New Hampshire Humanities

For more than 40 years, New Hampshire Humanities has provided opportunities for tens of thousands of Granite Staters to cultivate their curiosity, connect across cultures, and examine their beliefs and values. We’ve brought people together for face-to-face conversations about ideas that matter. And we’ve invited people to practice the skills of citizenship – to listen respectfully and engage thoughtfully with their neighbors.

Dear Friends, 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the health of our civic life, and I’m worried. Worried that we’re unable to hear each other’s concerns underneath the personal attacks. Worried that complex issues are being reduced to simplistic sound bites. And worried that we’re not treating our fellow Americans with empathy and respect – whether we agree with them politically or not.

What does New Hampshire Humanities do to improve our civic life? Lots, actually.

Traveling, tented “chautauquas” were an immensely popular form of American adult education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today’s Chautauquas feature scholars portraying significant historical figures in first-person performances followed by a question-and-answer period with the character and the scholar. New Hampshire Humanities brought the modern Chautauqua movement to New Hampshire in the 1990s with week-long festivals in Portsmouth and Keene.

For fourteen years, America has been mired in war, war being waged by less than one percent of the population. The relatively small number of active military service members has widened a cultural gulf between the military and civilian sectors.