The Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit founded in 1949 that works toward a free, just, and equitable society through dialogue, leadership, and action on challenges facing the United States and the world.
Judy Chicago Turned Women’s Art Into a Public Monument
Tiffany Shlain calls Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party the first artwork every American should see, arguing that its monumental scale reclaims women’s place in history through forms long dismissed as “women’s art.” For Shlain, Chicago’s triangular installation turns craft, decoration and repeated place settings into a public feminist monument. Its broad historical reach, she says, is inseparable from the situated perspective of a Jewish feminist American artist.
Community Colleges Must Organize Around Completion, Not Enrollment
Aspen Institute fellowship leaders and alumni argue that community colleges should organize around student completion and labor-market outcomes, not enrollment alone. Russell Lowery-Hart, chancellor of Austin Community College District, says those measures must shape institutional systems, budgets and decision-making, while Pascale Charlot and Maria Harper-Marinick describe the Aspen Rising Presidents Fellowship as preparing prospective college presidents with the evidence, tools and leadership frameworks to drive that change.
Community-College Reform Shifts From Completion to Post-Graduation Outcomes
Community-college reform should be judged not only by access and completion, but by what happens to students after graduation, argues Marcia Ballinger, president of Lorain County Community College. Ballinger, Russell Lowery-Hart of Austin Community College District and Falecia Williams of Prince George’s Community College describe the Aspen fellowship as training leaders to confront institutional data, build reform agendas with peers, and tie student outcomes to their colleges’ economic role in their communities.
Platform Incentives Are Reshaping Religious Authority Online
Social media has expanded access to religious ideas, but it has not democratized religious authority, argue Liz Bucar of Northeastern University and Andrew Mark Henry of Religion for Breakfast. Henry says platform incentives favor conflict, extremity, and moral-emotional language, distorting what users encounter; Bucar argues that authority has shifted toward communicators who can earn attention and trust rather than disappearing altogether. Both contend that online reach and information do not necessarily provide the sustained guidance, correction, and community required for religious literacy or formation.
An American Pope Makes Catholic Teaching a U.S. Political Force
Paul Elie and Christine Emba argue that Pope Leo XIV has made longstanding Catholic teaching newly consequential in U.S. politics not by changing it, but by making it harder to ignore. As an American pope confronting an American administration, Leo has become a legible moral countervoice on war, migration, technological power, and human dignity, while his restrained style leaves unresolved the Church’s own disputes over authority, gender, and tradition.
35% of U.S. Workers Lack a Durable Employment Bargain
MIT Sloan professor Paul Osterman argues that roughly 35% of U.S. workers occupy “disposable” jobs—through contracting, organizational freelancing, or marginal W-2 employment—that leave them outside a durable employer commitment to training, benefits, and advancement. In his account, firms use these arrangements to cut costs and preserve flexibility, while contractors and marginal employees report lower earnings, satisfaction, and attachment to their organizations than standard employees. Osterman argues that training can improve individual options, but changing the system requires stronger classification rules, labor standards, benefits, and bargaining power.
From Sparse Beginnings, a Community Takes Shape on Stage
Simon Godwin, artistic director of Shakespeare Theatre Company, sees Jonathan Demme’s *Stop Making Sense* as a lesson in making performance visible: a lone performer with a guitar and boombox gradually becomes part of a fully populated, diverse ensemble. For Godwin, that public assembly makes the audience a participant in the creation of a shared world and raises a broader question about America’s capacity to begin with little and make room for greater possibility.
CDFI Lenders Need Metrics That Link Risk, Subsidy, and Growth
Aspen Institute’s Joyce Klein and Brett Simmons argue that standard CDFI lender metrics such as portfolio risk, net income and self-sufficiency can obscure the trade-offs behind financial performance and push organizations to manage for covenant optics. They propose analyzing lending economics against portfolio assets under management, separating revenue, funding costs, expected credit losses, operating expenses and subsidy to show how mission, risk and financial resilience interact. The framework also calls on investors to assess covenant breaches in light of a lender’s reserves and net assets, not a single ratio alone.
