Saxifrage is an Intellectual Community that Belongs to Everyone

In a society in which all people are of equal dignity, rigorous learning in community should not be a luxury, but a continuously available option. At Saxifrage Institute, we create spaces in which people can share in the kinds of meaningful analysis and conversation characteristic of courses offered in colleges and universities. Our programming is two-pronged: we facilitate the Saxifrage Conversations, which are community-directed peer discussion groups organized around themes of mutual interest, and we offer the Saxifrage Seminars, which are discussion-based courses led by professors with the utmost level of experience in their fields. The founders of Saxifrage Institute met as graduate students at Yale University. As we were finishing our PhDs, we found ourselves having the same conversation over and over again. Why, in a country with the best universities in the world, is intensive guided learning mostly limited to the first years of young adulthood and kept behind the barrier of massive tuition fees? Why is the joy and excitement of learning not integrated into more of our social institutions after young adulthood? In our teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and Skidmore College, we watched students from a variety of backgrounds grow to tackle complex texts and fraught ethical dilemmas. We felt that there was no reason this kind of learning had to remain sequestered to colleges and universities, and limited to those with the time and money currently required to dedicate oneself to them. Saxifrage Institute is an effort to extend the rigorous, thoughtful work of liberal arts curricula to any interested learner. The academic landscape is changing. Although criticisms of the ivory tower are hardly new, they have taken on new dimensions in our political discourse as it has developed after the COVID-19 pandemic and the advent of LLMs. As scholars of science, technology, and society, the founding team believes that it is a good time to ask what we want from our institutions of learning, and how, where, and with whom we want to learn. Today, as in other moments of social change, alternative institutions are emerging that seek to support rigorous thought and the reintegration of intellectual and social life. Saxifrage Institute is part of this growing movement. Saxifrage Institute is founded on three guiding principles: 1. Learning, teaching, and thinking critically are fundamental parts of a good life. All people are capable of the intellectual engagement supported in the academic system, and opportunities for study should be available to anyone. 2. All learners deserve the opportunity to work with professors who understand the topic at hand with the utmost depth, and who hold themselves to the highest standards of fidelity to and responsibility for the topic they teach. These professors may be college professors credentialed with PhDs. But our society is also missing spaces to learn from people who, while not full-time professional educators, nonetheless have important knowledge to share. We value instruction earned from long, fruitful careers as much as that earned from a PhD. Depending on the topic of our course, we select faculty based on their depth of understanding of the topic, and their willingness to teach in Saxifrage's style. 3. Learning and living in society are inherently collaborative enterprises, requiring curiosity, careful consideration, and compromise. Strengthening our collective powers of interpretation prepares us to be better citizens, neighbors, and negotiators in our local, national, and international communities. Saxifrage programming is open to any adult learner. In joining us, you will gain a community that gathers to ask sincere, important questions, and that aims to be surprised and energized by the thinking it does together. Because of our commitment to operate without mandatory costs for learners, we are funded entirely by community contributions. We make our costs for hosting a program transparent to participants, and they make a choice about how much they can pay. Unless we receive adequate tuition from learners in a course or conversation cohort, our default is that professors work for little or no pay. We are able to meet together in-person because of the generosity of private individuals and businesses which offer their spaces. If you are interested in partnering with us, your generosity will directly contribute to a high-quality experience for all learners. We are always in need of low or no cost spaces to meet. If you know of a space and might be interested in partnering with us, please reach out to us at founders [at] saxifrageinstitute [dot] org.