The Public Culture Project

Source: https://artsandhumanities.fas.harvard.edu/public-culture-project Parent: https://artsandhumanities.fas.harvard.edu/

The Public Culture Project, housed in Harvard’s Division of Arts & Humanities, aims to revivify our shared public life by placing existential, moral and even spiritual questions at the center of our public conversations. We want to mine the deep insights, traditions and longings of our fellow citizens, and inspire current and future leaders to develop and advance beautiful, humane visions of who we are, and what we can become together.

Why Public Culture?

By many measures, we live in a moment of cultural disintegration. Here in America, trust in our institutions and one another has been plummeting for decades. Polarization has skyrocketed, and cross-partisan conversation has come to seem all but impossible. Rates of loneliness, anxiety, depression, drug overdose and suicide are on the rise. A recent Harvard study found that a majority of young adults report lacking a sense of meaning and purpose that could give shape to a life, or to a shared vision of society. Many of our most valued and powerful institutions seem bereft of leadership or vision. In the midst of all this wealth, technology and information, it feels like we are adrift, and possibly coming apart.

The belief that our public life can be guided by simply “following the numbers” - whether in the form of big data, share price or algorithms - has left our public life feeling sterile and inhumane, and opened the door to destructive and even violent ideologies. We believe that the time is right for people of good will to re-engage perennial questions about the human condition, the shape of a good life, who we are as a people, and who we want to become. We want America’s oldest university to play host to these kinds of conversations, which are so badly needed in our time and place. The inaugural theme, which will guide the first two years of the project, is Searching for the Soul of America.

What We Do

Over the course of two years we will host regular public conversations, bringing prominent leaders from government, business, technology, religion, medicine and media into conversation with thinkers from the arts and humanities. The project will be deliberately cross-partisan, welcoming good-faith thinkers and leaders from across the ideological spectrum to engage philosophical, moral and even spiritual questions in an honest, open, creative spirit. We are especially interested in groupings that will catalyze generative, surprising, open-hearted conversations. We might, for instance, pair a Democratic Senator with a Republican Governor, or a tech visionary with a spiritual leader, to engage deep and broad-ranging questions like the following:

What are education and work for? As we continue to build the capacity of AI, what sort of learning and jobs do we wantfor our children?
Why are men and women drifting apart, in education, work and politics? What do we want gender relations to look like?
How central are religious or philosophical beliefs and practices to a flourishing life and a solidaristic society? Might we see another Great Awakening?
What moral principles are shaping our economic life? Are they the principles we want?

In addition to these public events, we will host and produce The Public Culture Podcast,in which we interview public figures about the ideas and texts that have shaped their thinking about their own work and life, and about the future of public life in America. In the Fall of 2026, we will host a large public conference titled “America at 250: Searching for the Soul of a Nation.” In the run-up to this conference, we will host a series of community roundtables, to ask Americans from various walks of life what they are thinking and feeling about their country.

This project will also have an inward-facing aspect. We want to open these important questions for the students we are charged with educating, so that they can take them with them into their lives and careers. Throughout the second year, we will work with a carefully selected cohort of undergraduate fellows, who will engage with great texts and artifacts of American culture, attend private dinners with invited speakers, and receive financial support to intern in congressional offices, media organizations, technology companies, etc. As the program grows, so will our curricular and programmatic offerings.

Help us build a deeper, more human public sphere

Upcoming Events

### Do Liberals Want a Beautiful World?

Mar 23, 2026

7:00PM - 9:00PM EDT

Thompson Room (Barker Center 110)

Salad chains, consultant-speak, Parks & Rec. Is this really the world that liberals want? Or, is there a more beautiful vision of what kind of world we could build together, what all of this liberty is for? This question is increasingly urgent, as self...

Past Events

### The Public Intellectual in American Life

Feb 25, 2026

7:00PM - 9:00PM EST

Harvard Hall 101

In Person

America has sometimes been described as a pragmatic, anti-intellectual society. But in fact, from the Puritans to the Founders to the New York intellectuals and the Civil Rights movement, many major movements in American life have drawn language and...

### Religion in the American Story

Jan 28, 2026

3:00PM - 5:00PM EST

Thompson Room (Barker Center 110)

In Person

All around us are signs of anomie, loneliness and pessimism, driven by economic, technological, cultural and political realities. America went through a similar period of upheaval and discontentment in the early 19th century, and that period gave rise to...

