Welcome to a Penn State Commitment to the Public Scholarship of Democracy
The Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy brings together Penn State University students, faculty and staff, and community partners who view education as a democratic keystone. Serving as a catalyst for teaching, research and civic engagement designed to build democratic capacity, the Laboratory explores and models ethical habits and practices of citizenship; encourages discovery and creativity that contribute to an understanding of democracy's 21st century challenges; and initiates university collaborations founded on a recognition of the public value of scholarship and contribution through the arts, sciences, and professions.
The Laboratory engages the Penn State community through its:
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Call to civic commitment and democratic sovereignty supported by discovery and diffusion rooted in the scholarship and practices of the arts, sciences and professions
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Service as a clearinghouse for public scholarship opportunities and the academic literature, courses, and individuals that support them
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Conservancy of the university as a public commons
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A Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy by Jeremy Cohen
Jeremy Cohen, founder of the Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy, establishes public scholarship's connections with democracy by distinguishing public scholarship from service, outlining a curriculum of consequence, and suggesting the constitutional roots of public scholarship. Click here for his discussion.
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Students and faculty grapple with many issues as scholars and emerging student-scholars. Founded in the Land Grant tradition and committed to a student centered learning community, Undergraduate Education at Penn State recognizes the complexity of integrating academic discovery, student development, and faculty contributions to the obligations of civic engagement.
The constitutional framers also confronted complex questions and relationships in their democratic experiment. Could age requirements-25 for the Peoples House, 30 for the Senate, 35 for the Presidency-prevent ceding power to a landed aristocracy? Could the federal regulation of intellectual property promote the arts and sciences to the benefit of all? Like all good experiments, some were successful. Others, such as apportionment that rewarded slave holding states with increased congressional representation, fell eventually to the first principles of democratic fidelity.
As important as they understood the simple act of voting and public participation to be, the framers recognized something more. Rule of law, scientific enlightenment, commerce, the advancement of the arts, and the diffusion of knowledge and resources for the common good were as germane to democracy and freedom as the right to ballot.
The democratic experiment provides the intellectual and civic ferment of Penn States Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy. Here a community of faculty and student scholars and colleagues from the arts and humanities, the social and physical sciences, and from the professions are experimenting, making discoveries and contributing to the diffusion of knowledge in ways that recognize the vital interactions of scholarship and democracy. Welcome to the Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy.