BIPARTISAN SENATORS ANNOUNCE PLANS FOR "BUILDING CIVIC BRIDGES ACT" COMPANION BILL
Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE) and Ben Sasse (R-NE) announced that they are working on a Senate companion to the Building Civic Bridges Act, which was introduced in the House by Reps. Derek Kilmer (D-WA) and Andy Barr (R-KY) in February. The legislation would create an Office of Civic Bridgebuilding within AmeriCorps that would provide competitive grants to nonprofits, universities, and other community groups to initiate civic bridgebuilding programs that would facilitate conversations within a community across ideological spectrums. The legislation aims to help individuals and communities move beyond polarization and identify solutions. It would also fund research on civic bridgebuilding.
Barbara R. Snyder, president of the Association of American Universities (AAU), of which Duke is a member, voiced her support for legislation and stated, “Universities have a unique role to play in fostering civil discussion, and that kind of earnest engagement across deep divides is more important now than ever before."