Faculty and Student Videos

Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Associate Professor of Classics at Princeton University, on how he teaches Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan to high school students.

Roosevelt Montás, Senior Lecturer in American Studies at Columbia University, on how he teaches transformative texts to high school students, lifting up W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk as an example.

Lerone Martin, Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center at Stanford University and Associate Professor of Religious Studies, on how he teaches Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Prudence Layne, Associate Professor of English and founder and director of the Freedom Scholars program at Elon University, on launching new Knowledge for Freedom programs, how to bring texts from the summer into the year-long civic program, and how to establish a relationship with the local community.

Humberto Ballesteros, assistant professor of modern languages at Hostos Community College, presented on how he teaches the Constitution through gameplay to Knowledge for Freedom high school students. This session took place on December 13, 2024.

Matthew Pinsker, Professor of History & Pohanka Chair in American Civil War History at Dickinson College, shares how he teaches Lincoln’s First Inaugural (1861) as part of a classroom session he calls “Lincoln’s Secession Crisis, and Ours” to high school students at the Teagle Foundation’s Knowledge for Freedom Touchstone meeting on October 28, 2022.

Fannie Bialek, Assistant Professor of Religion and Politics and Director of the Knowledge for Freedom Program at Washington University in St. Louis, describes how she teaches Plato’s Allegory of the Cave with James Baldwin’s 1963 ‘A Talk to Teachers.’