PHOTO: GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Will the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris a transition made “orderly” with barbed wire, National Guard soldiers, and the closure of downtown Washington, D.C. be remembered as an inflection point? After 4 years of boorish incivility, incendiary nativist extremism, a crippling pandemic, resurgent racism, and riotous mobs incited to attack the Capitol, can the United States rebuild its civic and moral infrastructure? To repair the damage and prepare the next generation of citizens and leaders requires a new spirit of cooperation between the science and civics education communities.
About 30 years ago, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, the publisher of