### How is digital technology shaping the human soul?

Oct 1, 2025

3:30PM - 5:00PM EDT

Thompson Room (Barker Center 110)

In Person

Digital technology is transforming how we think, write, and connect. Does it stifle creativity and wonder, or open new paths for meaning, community, and faith? Join speakers Nataliya Kos'myna, Brandon Vaidyanathan, E. Glen Weyl, and Moira Weigel as they...

Recent News

### Pritzker sees an institution meeting the moment

"It might be natural, at a moment like this, to focus just on the challenges, but positive things have been happening on campus. What’s been most exciting to you and the Corporation?

As I mentioned earlier, there are so many great things happening at Harvard. Our researchers making groundbreaking progress in diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases are an inspiration, especially at a moment when scientific research is under duress.Across the University there is exciting, innovative work underway. The new Public Culture Project at the FAS will bring the critical thinking of the humanities to some of the biggest questions of our time, such as the evolution of AI and the moral principles underpinning economic life."

Find the full article on The Harvard Gazette website. Photo by Stephanie Mitchell via The Harvard Gazette.

### The consequences of America’s moral drift

"But there are promising signs. A pilot program at Utah State University places questions of meaning, purpose and civic responsibility at the heart of general education. All enrolled students will engage with the works of Plato, John Stuart Mill, Lao Tzu and Alexis de Tocqueville, fostering civil discourse and critical thinking. A new initiative called the Catherine Project has led thousands of people through readings of great books, online, for free. At Harvard, the Public Culture Project serves the public interest by hosting conversations with leaders from across society on matters of moral and spiritual import.

The nation will need more ideas than the ones above. Our democracy will not last another 250 years if it is populated by communities lacking direction and animated by addiction. As Coolidge proclaimed, we cannot rely on material prosperity alone. We must recover the “things of the spirit” — meaning, purpose and reverence for the good — if America is to endure."

Find the full article by Program Director Ian Marcus Corbin and Advisory Board member Spencer J. Cox on the Washington Post website. Photo from iStock via Washington Post.

### What will AI mean for humanity?

"What does the rise of artificial intelligence mean for humanity? That was the question at the core of “How is digital technology shaping the human soul?,” a panel discussion that drew experts from computer science to comparative literature last week.

The Oct. 1 event was the first from the Public Culture Project, a new initiative based in the office of the dean of arts and humanities. Program Director Ian Marcus Corbin, a philosopher on the neurology faculty of Harvard Medical School, said the project’s goal was putting “humanist and humanist thinking at the center of the big conversations of our age.”

“Are we becoming tech people?” Corbin asked. The answers were varied."

Find the full article by Clea Simon on the Harvard Gazette website. Photo by Veasey Conway via Harvard Gazette.

### Ian Marcus Corbin on the Harvard Salient Podcast

"I think I can speak for Sean and myself in saying that we both feel like there is too little of that sort of questioning going on both in academia and outside. I mean, one way you see it in academia, to take Harvard as an example, is last I heard, all of the Arts and Humanities put together have a total of 7% of Harvard undergrads concentrating in them. There are more people concentrating in Economics than there are in all the Arts and Humanities combined.\ \ And at the same time, I would argue that our public life, our lives at work, our lives in politics, have been drained of a lot of that kind of deep, kind of moral, spiritual sap. And in various ways, we’ve been told and we believed that these sorts of things are sort of private matters. They need to be left at home. They need to be kept in the closet. I think that tends to lead to a kind of desiccated public sphere that can be really alienating for people, right?"

Find the full conversation here.

### Arts and Humanities Division Launches Public Culture Project to Promote the Humanities in Public Life

"Harvard’s Division of Arts and Humanities launched its inaugural Public Culture Project to encourage philosophical inquiry at Harvard, with the aim of addressing increasing polarization in the U.S. and reinvigorating public life.

The Project will involve a series of public conversations between speakers from fields such as government, business, and technology to engage in questions about education and work, the role of artificial intelligence in human lives, and the role of God in the U.S., among others."

Find the full article by Ellen P. Cassidy and Catherine Jeon on the Harvard Crimson website. Photo by Megan M. Ross.

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