THE GIFT PROJECT

It was assumed, until recently, that our commitment to democratic values made us all modern. Liberal democracy was thought to be the only political form suited to the highest realization of human aspirations. In fact, democracy was never simply a formal political institution or a system of elected government. It was a distinctively modern social imaginary: a voluntary contract between citizens in which justice—a world of freedom shared equally—was supposed to take precedence over mere peace. 

But for better or worse liberal democracy, in its very striving for growth and consolidation, never ceased to steadily mutate into a system of unequal power. It was inequality on global scale. Liberal democratic governance became a system in which personhood was turned into the direct business of state. Not surprisingly, human identity and difference have today become arenas of strife over who controls the modern political narrative and its origin story. 

The GIFT Project is based on our conviction that an honest reckoning with the past and a realistic reimagination of the future of democracy requires a moral and political reset. It demands an inquiry not only of democracy's normative and desired forms but also its malignant discontents. There might be no regeneration of democracy unless we are prepared to take a hard look at the implosive and explosive forms of anti-democracy that have become endemic in our time. Tragically, these implosions are often the work of those very participants who act in its name and while benefitting the most from its inequalities. 

Freedom, it turns out, is less a solution to human want and more a puzzle that can only be solved if human beings take seriously the temptation to tyranny that haunts them. Our Global Inquiries in Freedom and Tyranny, developed in collaboration with The Teagle Foundation, returns this puzzle of human freedom back to the center of liberal education and the Humanities. 


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