Today, Project Pericles launches Shaping Civic Futures, our 2026-2028 Strategic Plan to reimagine the role of higher education in strengthening democracy.
Before founding Project Pericles, Eugene Lang argued in a seminal article in Daedalus that “liberal arts education must periodically refresh the substance of its mission.” This charge feels urgent today, as public trust in higher education and democracy falters. Over the past year, our community of campuses, faculty, students, and partners has come together to ask: How can higher education rise to this moment?
The result is a refreshed mission, vision, and theory of change, and a plan that serves as both a response to today’s challenges and a blueprint for the future.
Over the coming years, Project Pericles will address the pressing challenges facing higher education and democracy through three strategic priorities:
- Pedagogical Influence: shaping teaching and learning practices that cultivate civic identity, imagination, and agency.
- Consortium Strength: fortifying the dynamic network of Periclean institutions and building the organizational capacity to support them.
- Thought Leadership: elevating stories, research, and practices that inspire the field and reassert higher education’s democratic purpose.