THE DEENA M. GROSSMANN MEMORIAL LECTURE IN EDUCATION:
A Civil Care: The Public Library in a Time of National Disunion
Gratz College Summer Institute 2022 presents:
A Civil Care: The Public Library in a Time of National Disunion
Andrew Nurkin
Hart Associate Professor of the Practice at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy
Sunday, July 10
1:00 pm ET Online
Sunday, July 10
1:00 pm ET Online
The United States in 2022 seems at a point of political and social fracture. Nearly every institution, including the public library, has become a vector for the compounding challenges threatening our democracy. Yet perhaps more than any other institution, libraries offer common ground on which we might begin the long work of creating democracy anew. In a moment when scholars and commentators openly speculate about the possibility of a new civil war, this talk will ask how the public library can help us imagine and bring about a civil care.
This free program is the keynote opening to the 2022 Gratz College Summer Institute for graduate-level students. It is also open to the public.
About Andrew Nurkin
Andrew C. Nurkin is the Hart Associate Professor of the Practice and Director of the Hart Leadership Program at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, where he teaches courses in public and community-based leadership, civic engagement, facilitation, and arts policy. As Deputy Director for Enrichment and Civic Engagement at the Free Library of Philadelphia from 2017 until 2021, Andrew led public programs in the humanities, arts, and civic engagement for one of the largest library systems in the United States. At the Free Library, Andrew was responsible for nationally-recognized, city-wide series such as Author Events, the Philadelphia Poet Laureate Program, and One Book, One Philadelphia; exhibitions and
performances; programs in fifty-four neighborhood libraries and the Rosenbach Museum and Library; and new civic initiatives, including the Heim Center for Cultural and Civic Engagement and the statewide Hear Me Out dialogue program. Andrew’s work reimagining the role of the public library as a civic commons has been featured in The New York Times, CBS This Morning, WHYY, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.