This initiative continues the dialogue developed by Professors Higgins and Pinkert in the IPRH Research Cluster Public Humanities. They will address a series of questions of critical relevance to public universities and the role they play in public life:

• How do changes in public universities reflect transformations in higher education and in contemporary life?
• How can public universities reconnect with, or even help reconstitute, their publics?
• What special role do the humanities and the arts play, and how must they grow in order to play this role in the re-constitution of public higher education?

Learning Publics features ongoing dialogue punctuated by public events and 2 courses (CAS 587 in Spring 2018 and an undergraduate Grand Challenge Learning Gen. Ed. class in Fall 2018).