The Program on Public Values was created in 2007 to serve as common home for both the Greenberg Center and the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. It featured common projects, most importantly the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey. It also took on responsibility for awarding the Moses Berkman Memorial Journalism Award. After the ISSSC closed its doors in 2019, the Program became a means for the Center to look broadly at the moral and ethical dimensions of public issues, secular as well as religious. In 2017, it made climate change a central focus of its activities, both on and off campus.
The Faculty Fellows of the Program for Public Values was established in 2022. Inaugural Fellows represent a diversity of interests and perspectives. All have shown an abiding interest in public values.
Glenn Falk, Public Policy and Law
Johannes Evelein, Lanuage and Culture Studies
Peter Kyle, Theater Dance
Susan Masino, Neuroscience and Psychology
Climate has become the central focus of the Program on Public Values. We continue the Climate Initiative via our faculty fellows and events, and to integrate the Climate Initiative with the Ecology Initiative and with Community and Culture. We also highlight the legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted, who was born in Hartford and influenced the design and location of Trinity College.
The prize honors a journalist whose work demonstrates the qualities of integrity, insight, journalistic excellence, and serious moral purpose that were the hallmarks of Moses Berkman’s journalism, political editor, columnist and editorial writer on the Hartford Times from the 1920s to the 1950s. It was established by a gift from the estate of his wife, Florence Berkman, also a longtime journalist at the Hartford Times and Hartford Courant.
The Program on Public Values sponsored a Forum on Carbon Pricing in Connecticut on April 11, 2019 in the McCook Auditorium at Trinity College. Panelists included, scholars, legislators, and journalists.
