Governments need the ability to acquire property for public purposes. Without it, we'd have no public roads, buildings, parks, schools, national forests, military bases, etc. In the US, this power of eminent domain, inherited from English common law, is limited by...

Marguerite (Maggy) Barankitse was born in Ruyigi, a city in Burundi, Africa. Maggy’s father died when she was six. Her mother never remarried but Maggy’s family grew as her mother adopted 8 children. Maggy would follow in her mother’s example and adopted her first...

Many low- and middle-income nations face a problem of having millions of people whose talent is undeveloped and whose potential is wasted. Peru is one example. One in five young people (15 – 24 years) neither work nor are going to school, and a majority of these...

Ida B. Wells was born a slave in 1862 but was freed when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Ida was one of the few African-Americans who was able to go to college in the years following the Civil War, but she had to drop her education after her...

We just celebrated Independence Day here in the US. What if it's our last? Independence Day is more than a celebration of our freedom from another country, it's a celebration of our democracy. On Independence Day, we celebrate our independence as free and equal...

Dawn Langley Hall lived a life of crossing boundary lines. She was born out of wedlock on an English estate in the 1920s, reportedly the child of the household chauffeur and a teenage servant (who is sometimes described as being “from a high social class”). Dawn...

John Fryer was born in Kentucky in 1937. Being very bright, he graduated from high school when he was 15 and college when he was 19. He then went to medical school where his interests were in psychiatry. John happened to be gay. After receiving his medical degree...

Lynn Conway excelled in math and science courses and began her studies at MIT in 1955. Assigned male at birth, Lynn suffered from gender dysphoria. Due to a failed gender-affirming treatment while at MIT, she dropped out of college. She worked as an electronic...

What does freedom from fear mean? And why is it important for democracy? In this four-part exploratory conversation series, Four Freedoms: The Spirit of Democracy Today and Tomorrow, we helped each other explore different aspects of freedom. To do this, we looked...

Billye Talmadge was raised in Oklahoma by her mother. She never knew her father. She was the niece of Herman Talmadge, a former U.S. Senator and Georgia Governor known for his conservative views.   When Billye was in college she became aware that she was a lesbian....