Some institutions are deeply engaged with their neighboring communities, and they understand that partnerships provide opportunities for civic learning while generating knowledge and other public goods. Three educators shared the details of their local civic involvement.

The only university-wide college of its kind, the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life studies and promotes the civic and political engagement of young people at Tufts University, in our communities, and in our democracy.

The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University, in partnership with the Alliance for Civics in the Academy and GBH, hosted a one-day national summit in April 2026 for faculty, administrators and students to examine the state of civics in higher education. Summit speakers and panelists recorded by the GBH Forum Network and presented here include Amy Binder, Mary Clark, Michael Clune, Dayna Cunningham, Andrew Delbanco, Fonna Forman, Bryan Garsten, Leslie Garvin, Caroline Attardo Genco, Tetyana Hoggan-Kloubert, Jonathan Holloway, Jessica Kimpell Johnson, Peter Levine, Marisol Morales, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Josiah Ober, Eboo Patel, Mindy Romero, Jenna Silber Storey, Leela Strong, Amber Wichowsky, and more.Photography by Laurie Swope/Tufts University

Join the Ford Hall Forum screening of Living in Pryde in Boston's theater district at The Modern Theater on Washington St. Filmmakers and residents featured in the film will convene after the screening for a discussion with the audience.

Living in Pryde is a powerful short documentary following residents of The Pryde—New England’s first LGBTQ+ welcoming, affordable senior housing community. As LGBTQ+ rights face renewed challenges, the film highlights a generation that came of age without basic legal protections. Residents draw on a lifetime of resilience, reflecting on surviving the AIDS crisis, fighting for same-sex marriage, and coming out as transgender. Located in a former public school in Boston’s Hyde Park, The Pryde is both a refuge and a target—a place where community becomes a powerful force in the ongoing fight for civil rights and equality.

Improbable Patriot: The Secret History of Monsieur de Beaumarchais, the French playwright Who Saved the American Revolution, a conversation with Suffolk University historian Robert Alison and Iris De Rode.

In 1776, the playwright and inventor Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732–1799) conceived an audacious plan to send aid to the American rebels. What’s more, he convinced King Louis XVI to bankroll the project and single-handedly carried it out. By war’s end, he had supplied Washington’s army with most of its weapons and powder, though he was never paid or acknowledged by the United States. To some, he was a dashing hero, a towering intellect who saved the American Revolution. To others, he was a pure rogue, a double-dealing adventurer who stopped at nothing to advance his fame and fortune. In fact, he was both, and more: an advisor to kings, an arms dealer, and an author of some of the most enduring works of the stage, including The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville. Now in paperback, Improbable Patriot introduces readers to an unrecognized power player in the Revolutionary War.

Join us at the GBH Studio in the Boston Public Library or watch the live stream to participate in this important conversation. Revenue from the Fair Share Amendment, passed in 2022, is dedicated to spending on transportation and education in the Commonwealth, but three years after the bill's passing, where do things stand? GBH New transportation correspondent Jeremy Siegel moderates a discussion.

Nicole Lynn Lewis, founder of Generation Hope, Susan Blum, anthropologist at University of Notre Dame, and Paul LeBlanc, visiting scholar at Harvard Graduate School of Education, join moderator Anya Kamenetz to navigate discuss the question: What is college for today—and what is at stake for our democracy if its purpose erodes?

To know the name Judy Blume is to know and love literature. Her influential novels are classics, from "Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret" to "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing." Blume touched the lives of tens of millions of readers. Mark Oppenheimer shares his new biography of the iconic author.

Witness the launch of the Silence Dogood Project’s Precedented Times Town Hall Series at Old North Church. Supported by Mass Humanities’ Promises of the Revolution initiative, this new series builds on the Silence Dogood Project’s projection-based storytelling to create spaces for live civic dialogue, rooted in Boston’s deep tradition of public dissent and collective action.

Inspired by historic New England town halls, this series convenes conversations in the very buildings where Bostonians have gathered for generations to wrestle with questions of liberty, justice, and power. Each event pairs leading historians with contemporary organizers to explore how today’s most urgent challenges have clear historical precedent, and how that perspective can inspire meaningful action.

The esteemed panelists for this first event will examine the forces of oppression and resistance shaping 18th-century Boston to trace how those dynamics continue to resonate, and to discuss how we can learn from the past to take action today.

Throughout the evening, you will have the opportunity to contribute reflections and responses in real time. These collective insights will shape a culminating, community-authored statement—projected onto the exterior of Old North Church as a powerful closing moment, transforming individual voices into a shared public declaration.

A.I. companions increasingly replace human romantic, erotic, social, educational, therapeutic, and collegial relationships. Whether interpersonally or society-wide, we are ill-equipped to engage in moral discernment about the ethical implications of this shift. The turn to A.I. companions reveals fractured expectations, systemic pressures, and misaligned desires troubling human-to-human relationships misguided by echoes of religiously inflected sexual and gender-based historical trauma embedded in hierarchies of material embodiments and on-going abuses. Our response to this unveiling must reshape relational ethics. What are the possibilities for creative, morally grounded A.I. companion design and use to promote human and agentic flourishing rather than diminishment? What resources might religious communities offer that remedy historical wrongs and promote moral formation? Is theological education be a place for this work?