Rebirth of American Civic Life?

Harvard Professor and Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam has an interesting opinion piece in todays Boston Globe. Putnam's work describing the decline of social capital and civic engagement garnered a lot of attention when it was published in 2000, and was a motivating factor in the founding of SCI. Now, in this piece, he describes evidence that young adults are the one cohort that has had a sustained increase in civic engagement since 9/11. He and others are suggesting this could even be the "New Greatest Generation". His article warns that this bubble could burst should the Democratic nominee wind-up being decided by party superdelegates as opposed to the popular vote. Here at SCI we leave the political commentary to others, but the increasing evidence of sustained civic engagement among young adults is certainly encouraging.