Creating Public Value is a new course aimed at understanding more clearly the purposes and outcomes of public policies and other kinds of collective action. The course will explore the public values at the heart of a range of "sacred" texts from the US Declaration of Independence to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. It will also focus on the public values are the heart of many historic and contemporary policy debates and explore what the common good might or might not be in each. And it will explore the connection between means and ends in the creation (or not) of public value.
Potential policy questions to explore might include, for example:
Has President Obama overreached in issuing executive orders on immigration?
Should employers be required to provide paid family leave to employees?
What should government's role be, if any, in regulating the Internet?
What public values are at stake in the public debate about, and policy proposals to address, climate change?
As these questions and others are debated at the dinner table, in coffee shops, in print and social media, and elsewhere, clashes over public values are often evident, though they are not always articulated very clearly. We believe that exploring the values that sustain collective action is important in a democracy, since the exploration can clarify what is at stake and also what the common good might be.
Purposes:
To clarify the public purposes and values served by collective action, including cross-sector collaboration, in democratic contexts
To understand the role of public values in historic and contemporary policy debates
To be knowledgeable about the important debates in the public value literature
To provide practical guidance about how to discern, measure, and assess public values
To explore how public value and public values might be achieved in practice
To prepare leaders in nonprofit and public organizations to articulate and uphold public values in media-rich environments
Themes:
How a focus on public values helps us think about what kind of society we want
How to talk about public values
How to discern, measure and assess public values
How to create public value in practice
How to deal with competing public values
Audience:
Graduate students and advanced undergraduate students
Early, mid- and later career professionals
Policy advocates and civic activists