Clemente Course in the Humanities
Jefferson County, Washington
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and
never will be.
-Thomas Jefferson
Our Purpose
To support civic engagement and increased community participation of low-income adults through exploration of the intellectual foundations of Western democracy.
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Transforming Lives,
Enriching Community
by Lela Hilton, Academic Director
When we started the Clemente Course
in Jefferson County in 1999, we were the
first rural Bard-sponsored Clemente Course in
the Country. We still are.
As a partnership of local agencies, educational institutions and engaged citizens began to work together to offer a free college humanities course to low-income members of our community, there was some concern that we neither had the resources nor the population base to sustain the Course for more than a year or two.
Could we recruit and retain students year after year? Would we be able to find high caliber faculty? Would studying Plato, reading William Shakespeare and Emily Dickenson, and looking at paintings by the great masters of western art really make a difference?
The answer to all of these questions is “yes”!
We have watched Clemente students literally change their lives: they have enrolled in and graduated from college, gotten off of welfare, left abusive relationships, entered into apprenticeships, voted and volunteered for the first times in their lives. And our success rates here in Jefferson County continue to be among the highest of Bard College Clemente Courses in the country.
The significance of our success speaks to the very nature of this community in which we live. Jefferson County is a culturally and economically diverse community. We have wonderful programs in the arts and some of the highest poverty rates in the Puget Sound region.
We are celebrating the positive results of our efforts to sustain local natural resources and are seeing a huge displacement of workers from fishing, agriculture and timber harvest. We have a community in which many of our neighbors are really struggling -and we have come together to offer something innovative and lasting to assist them.
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