Leaders and activists from around the world gathered at Wellesley on April 6 to grapple with important global questions at the “Renewing Democracy: Women Leading the Way” summit. The group of 20-plus distinguished visitors came to participate in conversations about challenges facing democracy in the United States and abroad. Among them were Nobel Prize winners, lawmakers, a minister of state, educators, nonprofit founders, and keynote speaker Maura Healey, governor of Massachusetts. The event launched the College’s Hillary Rodham Clinton Center for Citizenship, Leadership, and Democracy (HRC Center), which has a mission to advance democracy and prepare the next generation of civic leaders and changemakers.

“Our framework is citizenship, the shared responsibility and stewardship for a community; collaborative leadership in which change is enacted in concert with others; and democracy—access to voice, to civil rights, to justice; and to the tolerance of disagreement and dissent,” said Patricia Berman, Theodora L. and Stanley H. Feldberg Professor of Art and Charpie ’78 Faculty Co-Director of the HRC Center, at the beginning of the summit.

The HRC Center’s work with students began in August 2023, when 30 rising sophomores participated in the three-day Civic Action Lab, an immersive experience that involved the study and practice of listening and learning across difference and lessons in how to build an inclusive community. In the future, the lab will expand into a full-year academic program focused on leadership development and civic engagement. Students will progress through the Paula Phillips Bernstein ’58 Civic Innovator and Scholar Series—three labs in the fall, winter, and spring. The program culminates in a global summit like the one held on campus in April.

The inaugural cohort of sophomores “laid the foundation for the promise and the possibility of the work ahead,” said Berman. “We extend our gratitude for their lessons of leadership to us. We live in a time of complex challenges, which can feel overwhelmingly daunting. Our hope is that the [HRC Center] will enable us to see a path forward, and that we will find solutions and partnerships in new places and with new voices around the table.”

Hillary Rodham Clinton ’69, former U.S. secretary of state, told the audience at the summit, “There is no doubt in my mind that we need more women at every table where any decision is being made across society—in this country, and around the world—in order to make sure that our experiences, our hopes and dreams, our fears, the commitments that we carry with us, each one of us as women, will be recognized, respected, and help to improve life for others.”

Clinton moderated a panel titled “Democracy at a Crossroads Worldwide.” Liberian peace activist and 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Leymah Gbowee, one of the panelists, began the conversation by speaking about the power of protest.

“In Liberia, when we started protesting, there was one of the most brutal dictators. … Charles Taylor had instituted a mandate that even if his mother got in the street to protest, she should be flogged. And we defied that and stepped out,” Gbowee said. “And at the end of the day, we were able to contribute to not just ending a war, but having Africa’s first elected female president. So, that’s power.”

A sophomore season for learning

Encouraging active citizenship is at the heart of the HRC Center’s mission. Heidi Johnson, director of civic engagement for Wellesley and program director of the center, spent more than two decades at City Year, a national youth service program that served as the model for AmeriCorps. She is also the founder of Purple Suitcase, an organization based on the belief that travel is essential to the development of young people as global citizens. She says the sophomore year—after the sometimes overwhelming first-year experience and before the increasingly pressing academic demands of the junior and senior years—is the ideal time for students to get involved with the center. “Sophomores are really starting to form their values,” she says.

To become Clinton Fellows, students simply have to register—a relief in the often-competitive atmosphere of the College. “A student came in a couple days ago and she said, ‘It’s not about the chosen. It’s about everybody.’ And I couldn’t have said it better,” Johnson says. “First of all, it lives the values that we’re trying to talk about. I think this is one of the most powerful parts of the program.”

Civic action isn’t about changing the world in a weekend, and Johnson says she tells students from the beginning, “I assume you’re all here because you want to effect change; you want to build community. I challenge all of you to just start small. When was the last time you said hello, looked the person in the eye, and said thank you to the person who fed you lunch today?” She lets them know it’s about one-on-one connections, “making an impact in the nooks and crannies of our lives. We’re trying to help them connect that experience to the way you want to build your civic life.”

