Centers of knowledge production, from universities to newspapers, are undergoing massive changes as older institutions compete with alternative mediums of creating and circulating information, from social media to artificial intelligence. In this environment, many question who is an expert, what constitutes research, and where we should look for reliable knowledge about the issues that matter the most to us, from health to the environment to racial and social justice. How we answer these questions has profound implications for the future of democracy, as the means through which people obtain knowledge is foundational to participatory governance.
In the Gardner seminar, we will approach these questions from an interdisciplinary and global perspective. This is not a normal class, in which you learn a specific body of knowledge, through the tools particular to a specific academic discipline. Instead, we will read and speak with scholars with varied research approaches. We will also view Hank Willis Thomas’s artwork at the Zimmerli Museum and read Ted Chiang’s sci-fi to consider how art and literature can broaden our perspective. While we will spend time grappling with the seismic forces reshaping US politics in recent years, we will resist the pull of “Americentrism” to consider how knowledge and politics operate at both local and global scales.
Collectively, we will challenge ourselves to grow through the fellowship – to understand things together that we could not alone. As the director of the Gardner program, I bring to the “table” expertise as a historian and a specialist on South Asia and the Indian Ocean. You, the 2026-2027 Gardner Fellows, bring training in a variety of disciplines—political science, criminal justice, history, economics, psychology, philosophy, computer science, genetics, urban planning, public health, and dance, among others. Many of you grew up in New Jersey, but in very different parts of the state, from small rural towns to major cities; others spent their childhood further afield from Rutgers, including Lagos, Nigeria. Born in 1981, my worldview was shaped by the end of the Cold War, September 11th, the War on Terror, Facebook (I went to college with Mark Zuckerberg), and the revolutions of the Arab Spring. Your historical landmarks are different: the election (twice) of Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter, the COVID-19 pandemic, Ukraine, Gaza, and now the possibility of a new global conflict in the Middle East.
Yet, as we will explore, “generational” thinking has limits – our politics and worldviews are shaped by far more than our birth year. Through the fellowship, we will ask how our views might change by listening deeply to others with experiences that differ from our own. This practice of sharing our ideas and deeply listening to others is key to the success of the fellowship. And as Anand Giridharadas argues in The Persuaders, it is also foundational to a healthy democracy: “you change things by changing minds,” including your own (p. 13).
We will begin our discussions by reflecting on the role of free discussion as foundational to both the production of knowledge and democratic governance. We will start with a classic: J.S. Mill’s On Liberty (1859). What remains relevant about Mill’s argument, and what has changed? Mill wrote at a time when many did not enjoy the most basic liberties, from the enslaved to women. His mediums of public discussion were print and in-person speech. Today more people can participate in forums of public debate, but what we read, hear, and see is shaped by corporate media conglomerates and subject to invasive technology-enabled surveillance. Is our speech freer? Our summer reading, Maria Ressa’s How to Stand Up to A Dictator: The Fight for Our Future, grapples with these questions. Ressa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, was born in Manila, grew up and was educated in New Jersey, and built her career as a journalist across Southeast Asia. Ressa asks how our understanding of free speech needs to change in the context of the explosive power of new media technologies, with algorithms that serve as “a bullhorn to hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories” (p. 143. She argues that we now inhabit a media ecosystem in which “Free speech is being used to stifle free speech” (p. 185). Yet who gets to decide what is hate speech, disinformation, or a conspiracy theory, and how? We will wrestle with this challenge by revisiting recent efforts to censor public speech, from the removal of misinformation from social media during the COVID-19 panic to the closure of academic programs related to gender and DEI.
Other topics and readings for the seminar will evolve according to the interests of the fellows and our invited guest speakers (TBA). Some might include selections from Anand Giridharadas’s The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy; Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation; Nanjala Nyabola, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Politics in Kenya; Stephen Macedo and Frances E. Lee’s In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us; and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Backtalker: An American Memoir. These readings are just a launching pad. I will provide some thematic anchors (see below), but there will be room to pivot and respond to events unfolding over the course of the semester.
We will also cover several research modules that will set the foundation for your independent projects in the spring. Through the modules, you will develop concrete research skills and think more broadly about how your own research engages the larger questions posed in the seminar: What role does knowledge play in a democratic society? How should academic expertise shape public policy? What are the responsibilities of the researcher to society at large?
REQUIREMENTS
Participation in the seminar, including attendance and active shaping of discussion, is the majority of your grade. You will be asked to post a discussion question or short reflection before each class section, and we will also spend time in class “journaling.” The mid-term assignment will ask you to look back over your journal to reflect on how your ideas have evolved. The final assignment will be a research proposal. Additional details about assignments and grading will be posted on Canvas.
COURSE MODULES
Thematic
- Why is History a Battleground for the Future of Democracy?
- "Believe in Science": Expertise and Public Policy
- Universities and the Purpose of Knowledge
- Social Media, AI, and the New Politics of the "Public Square"
- "Art Created the Possible of Politics" (Coates, The Message, p. 106)
- What can we do?
Research
- How to Develop a Research Question: A Social-Scientific Approach
- What Motivates Research? Passion, Curiosity, and Storytelling
- Working Across Disciplines
- Ethical Research: The Researcher as Impartial Expert or Engaged Activist?
- Nuts and Bolts: Literature Reviews, Proposal, and Grants
IMPORTANT DATES
Fall 2026
- Wednesday, September 23, 2026: 6:00 - 8:00 PM: Fall Welcome Dinner, Rutgers Club
- Wednesday, November 4, 2026: Visit to the United Nations and Permanent Missions
- Wednesday, November 11. 2026: Visit to the Zimmerli Art Museum to see Hank Willis Thomas's "LOVERULES"
- (TBA): Mid-Term Journaling Reflection Due
- (TBA): Research Proposals Due
Spring 2027
- (TBA): Spring Welcome Dinner
- March 16-17, 2027: Spring Break, Washington, DC Trip
- Reading Day TBA: Policy Conference