Civic Learning Week at ACT
This week, March 10-14, is Civic Learning Week (CLW).
Civic Learning Week is hosted annually by iCivics and seeks to highlight the importance of civic education in sustaining and strengthening constitutional democracy in the United States.
According to the CLW website, “Civic Learning Week unites students, educators, policymakers, and private sector leaders to energize the movement for civic education across the nation.” Objectives include:
- Engaging the public around the importance of civic education and elevating it as a national priority;
- Supplying students with positive and engaging civic learning opportunities; and
- Providing mechanisms for educators, students, coalition partners, business leaders, and other community members to connect at the local level and beyond around a shared commitment to civic education.
In this spirit, the Dukakis Center at ACT will host two distinct gatherings of study abroad and American degree candidates.
The first (Wednesday, March 12, 2-3 PM, C Hall 201) will be a primer on special elections scheduled to take place in as many as 35 states in the US in 2025. A Dukakis Center intern will present basic information on forthcoming elections in the home states of a select cohort of current study abroad students. American students will also have an opportunity to register to vote online and/or request an absentee ballot, as appropriate.
The second event (Thursday, March 13, 2-3 PM, C Hall 201) will be an Semiquincentennial jam, in which study abroad students will form small teams and plan a campaign to interact with inhabitants of Thessaloniki, to understand what they think about the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The teams will then mingle in public spaces between now and the end of the term, interviewing locals and recording and producing their findings in uploadable video clips. (A prototype of one such production was done by a student from American University in March 2024 ahead of our voter registration drive on Super Tuesday.)
A third and final event will be a screening on March 13 of live virtual presentations in English by ACT instructors to participants in the 2025 iteration of the Thrace Negotiation Tournament. The tournament will take place over three weekends in March 2025, with interactive virtual sessions on March 15-16 and again on March 22-23, and an onsight finale in Xanthi on March 28-30. A unique feature of this year’s tournament will be its integration of Artificial Intelligence into the negotiation process. The presentations on March 13 will take place in the C Hall Conference Room, as follows:
- 5:30 PM Dr. Wisner, presentation on diplomacy and international negotiations
- 6:10 PM Ms Giannopoulou, presentation on negotiation from a business and legal perspective.
This is the first time ACT and the Dukakis Center participate in Livic Learning Week. The principal co-hosts of Civic Learning Week in 2025 are iCivics and the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions (RAI), Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
