EDUCATED CITIZENRY
THE MISSION
ECit seeks to improve the political literacy of ordinary people and to help them (re)define goverment as a "we" rather than as a "they."
PolItical literacy is the ability to "read' one's political world. It entails an understanding of how government works, what political rights citizens have, what the major policy issues of the day are, and how those issues affect the lives and choices of citizens.
A politically literate person has the ability to recognize political propaganda, to think critically about gaps and inconsistencies in political messages, and to make their own independent judgments about actions the government should take--without denying the existence of their own biases and self-interest.
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DR. FRANCISKA A. COLEMAN
Franciska Coleman is an Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School. She is an interdisciplinary scholar, whose work draws upon political theory, critical discourse analysis, and constitutional law. Her current research focuses on the constitutional implications of the United States' eventual demographic shift to a minority-majority society. She also explores "cancel culture" as a byproduct of the American constitutional choice to rely on the social rather than legal regulation of speech.
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Professor Coleman is a strong advocate for citizen engagement in governance. During the six years she taught law in South Korea, she worked to help high school and undergraduate students improve their political literacy. Her efforts in this regard included giving guest lectures on political literacy at Academic Decathlon competitions, partnering with high schools to provide civic participation experiences to their students, and designing courses to engage undergraduate students in administrative rule-makings. She also worked closely with the Korean government on several initiatives, such as international roundtables on offensive speech held by the Korean Communication Standards Commission and efforts by the Korean Legislation Research Institute to make Korean statutes more accessible to foreign communities.
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Professor Coleman received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her PhD in Literacy, Culture and International Education from the University of Pennsylvania. While studying at these institutions, she was a recipient of the competitive AAUW Selected Professions Fellowship and the Fontaine Fellowship.
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