Serving a Democracy That Needs Us

As we celebrate our 150th year, Wellesley’s founding mission is more relevant than ever. Henry and Pauline Durant were inspired to create Wellesley College because they saw that our American democracy required educational opportunity to be spread as widely as possible. They also made sure that the education offered here would allow women to become a civic force in their own right and to work for a more equitable society.

Today, a majority of Americans fear that our political system is too divided to solve the nation’s problems. Across U.S. higher education, there is now an urgent conversation about what we can do, as institutions, to reduce the polarization that is harming the country’s civic life. Two years ago, I joined forces with 14 other college presidents to launch College Presidents for Civic Preparedness, a group that pledged to reaffirm the crucial role higher education has always played in educating engaged, tolerant citizens for our democracy. The group has now grown to include more than 100 presidents.

One of the key things we are doing at Wellesley is addressing the ways the marketplace of ideas has become muffled on many campuses. Nationwide, a Knight Foundation survey found that two out of three college students believe self-censorship, inside the classroom and out, limits conversations that would be valuable for their education. Wellesley Provost and Lia Gelin Poorvu ’56 Dean of the College Courtney Coile is leading a faculty working group exploring ways to ensure that every classroom encourages a free exchange of ideas, even controversial ones. The entire community will soon consider the group’s recommendations. At Wellesley, we believe our campus should be a place where students learn to challenge the assumptions of others, and their own assumptions, on the road to the truth.

We also want to give our students the confidence to take their place in the civic sphere using the knowledge and skills they have developed at Wellesley in the fields that interest them most. Recently, Wellesley invited Darren Walker, then president of the Ford Foundation, and Emily Wei Rales ’98, director, co-founder, and chief curator of the contemporary art museum Glenstone, to campus to discuss how the arts and the humanities can effect social change. In October, Professor of Mathematics Ismar Volić, an expert on the intersection of math and democracy, organized a three-day conference on voting and representation that examined how quantitative approaches and computation can help spur political reform. Events like this showcase how civic leadership and engagement are essential across all disciplines—including humanities, social sciences, and STEM.

At Wellesley, we are fortunate to have two flagship programs—the Albright Institute and Hillary Rodham Clinton Center for Citizenship, Leadership, and Democracy—that are essential resources for educating active global citizens. In the second year of the HRC Center, 120 sophomores are taking part in the yearlong Clinton Fellowship program, where they learn from civic innovators in all professions. At last fall’s HRC Center summit, students heard from political leaders who had bridged ideological divides to get things done. They included Arkansas State Senators Breanne Davis and Jamie Scott, who overcame their partisan differences and joined forces to pass legislation preventing discrimination and expanding contraception.

At Wellesley, we help our students see that they can break through disagreements with their fellow citizens to find common purpose—and that, in a pluralistic democracy, this is essential to making lasting change. Fortunately, we can point to many examples over 150 years of Wellesley women who have made this a better, fairer nation. We want to inspire the next generation to do the same.