The State Of American Citizenship 2023

Chester E. Finn, Jr., is the Volker Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution, a former member of the Maryland State Board of Education and its Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education, and Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. His primary focus is reforming primary and secondary schooling.

Jed Ngalande is a research assistant for the Hoover Institution Working Group on Good American Citizenship. He is a graduate of Stanford University, where he studied biology and economics, while also expressing a passion for civics and government through participation in the Stanford Daily as a beat reporter and the Intercollegiate Civil Disagreement Partnership Fellowship.

Within the Hoover Institution’s Center for Revitalizing Americans Institutions (RAI), the Working Group on Good American Citizenship seeks to craft and communicate policies and practices that nurture good citizenship in the constitutional democracy Americans inhabit—policies and practices that support the principles, convictions, character traits, and associations upon which liberty depends. Consisting of high-quality, nonpartisan research, analysis, and communications, our work is anchored to what Alexis de Tocqueville called “reflective patriotism” and seeks to cultivate in Americans young and old an affirmative attachment to the nation that Lincoln termed “the last best hope of earth.”