AMERICAN
INSTITUTIONS
COMMON CORE

The GIFT Project, CPP's award-winning initiative, offers a pathway to revitalize the research and study of American Institutions & Ideals across the California State University system. "The Faces of Freedom", developed in collaboration with The Teagle Foundation, is the flagship seminar of the project. The Initiative rests on the idea that reading a common set of texts, from Tocqueville's Democracy in America to Du Bois' Darkwater, for example, is fundamental to our efforts at reactivating the spirit of the American civic contract. "The Faces of Freedom" serves as the Common Core Seminar in the Degree Pathway on Political Nonviolence.

THE FACES
OF FREEDOM

Perhaps no country has shaped the trajectory of democracy in the modern world more decisively and more enduringly than the United States of America. It is in America that the modern constitutional tradition is born, along with the ideal and institution of the Declaration of Independence, which many modern states would follow. America’s founding faith was anchored in the belief that a people, when bound together by a shared moral and political vision and restrained collectively by a common purpose and care, can indeed rule itself without the tutelage of human sovereigns or godly masters.

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COMMON CORE IN TRANSFORMATIVE TEXTS

The Common Core in Transformative Texts is drawn from the Fall 2023 pilot in American Institutions, offered by Dr. Aishwary Kumar under the title "The Faces of Freedom". The Democratic Visions seminar for both upper and lower division sections, which run for 15 weeks (meeting twice a week), use this larger pool of transformative texts as the foundation for the Core’s shared, common syllabus. The Core's lower division seminar places heavy emphasis on primary texts; the upper division seminar opens room for close engagement with major texts in American letters and political thought.

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