Foundational Skills Gaps Are Constraining Workforce Mobility
Foundational skills are a workforce issue, not a remedial concern outside employers’ remit, speakers at an UpSkill America and Lumina Foundation discussion argue. Lumina’s Georgia Reagan says employers can link skill-building to current jobs, credentials and better-paying roles. CJK Group starts with role-specific requirements; Tyson Foods uses broad frontline outreach and assessment to direct workers to suitable learning formats; and Ochsner Health connects support to employees’ next career steps through its career center.
Economic Mobility Depends on Institutions That Make Opportunity Usable
Aspen Institute leaders Ida Rademacher, Josh Wyner, and Pilar O’Leary argue that economic mobility depends less on individual effort than on whether financial systems, colleges, and businesses give people usable access to stability, valuable credentials, capital, and authority. Rademacher says households need enough financial margin to absorb shocks and make long-term choices; Wyner argues colleges should be judged by how graduates fare after completion; and O’Leary contends that Hispanic communities’ economic contribution must be matched by pathways to investment, ownership, and leadership.
Government Speaker Withdrawals Put Nonpartisan Convening at Risk
Niamh King, director of the Aspen Strategy Group and Aspen Security Forum, argues that the group’s value lies in giving officials, scholars, business leaders and journalists room to test foreign-policy disagreements outside Washington’s incentives for public conflict. Founded in 1984 to build bipartisan coherence on international issues, the group combines private deliberation with a public forum that requires senior officials to answer questions rather than deliver prepared speeches. King says that model is under pressure as participation in nonpartisan convenings itself becomes politically charged.
School Choice Must Not Weaken Public Education’s Universal Obligation
Janice K. Jackson, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Education & Society Program, argues that public education’s central problem is a failure to define what the country owes every child. She supports family choice and accountability, but says neither can come at the expense of public schools’ obligation to serve all students or substitute for adequate resources and implementation support. Her proposed agenda focuses on practical guardrails for alternative school models, AI procurement, career pathways and state governance.
Reliable Information Is a Prerequisite for Self-Government
Vivian Schiller, Aspen Digital’s executive director, argues that the program’s central concern is whether people can access the reliable, independent information needed for self-government—not simply whether journalism institutions survive. She traces Aspen Digital’s work from its communications-policy roots through cybersecurity, local news and AI, contending that technology now shapes public understanding across nearly every policy field. Her chief AI concern is not a single viral deepfake but the broader “liar’s dividend”: a flood of fabricated or contested material that leaves people unsure what is real.
Pluralism Requires Religious Liberty for Beliefs Majorities Do Not Endorse
Treating religion as a fixed, private or uniform identity obscures the ways it shapes public life, argue Simran Jeet Singh, Diane L. Moore and Asma Uddin in Faith Angle’s discussion of Modeling Religious Pluralism. They define religious literacy as understanding traditions as diverse, evolving and entangled with social power, and argue for a pluralism that protects strong commitments without allowing any one community to make its norms the public default.
Stablecoins Could Expand Dollar Use and Concentrate Demand for Treasury Bills
Nellie Liang of the Brookings Institution argues that stablecoins could widen global access to dollar-denominated value and add demand for Treasury bills, but only if their growth expands the dollar market rather than shifts money from existing dollar instruments. In her paper with Brent Neiman, Liang contends that the potential gains in payments and dollar use carry policy costs: regulators must address illicit-finance risks and possible losses of bank lending, while Treasury must account for reserve demand concentrated in short-term debt.
Vertical Pumped Hydro Would Bring Grid Storage Into Cities
Adam Semel argues that cities should treat energy storage as civic infrastructure rather than a remote grid asset. His proposed Gravity Bank system would package pumped-hydro storage into towers that, he says, could store electricity, cool data centers and industrial facilities, and hold water reserves near urban demand. The case rests on the view that rising power needs require durable, locally integrated systems built to manage electricity, heat and water over generations.
