Academic and entrepreneur Cynthia Farrar will join us in class tonight. She will discuss her work developing Purple States, a media company capturing and disseminating user-generated content.Cynthia has a special interest in using media to engage ordinary citizens as full partners in American democracy. Since 2003, with MacNeil/Lehrer Productions and public television stations around the country, she has been orchestrating non-partisan conversations among randomly-invited citizens. Purple States launched in 2006.
In 2008, Purple States documentary video aired on NYTimes.com and WashingtonPost.com, local television, and Verizon's v-cast channel. Cynthia is now adapting the Purple States method for various platforms, and plans to cover a range of issues that divide people or where a bottom-up perspective is revealing.
Cynthia directs a program on deliberative democracy and local governance at Yale University’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies. She teaches the history of political thought and the theory and practice of democracy, ancient and modern, with a special focus on deliberative democracy. She holds a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University.
