Spring 2026
Civic Engagement in Repressive Contexts
Dates: January 26, 2026 - May 21, 2026Day/Time: Monday; Thursday 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM EST
Level: 100-Level
Certificate: Civic Engagement, Human Rights
Instructor: Obaidullah Bahir, American University of Afghanistan
The course seeks to help the students and professors of the course answer the classic question: “What is to be done (by us)?”. It does this through examining four themes: cultural freedom, investigating the arts and sciences as a key achievement of modernity and an important ground for civic engagement; media and autonomous publics, examining the notion of public life and the role a free public space plays in supporting alternatives to autocracies; politics as concerted action, considering how people, when they come together on the basis of shared principles, speaking and acting in each other’s presence, and developing a capacity to act in concert, create political power as an alternative to violence and coercion; and finally, the responsibilities of intellectuals and the roles they play in creating democratic public life, political power and cultural freedom. Some of the key questions to come up will be: What are the alternatives to the power of coercion in repressive social and political contexts? How are they grounded, acted upon and with what consequences? What roles do intellectuals play? Who is the intellectual? What are the distinctive roles of democratic intellectuals? What are the distinctions that should be made between the responsibilities of intellectuals, scholars, scientists, students, activists, politicians, and experts?
Credits: 3 US / 6 ECTS