At a time when we should be coming together to make our communities better and solve big challenges, we’re finding ourselves increasingly isolated from each other. Across the country, in neighborhoods large and small, we’re finding it harder to trust that our neighbors and fellow citizens have our best interests and safety at heart. Income inequality continues to increase at the same time that we see a troubling rise in disparities in health, life expectancy and educational attainment. We’re less and less sure that the information we receive is true, or that the institutions that support public life can effectively serve everyone.
Most concerningly, many of us are finding it harder to trust that democracy’s promises of liberty and justice are available to us all.
A healthy civil society is essential to a large, multiracial, multifaith country like ours. Societies create governments to bring people together to solve common problems, yet the United States’ faith in our collective agreements and shared goals is fraying. Research shows that most Americans want to strengthen our communities’ civic health and culture: the norms, values, relationships and actions that knit trusting communities together, sustain civic institutions and allow us to work together to create change.
The University of Washington agrees. We want to accelerate efforts to strengthen the nation’s civic health, starting with our own Washington communities and its future leaders and scaling up to communities and institutions across the country and around the world. Public universities are one of the few places in our society where people can still choose to come together across differences and learn together to solve problems, so we see this as our essential work in this pivotal moment.
