Introduction

From its inception, CCD has been interested in advancing education in democracy and international community building. Two efforts jointly sponsored by CCD should be particularly mentioned: The Pocantico Conference on Democratic Education, 2003 and the Pocantico Conference on Democracy Education in the Middle East and Muslim Africa, 2005. Reports of both conferences are available.

Over the last year, the CCD staff has been developing information about the college and university courses offered in democracy studies and other closely related topics. Accompanying this effort, they have begun a compilation of references, syllabi, and other materials that might be helpful for any person or institution interested in developing such offerings or improving current offerings. This is part of a continuing program to make the CCD website directly useful to students, researchers and university lecturers looking for material for their papers or theses, as well as research and course design. CCD believes that since no such compendium of material exists it could be useful both within the U.S. and abroad.


In June, 2006, several CCD board members and associates met to talk about the possibilities of advancing the study of democracy/community- building by means of modifying and sharing university and college curricula.  Among other topics, the group discussed the efforts of Liz Coleman (attendee) at Bennington College to make the subject of democracy a major part of its undergraduate program. It noted that Chris Jones (attendee) at the University of Washington has developed a course on "Democracy, Community, and International Strategy".  A course in this area has also been developed at American University with CCD involvement. The question of how best to promote democracy in the developing world was also considered, with reference to the work of Larry Diamond and associates at Stanford. The meeting concluded with a decision that this effort at the university and college level should continue to be supported by CCD staff.

We encourage CCD members and associates as well as all those interested in the question of higher education in democracy and related topics to use the materials gathered in the accompanying pages under the headings "sources" and "courses". We particularly encourage them to contribute directly or indirectly to this archive of materials. Contributions may be of many kinds, and may include reviews of books, articles, or other materials related to this topic.