Citizen Leadership

Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership

2019-CFCL-Luncheon-Banner

6th Annual Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership Benefit Luncheon

We invite you to join friends and supporters of Discovery Institute at 12 PM on Wednesday, November 6 for the 6th annual luncheon to benefit Discovery Institute’s Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership. The luncheon will feature a keynote by author, futurist, and publisher of Forbes magazine Rich Karlgaard. Read More ›
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We Need to Bring Back Real Debates in America

The televised Democratic presidential sound byte pageants will not be true debates by any realistic standard. They are reminiscent of the 2016 Republican primaries that started with 16 candidates preening on a platform and enduring “gotcha” questions by reporters/moderators trying to get themselves into the news story. Until the nominee field narrows, these shows are almost a parody of real debates in the Lincoln-Douglas or Oxford Union manner. That’s too bad. We need to bring back real debates in America, and not just among candidates. Name the issue (climate change, foreign interference in our elections, abortion, immigration, tariffs, privacy online, the future of artificial intelligence, the meaning of “free speech,” whatever): Americans are badly divided. Since media and politicians often operate in inward-looking communities, they tend to ignore or distort views that differ from their own. In this environment, mere calls for greater civility don’t work. What can work is facing issues straight on and together. Read More ›
Flag of Israel against the morning sky. The Israeli flag on Masada

Springtime for Israel

Please join us on Thursday, June 20 for a captivating discussion on the current state of Middle East geopolitics, as Israel prepares for a new election, and how it will affect the United States with Discovery Senior Fellow and foreign policy expert John Wohlstetter. President Trump’s first year saw the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War–and also of the Read More ›

Benji Backer on Fox News

Watch: 2018 Chapman Fellow Benji Backer Appears on Fox News to Discuss the Flaws of the Green New Deal

President of the American Conservation Coalition and Chapman Fellowship alum Benji Backer joins Todd Starnes on Fox Nation to discuss the flaws of the proposed "Green New Deal" as well as the need for more conservatives to act on environmental issues. Read More ›
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Mount Rushmore National Monument near Keystone, South Dakota on July 26, 2013.

Presidents Day: Washington and Lincoln as Relevant Today as Ever

Presidents Day is unique among American holidays in providing the opportunity to remember and appreciate why George Washington and Abraham Lincoln — whose birthdays fall in February — were the two greatest U.S. presidents. While Washington was the founding father of the United States, Lincoln would later save the nation from division and collapse — bringing an end to the Civil War and the scourge of slavery. In short, Lincoln saved the republic that Washington made possible. Read More ›
Martin Luther King

King Helped Nation Fulfill its Spiritual Destiny

Martin Luther King Day is unique among American holidays in that it honors the one American who delivered the fulfillment of a core value expressed in the country’s founding Declaration of Independence in 1776. The Declaration’s self-evident truth “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Read More ›

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The Deep State Digs Deeper

As we approach Martin Luther King Day, it seems timely to reflect on King’s statement from a Birmingham jail in 1963 that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Arguably, the greatest injustice and worst crime against the democratic republic of the United States is for an elite cadre to engineer and attempt to carry out a coup that Read More ›

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Michael Medved smiling in front of the microphone during a taping of Great Minds
Photo by Nathan Jacobson

Conserving Great Ideas

To be a conservative, says Yale polymath David Gelernter, is to “give due credit to the ideas that created the civilization we live within.” A simple and beautiful summary. In a new podcast episode of Great Mind with Michael Medved, Dr. Gelernter talks with our host Mr. Medved about the shocking irresponsibility in the failure to introduce young people to the Read More ›