Teaching Contemporary Contested Issues

The Alliance for Civics in the Academy hosted "How Can Universities Strengthen Civic Education in K–12 Schools?" with Jennifer McNabb, Joshua Dunn, and Jenna Storey on March 4, 2026, from 9:00-10:00 a.m. PT.

Universities are increasingly reexamining their role as incubators of effective citizenship. An essential yet often overlooked part of this work is strengthening K–12 civic education. This webinar explores how efforts within higher education can support civic learning in K–12 schools, with particular emphasis on the academy’s role in training the next generation of educators.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Meira Levinson is a political theorist/philosopher of education who is working to start a global field of educational ethics that is philosophically rigorous, disciplinarily and experientially inclusive, and both relevant to and informed by educational policy and practice. In doing so, she draws upon scholarship from multiple disciplines as well as her eight years of experience teaching middle school humanities, civics, history, and English in the Atlanta and Boston Public Schools. 

Meira has written or co-edited nine books, including Civic Contestation in Global Education and Educational Equity in a Global Context (both 2024, with Ellis Reid, Tatiana Geron, and Sara O’Brien), Instructional Moves for Powerful Teaching in Higher Education (2023, co-authored with Jeremy Murphy), Democratic Discord in Schools (2019, with Jacob Fay), winner of the 2020 AERA Moral Development and Education SIG Outstanding Book Award, and Dilemmas of Educational Ethics (2016, with Jacob Fay). Her book No Citizen Left Behind (2012) won awards in political science, philosophy, social studies, and education and has been translated into Chinese and Japanese. Meira shares educational ethics resources on JusticeinSchools.org, materials to support K-12 educators working in politically charged environments at Educational Values in Action, and resources for youth activists and teacher allies at YouthinFront.org. Each of these projects reflects Levinson's commitment to achieving productive cross-fertilization — without loss of rigor — among scholarship, policy, and practice.

Meira earned a B.A. in philosophy from Yale and a D.Phil. in politics from Nuffield College, Oxford University. Her work has been supported by fellowships from Guggenheim, the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and the National Academy of Education. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, Meira taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Jennifer McNabb is Professor and Head of the Department of History at the University of Northern Iowa, where she teaches courses on early modern European history and the history of England. She was Co-Chair of UNI's Civic Education Task Force, which created UNI's Center for Civic Education, and she was Co-PI for a National Endowment for the Humanities Connections Grant that developed UNI's first civic education curriculum: "Civic Literacy, Engagement and the Humanities." McNabb is also a Co-PI of a national grant that will establish the Iowa Civic Educators Institute, providing professional development opportunities for in-service and pre-service social studies and history teachers throughout the state. McNabb has received several awards for her teaching and has completed four courses for The Teaching Company’s The Great Courses on the Renaissance, witchcraft, sex, and marriage. She currently serves as a Councilor in the Professional Division of the American Historical Association and as president of the Midwest Conference on British Studies.

Joshua Dunn (PhD, University of Virginia) serves as Executive Director of the Institute of American Civics at the Howard H. Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research and teaching focus on constitutional law and history, education policy, federalism, and freedom of speech and religion. His books include Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri v. Jenkins (University of North Carolina Press), From Schoolhouse to Courthouse: The Judiciary’s Role in American Education (Brookings Institution Press) and Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University (Oxford University Press). 

Moderator

Jenna Silber Storey is the Ravenel Curry Chair in Civic Thought in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies Division of the American Enterprise Institute, and Co-Director of AEI’s Center for the Future of the American University.  She is also an SNF Agora Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and a Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.  She previously taught political philosophy at Furman University, where she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and International Affairs, and Executive Director of Furman’s Tocqueville Program.  Her writing has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, First Things, and The National Endowment for the Humanities flagship journal, Humanities.  Dr. Storey is the co-author, with her husband Ben, of Why We Are Restless:  On the Modern Quest for Contentment (Princeton University Press, 2021).  They are currently working on a book titled The Art of Choosing: How Liberal Education Should Prepare You for Life.