Rob Reich, a Marc and Laura Andreessen faculty co-director of Stanford PACS, moderates a conversation about the promise and peril of technology in civil society. Reich is joined by Kelly Born, a program manager at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Madison Initiative, and Arisha Hatch, managing director of campaigns at Color of Change.
Civil society can act directly to solve critical problems, but its indirect effect might be just as important: allowing individuals to participate, collaborate, and—in the process—develop into citizens capable of upholding democracy.
While old foundations typically support traditional public-school institutions, new foundations are seeking to reshape or bypass them.
Civil society can help make sure that we in America do not turn our back on fundamental values, or forget about those who lack market and political power.
Civic engagement and community voice make up the secret sauce of US democracy. We need a new, community-generated social compact to assert the vision and policy framework for an inclusive 21st-century America.
In a time when many are drawing a line between communities and ideologies, the best line to draw is one that goes right through every human heart—a line that leads to five essential civic virtues.
A new model for advocacy groups and organizations can help them identify and effectively communicate with persuadable audiences.
Discourse and dialogue have always been the hallmarks of civil society, but when the power of government is used systematically to divide and exclude, it is the stinging conversations and actions at the leading edge of civil society that will reestablish the democratic ideals of an equitable democracy.
The history of America’s Hispanic community shows how civil society can create a refuge for those excluded from society at large. But allowing such demarcation lines is never good enough. For a civil society to be effective, sustainable, and worthy, it must tie together all who reside in that society.
In both the conservative and progressive imagination, civil society is valued—for opposite reasons—as an arbiter between the individual and the national state. But by viewing civil society as the core of America’s social life, we can see our way toward a politics that might overcome some of the dysfunctions of our day.
