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Senior Scholar in Public Work Philosophy, Augsburg University

Harry C. Boyte is co-founder with Marie Ström of the Public Work Academy and Senior Scholar of Public Work Philosophy, both at Augsburg University. He also founded the international youth civic education initiative Public Achievement and the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota, now merged into the Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship at Augsburg University. In 2012 Boyte coordinated the consortium of universities and colleges, the American Commonwealth Partnership on invitation of the Obama White House. The partnership, on the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Act which established land grant colleges, sometimes called "people's colleges," developed strategies to strengthen the public purposes of higher education.

Boyte’s most recent book, Awakening Democracy through Public Work, Vanderbilt University Press 2018, recounts lessons from more than 25 years of revitalizing the civic purposes of K-12, higher education, professions, and other settings. In the 1960s, Boyte was a Field Secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization headed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and subsequently was a community and labor organizer in the South.

Boyte has authored ten other books on democracy, citizenship, and community organizing and his articles and essays have appeared in more than 150 publications including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Political Theory, Chronicle of Higher Education, Policy Review, Dissent, and the Nation.

Experience

  • –present
    Senior Fellow , University of Minnesota