverse its vulnerable state:

American Dreams – Access, Mobility, Fairness
Free Minds – Educating Democratic Citizens
Hard Truths  – Creating Knowledge and Checking Power
Purposeful Pluralism – Dialogue across Difference on Campus

I will be in attendance at both the conversation with President Parsons and the luncheon to follow – the latter was scheduled especially for CSU faculty and academic leadership. If your schedule permits, I encourage you to attend one or both of his talks.

• Donna Brazile – April 30, To register, 4-6 p.m., LSC Main Ballroom, click here. Space is limited.

Donna Brazile is providing the keynote address at the Gather – Conversations to Inspire event presented by Women and Philanthropy. Ms. Brazile is a political strategist, New York Times bestselling author, chair of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, and an Emmy and Peabody-award-winning media contributor. She was the first African American woman to serve as the manager of a major party presidential campaign, running the campaign of former Vice President Al Gore.

She is the author of the 2004 bestselling memoir Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics and the 2017 New York Times Bestseller Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-Ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump In The White House. Ms. Brazile serves as an adjunct professor in the Women and Gender Studies Department at Georgetown University. She also served as the King Endowed Chair in Public Policy at Howard University and as a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. Ms. Brazile has lectured at nearly 250 colleges and universities on diversity, equity and inclusion; women in leadership; and restoring civility in American politics.