Hampshire College Launches LEEP Program to Advance the Common Good - Shareable

"On February 12, Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts, formally launched its Leadership and Ethical Engagement Project (LEEP) with a series of public presentations and workshops entitled, Ethics and the Common Good: What Kind of World Do You Want to Live In? I was one of the two speakers joining choreographer, performer, and educator Liz Lerman of Washington, D.C. The new project will offer interdisciplinary courses in applied ethics, paid internships, research support, and other resources for students. Its larger ambition is to explore ethics and the common good not just within the academic curriculum, but through hands-on projects and community engagement. The initiative is supported with a $2 million, five-year grant from SHIFT, a private family foundation dedicated to advancing the culture of common good (who also fund Shareable) ... I talked a lot about the transformational potential of the Commons paradigm – the social systems used in diverse contexts to manage the shared wealth of a community. The Commons is at work in the managing of free and open software, for example, and in Wikipedia and open access scholarly journals. The Commons can be seen in urban spaces and civic institutions that are open to everyone; in water and land that are important to our everyday needs; and in alternative currencies and attempts to relocalize the economy.  What unites these various Commons is a basic commitment to production for use, not for private profit. In each, people have the right to make their own rules for managing resources that are important to their needs, and the responsibility to act as long-term stewards of resources ..."