About the Seminar

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Our seminar’s title, “Sharing Ground,” addresses the need to move away from a vision of the university as territory that must be conquered by one “side” or another. We must instead learn to exchange ideas and communicate across differences—skills for which the humanities are particularly well suited.

Exploring the deeper humanistic questions at the center of academic freedom prompts discussion of topics vital to collegial academic discourse: the role of shared imaginative experiences; the ethics of debate, disagreement, and interpretation; the preservation of civic memory; and negotiating between conflicting philosophies of free expression. By working through these ideas together, we can better understand the value of academic freedom and the related topic of free speech for all citizens—both of which are facing growing strain.

In sum, we believe that, when we move beyond frameworks of law and policy, the humanities can help us see the fertile ground of research and ideas accessible to all in true democracies. Between aspirational principles and institutional policy lies a field of practice shaped by ethical debate, interpretive generosity, and the reflective exercise of scholarly judgment.

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To pursue these aims, “Sharing Ground” encompasses a variety of activities. The core of the seminar will be meetings, typically every 2-3 weeks, during which we will bring together academic leaders and humanist scholars from across the country to consider the seminar’s animating questions. These discussions will also highlight the institutional differences between Duke and NC State, the two universities hosting the seminar. While Duke will serve as the seminar’s home institution, connecting with NC State will allow for the unique missions and governance structures of public universities to be a focus of our exploration. Questions about the suitability of institutional neutrality, about academic freedom and “compelled speech,” about protest and public display, and about embodying democratic ideals take on added dimensions at public institutions.

The seminar will also feature work exhibiting the humanities in practice. A Humanist in Residence will collaboratively work to develop a project that demonstrates the involvement of the humanities in community building. A student working group will also be formed through Duke’s Bass Connections program, which fosters interdisciplinary, faculty-guided student research. These students will attend core seminar meetings while also pursuing a focused project exploring the history of academic freedom at universities within the Research Triangle region. Students will engage with archival materials, conduct oral histories, and apply humanistic methods—historical interpretation, textual analysis, and civic inquiry—to produce a critical account of how academic freedom has shaped regional institutions. A concluding session for the seminar in the spring will showcase the work of both the Humanist in Residence and the student working group.

Fundamentally, this seminar proposes that humanities-based understandings of freedom—rooted in traditions of dialogue, pluralism, and critical reflection—can enrich how universities foster civil discourse and democratic participation. Humanistic practices model how universities might sustain disagreement without dissolving community and cultivate inquiry without foreclosing dissent. And when we can better envision a world that reflects those community-driven ideals, we come one step closer to becoming Le Guin’s “realists of a larger reality.”

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