For Aleah Litton ’26, a neuroscience major who participated in the pilot Civic Action Lab, building a civic life began back home. “I’m from a small town in the southwest region of Virginia, called Big Stone Gap,” she says. “It’s a really small area primarily known for coal mining. And it’s been ravaged by the opioid epidemic. It affected a lot of the people that I grew up with and helped me on my journey to discovering medicine and wanting to go into a career not only in medicine, but focusing on addiction medicine.”

This summer, Litton is working through a College-supported signature internship with The Health Wagon, which runs mobile clinics. “It just happened to be in my hometown,” says Litton. “The stars aligned. I’m going home for the summer and doing public health research.”

Litton’s involvement with the Civic Action Lab was transformative. “I have grown in so many ways that changed the trajectory of my college career for the better,” she says. “It helps you to think outside of yourself, helps you to think about what your greater purpose is. It’s not just to be a neuroscience major, it’s not just to do premed things and only premed things. I have a voice. I have the tools now that I can utilize to make myself heard, but also listen to others, to expect that there will be some disagreements, but figure out what I can do to work through that. Skills like that are so necessary in the very divided and broken world that we have today.”

Impact and action

At the summit, a panel of election leaders and democracy activists shared how they’re mobilizing voters to preserve democracy at the ballot box, in the courts, in the state legislators, and everywhere in between. The panel included Jocelyn Benson ’99, Michigan’s secretary of state.

Benson recalled one of the reasons she chose to attend Wellesley. “I wanted to be part of a sisterhood that really empowered everyone and taught me the importance of lifting up everyone. And the power of the vote really is that structural promise of empowerment in our law, in our constitution, in our country,” she said.

Benson came to national attention when the Republican National Committee and Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 Michigan vote. Benson fought back.

“And what happened … underscore[s] what the beauty of democracy really is, which was that hundreds of citizens in Detroit and in Wayne County showed up … and simply spoke cogently and eloquently about the law and their voice and their vote, and demanded that their voice and vote be heard, their vote be counted, and the vote be certified,” Benson said. “That is actually what turned the tide. Then after that, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers voted to certify the election. … [S]o I never forget that we, as officials, [as] lawyers, as leaders, have a role to play, but it’s always the citizens who stand up and defend democracy, and when they do, democracy always prevails.”

Empowerment was also part of the conversation during the panel on “Journeys in Civic Purpose” that included Chantale Zuzi ’25, founder of the nonprofit Refugee Can Be.

For Zuzi, civic purpose has meant turning personal tragedy into action for others. She founded Refugee Can Be to provide secondary education and leadership training for girls in the Rwanda refugee settlement in Uganda.

“I was once such a girl in that refugee camp, displaced by ongoing violence in my home country, Democratic Republic of Congo, that took the lives of my parents. I joined tens of thousands of other refugee girls who suffered the pain of hunger and hardship. I was one of thousands who suffered abuse and anguish, and really my most painful time living in the camp was not having access to education,” Zuzi said. “Wellesley College has changed my life by providing me the education that I have. … I do believe that a refugee can be anything, but what does it take for a refugee to be anything? What did it take for me to be anything? And that is what I’m trying to address with Refugee Can Be.”

Zuzi said that sometimes she meets with potential donors who ask, “Do you know what you’re doing?” “I take that as an opportunity to show them how much young people can do,” she said. “We hope that older generations will have faith in us and our ability to do things.”

Fostering young people’s ability to make positive change is at the heart of the HRC Center. Clinton said, “Everyone on this stage was showing what leadership looks like. … And now I think it’s up to the [HRC] Center and all of us to figure out how to take what we heard today and translate it into impact and action.”

Voices of protest

Like democracy itself, the global summit was not without its moments of controversy. A vocal group of pro-Palestinian student demonstrators protested outside Diana Chapman Walsh Alumnae Hall throughout the day, and four students rose and shouted at Clinton and other speakers inside the auditorium, which violated the College’s demonstration policy for the event and incurred honor code violations. Clinton has become a lightning rod for protest, with some students criticizing her statements last fall opposing a cease-fire agreement in Gaza.

