FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 4, 2026
UVA Institute Launches “Third Founding” Call to Renew American Civic Life and Democracy
The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture releases the Third Founding Declaration marking the initiative’s national launch November 12 at UVA’s Rotunda.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia is launching the Third Founding, a long-term national effort to renew the cultural sources of American democracy.
The initiative will be formally introduced November 12 at the University of Virginia by Institute founder and UVA Professor James Davison Hunter, author of the groundbreaking 1991 book, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, and a widely celebrated recent book, Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis. The event culminates with an evening gathering in the Rotunda and a keynote address on “Foundings and Re-foundings” by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and presidential biographer Jon Meacham.
The Third Founding argues that the present crisis of democracy cannot be understood in political or institutional terms alone: written constitutions do not by themselves create the moral world that sustains them, elections cannot manufacture mutual trust, courts cannot legislate cultural legitimacy, the law cannot create the shared horizon of meaning that makes democratic self-government possible. Democracy depends upon a deeper public culture: beliefs and practices that teach us what freedom is for, what justice requires, why equality matters, why toleration is necessary, what we owe those with whom we disagree, what constitutes a legitimate use of power, and why self-government is worth preserving in the first place.
The Third Founding is an effort to address that deeper layer of democratic life, calling for renewal through the institutions that form citizens and shape our common life—community and civic groups; schools of all kinds; churches, synagogues, mosques, and other faith-based organizations; charities and foundations; professional associations and labor unions; independent journalism and media. It is not a conventional political program but a summons to the culture-forming institutions of American life to take up again the work of sustaining a free and pluralistic society.
“The challenge, as we see it, is not simply to diagnose democratic dysfunction, but to help institutions of civil society recover their capacity to form the habits, dispositions, and shared understandings upon which democratic life ultimately depends.” James Davison Hunter
Over the past year, the Declaration has been tested and refined with a wide range of civic leaders and institutions. That response has strengthened the Institute’s conviction that leaders in civil society are looking for ways to move beyond polarization and reactionary politics and take responsibility for strengthening democratic culture within their own institutions and communities.
The next phase of the Third Founding initiative will focus on catalyzing the vision of the Declaration by deepening its scholarly foundations and mobilizing civic leaders to take up its summons.
James Davison Hunter, lead drafter of the Third Founding Declaration, is LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and founding executive director of its Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Hunter is a historical and cultural sociologist concerned with the problem of meaning and moral order in a time of political and cultural change in American life and considered “the nation’s leading cultural historian” (New York Times). He has contributed seminal works in the field including Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, Science and the Good, and Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis.
Jon Meacham, American presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, holds the Rogers Chair in the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University. A frequent contributor to national media and a trusted public intellectual, Meacham has authored numerous New York Times bestsellers, including American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House and Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power.
About the Third Founding
The Third Founding, an initiative of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture focused on renewing the cultural sources of American democracy, is made possible through generous support from the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, and the Advanced Studies in Culture Foundation. Through the Third Founding Declaration, scholarship, civic engagement and partnerships across civil society, the initiative seeks to strengthen the ethical commitments, practices and institutions necessary for a free and flourishing democratic society. The text of the Third Founding Declaration is available here and supporting essays were published on November 1 in The Hedgehog Review and further information is available at www.thirdfounding.org.
About the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
Founded in 1995, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture is an interdisciplinary social science and humanities research center affiliated with the University of Virginia. The Institute studies the deeper structures of culture, the frameworks of meaning, belief and moral order that shape individual, institutional and public life.
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