Contributor

Harry Boyte

Senior Scholar in Public Work Philosophy, Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship Augsburg College

Harry Boyte, Senior Scholar in Public Work Philosophy at Augsburg College, is a civic organizer, democratic educator, and public intellectual. His work focuses on revitalizing the purposes and practices of education for the democracy way of life. As a young man he worked in the Citizenship Education Program of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Martin Luther King's organization during the civil rights movement, and a community organizer. Boyte, working with a team, co-founded Public Achievement to bring the spirit and sense of civic agency he experienced in the movement to young people today. Public Achievement is a civic empowerment and citizen education initiative which teaches the citizen-centered politics of the freedom movement. It operates in communities and schools in the US and more than a dozen countries. Boyte also coordinated the Reinventing Citizenship project with the Clinton White House from 1993-95, developing concepts and strategies to overcome the citizen-government divide and presented findings to President Clinton and his administration leaders at a Camp David summit on the future of democracy. Boyte is an architect of the public work framework of citizenship, which conceives of citizens as co-creators of the democratic way of life, and a co-founder of Civic Studies, the transdisciplinary intellectual movement which also conceives of citizens as co-creators. He is author, co-author and editor of ten books on democracy, citizenship, community organizing and democratic movements including The Citizen Solution - How You Can Make a Difference, Everyday Politics, Free Spaces with Sara Evans, and The Backyard Revolution. His writings have appeared in Political Theory, the New York Times, Public Administration Review, the Wall Street Journal and more than 100 other publications.