Sport Does Not Just Reflect Society; It Helps Shape It
Tom Farrey of the Aspen Institute and LACMA curator Britt Salvesen argue that sport and art are not separate cultural pursuits but ways of seeing how power, belonging and freedom operate in society. Farrey contends that sport has helped shape social change rather than merely reflecting it, while Salvesen says art makes the bodies, communities and emotions behind sport visible. Their Why We Play project asks what games and their representations reveal about the conditions in which people play, watch and belong.
Sport’s Power Depends on Credible Rules, Access, and Responsibility
At the Rose Bowl Institute’s Sportsmanship Summit, Aspen Institute leaders and sports executives argued that sport shapes power not automatically but through the rules, access and relationships institutions build around competition. Dan Reed of the Aspen Institute said leagues depend on legitimate governance and fair enforcement, while Scarlen Martinez argued that athletes and other sports figures must recognize the influence their platforms give them. Across examples from women’s and para sport to the Los Angeles Chargers’ work in Greece, the panel made the case that sport’s civic value rests on how people choose to use that influence.
Sport’s Social Value Depends on Access, Agency, and Power
Sports sociologist Jay Coakley argues that sport does not automatically create belonging, democratic participation or freedom; its effects depend on who gets access, who holds authority and how much control players retain. In a conversation with Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program executive director Tom Farrey, Coakley says commercialized elite sport can narrow participation, normalize top-down power and constrain athlete expression, while informal play offers more room for adaptation and agency. If sport is to connect people across differences, he argues, institutions must deliberately organize for it.
Early Setbacks Are Not a Verdict on a Child’s Future
Michael Lewis argues that youth sport is most valuable not as a route to achievement but as a setting where children learn that failure is real without being final. Speaking with Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program founder Tom Farrey, Lewis says parents’ anxiety about early setbacks can lead them to obstruct coaches and teachers in an effort to protect children from ordinary difficulty. His practical prescription is to educate parents when children are young, before every loss or selection decision is treated as a judgment on a child’s future.
Belonging in Sport Requires Shared Authority, Not Just Access
At an Aspen Institute roundtable on sport and belonging, sociologist Jay Coakley argued that inclusion requires more than being welcomed: people must be seen, valued and included in decision-making. Participants including Binta Brown, Brandon Bailey, Ezra Frech and Sue Enquist made related cases for sport as a route to agency, representation and social change, while warning that access without shared authority or institutional accountability leaves belonging incomplete.
4P Foods Replaces Fragile Supply Chains With Regional Food Hubs
Tom McDougall, founder of 4P Foods, argues that regional food hubs can give farmers a larger share of customer spending while making local sourcing workable for schools, retailers and other large buyers. He presents the model as an alternative to a concentrated food system that he says has made supply chains brittle and consolidated wealth and power. McDougall’s broader case is that leaders must both improve the institutions people still depend on and build replacement systems organized around fairness, respect and resilience.
More Free Time Does Not Necessarily Produce Greater Well-Being
Behavioral scientist Cassie Holmes argues that well-being depends less on maximizing free time or efficiency than on how people direct attention within the hours they have. Drawing on time-use research and her work at UCLA, Holmes finds that too little discretionary time is associated with lower life satisfaction, but so is too much when it lacks purpose or connection. Her prescription is not a universal schedule: it is to protect finite time for activities that feel worthwhile, especially ordinary rituals and relationships that urgency can obscure.
Conversational Style Differences Can Be Mistaken for Character Flaws
Georgetown linguist Deborah Tannen argues that many conflicts in relationships and workplaces arise not from bad intent but from differences in conversational style. A pause, overlapping speech, a question, advice, eye contact or an indirect request can be read as rudeness, indifference or control when it was meant as attention, care or collaboration. Her remedy is to distinguish observable behavior from the motive assigned to it, then discuss what each person meant and needed.