The Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions is an interdisciplinary center created in 2009 as part of the UCLA division of Humanities. CLAFI’s Director is Daniel Lowenstein and its Associate Director is Andrew Sabl. This web site is currently under construction and will soon contain links to further information, including a more detailed mission statement and links to CLAFI’s faculty committee and other affiliates.
CLAFI is founded on these principles:
- That an educated citizen in a democracy should have a sound understanding of the history of free institutions and their underlying principles.
- That a central purpose of a university is to assist and encourage students, faculty, and others, to confront basic questions of the meaning of life, the nature of the cosmos and of human society, and the principles of right and wrong. The study and appreciation of history, literature and other arts, philosophy, religion, and social science are of value in themselves and are also integral to consideration of these basic questions.
- That the study of the great works and achievements of western and other civilizations, not uncritically but with the presumption that we have much to learn from our greatest forerunners, is a valuable if not indispensable means for education directed toward the principles of free institutions and the fundamental questions we face as individuals.
Although UCLA has always contained innumerable faculty and students committed in varying degrees to these principles, the pressure for specialization in a great research university sometimes pushes educational and research activity in other directions. CLAFI exists to provide a home for faculty, students, alumni and others in the surrounding community who share our principles and wish to give them greater emphasis in their own educational and research activity.
CLAFI hopes to pursue these goals through various means. In our first academic year, generous grants have made it possible for us to sponsor our inaugural public event, the Lincoln Celebration of November 18-21, 2009 and Mark Twain on the Page and on the Stage on March 11, 2010 and to offer two linked demonstration seminars in the winter quarter: “Liberty, Government, and Society in European Thought” and “American Political Thought.” We hope to be able to put on more such public events and, particularly, to develop more ambitious curricular programs in the future. We hope that CLAFI will become an informal home for interested students, faculty, and community members who would like to participate in occasional activities, lectures, seminars and discussion groups, performances, and whatever else we and you can think of—including, of course, occasional CLAFI-klatsches! We also hope to publish a journal containing important ideas but accessible to the generally educated public, as well as a newsletter to keep us in touch with our friends and supporters.