President's Blog: Wintersession Workshop on Online Media & Civic Discourse

by Christopher L. Eisgruber

Jan. 5, 2023

I am thrilled to be one of more than 400 people leading a Princeton Wintersession course this month. For me, Wintersession provides an opportunity to brainstorm with students about a question that keeps me up at night: how do online media affect us, and what can we do to achieve a healthy civic discourse in this rapidly changing information environment?

To help us think about that question, I’ve invited three outstanding guest speakers to participate virtually in the workshop:

• Professor  Danielle Allen '93, Director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, is one of America’s most creative and influential thinkers about citizenship and civil society.
• Professor  Anna Lembke Anna Lembke, Medical Director of Addiction Medicine at Stanford University, is a leading authority on addiction who has applied her expertise to explain the effect of online media.
• Congressman Derek Kilmer  '96, United States Representative from Washington’s 6th District, is a co-sponsor of the bipartisan “Building Civic Bridges Act,” designed to address polarization and division in the United States.

I know, of course, that even with these terrific speakers and a group of creative Princeton students, we’re not going to solve the problem in an afternoon workshop. But the great thing about Wintersession is that it provides a no-pressure, imaginative space where we can ask big questions, dream up some out-of-the-box solutions, and, who knows, maybe discover seeds that will germinate into bigger things.

The workshop takes place in person on Tuesday, January 24, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Register here!