A participant in the pilot Civic Action Lab, who wishes to remain anonymous, found herself conflicted as student protestors rose inside Alumnae Hall during the panel moderated by Clinton. They were quickly escorted from the room by College staff.

The student had attended a small gathering with Clinton the previous evening. “I was willing to hear [Clinton] out, and I listened to her, and I disagreed with what she said [about the war], and I felt hurt by it. And so I decided, ‘You know what, at one point, you hear somebody out, and if you’ve listened to them, you’ve done what you need to do, then you’re allowed to disagree,’” she says.

During the summit the next day, she decided to leave the auditorium after students interrupted the panel. “I felt like it was time for me to stand up for the things I believe in. Even when it was hard,” she says.

Although she chose to support her peers’ protest, the student says she recognizes the value of the program. “The summer retreat was really about learning what you’re empowered by and what you contribute, and combining those two into action,” she says. “That’s where I am hopeful about this program.”

At the end of the day, moderator Arielle Mitropoulos ’19, anchor and reporter for WMUR-TV in Manchester, N.H., addressed the disruptions that had taken place. “Obviously, we’ve had some protestors today,” she said. “But the point of how we’re able to have this summit is that democracy allows us to do that.”

The year ahead

The unifying theme for the HRC Center in the coming academic year ahead is “Influence and Influencers on Democracy.” Jennifer Pollard, Lulu Chow Wang ’66 Executive Director and Associate Provost of Career Education, says, “I think it’s the most important topic we could try to work on with our students right now, because their opinions and their conscious decisions are being shaped by forces that are driven by algorithms that create echo chambers all around them. We really need to teach them how to sift through that information.”

The program is scaling up from the 30 students in the pilot to 250, kicking off with the first intensive lab before classes begin in the fall. The Clinton Fellows will be gathered into small groups, keeping the intimacy that was so important during the pilot.

“One of the things that’s really crucial is learning to speak across difference,” Berman says. The initial lab in August “brings them all together and hopefully gets everyone on the same page, so that there’s a language they all have in common for understanding the principles of democracy.”

Then comes the Paula Phillips Bernstein ’58 Civic Innovator and Scholar Series, with lectures, conversations, and role-playing during the three intensive labs in the fall, winter, and spring. The first will happen in October, just ahead of the national election. Tracy Gleason, professor of psychology and Charpie ’78 Faculty Co-Director of the HRC Center, says the October lab will focus on “thinking about the information that comes in, how to discern missing information, factual information, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda—really thinking about what’s out there that becomes part of the messaging that shapes action.”

The January lab is designed to help students think about what to do with information, what to do with influences, and “how to incorporate that into your own way of being in the world and your own goals,” Berman says.

“In this particular year, it will also be about how we understand what happened with the most recent election,” Gleason adds. The final lab of the year will focus on how one becomes an influencer of democracy. “It’s really about how to exercise your voice when you want to be building a better world,” Berman says.

The HRC Center is also launching a faculty research initiative, beginning with a one-year pilot study for faculty interested in working with the idea of influence and influencers in democracy. “It could be music, it could be mathematics, it could be science, it could be psychology, it could be art,” Berman says. “We know that there are a lot of people engaged in intellectual work across campus who may not know about each other or may not be in conversation.” The hope is that faculty participants might, for example, create an interdisciplinary course, write a white paper or an article, or bring in a speaker. “The idea is to build community,” Berman says.

“There’s such an opportunity here,” Gleason says. “This center has the potential to provide our students with a dimension that could really bring a lot of meaning and purpose to the work that they do, not just in college, but beyond.”

For Aleah Litton, that’s already happening. From the global leaders who took part in the summit, she learned that “we are part of something bigger, and we have the ability to make a difference,” she says. “These are the generations who have made a difference. And we’re going to be the next one.”