The New Public Square: A Convene with Purpose Speaker Series

Technology, media, artificial intelligence, and new forms of influence are transforming how Americans encounter ideas, understand public issues, and participate in democracy. The New Public Square will create a high-profile, nonpartisan forum where prominent leaders and broad public audiences can examine these changes through informed, respectful conversation.

The series will feature nationally and regionally recognized voices from government, journalism, higher education, business, technology, advocacy, culture, and public life. Its purpose is not to prescribe a political conclusion or force agreement, but to deepen understanding, challenge assumptions, and model rigorous disagreement across differences.

Audience

The intended audience is the wider Michigan public as well as U-M students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

What it offers

Each event will combine thoughtful framing, skilled moderation, substantive discussion, and audience participation.

• Hear credible perspectives from influential leaders, experts, journalists, creators, and public figures.
• Examine urgent questions at the intersection of technology, media, leadership, democracy, and society.
• Encounter viewpoints that may complicate familiar narratives or differ from your own.
• Explore the evidence, experiences, values, and tradeoffs underlying public disagreements.
• Submit questions before an event, in the room, or through accessible virtual tools.
• Participate without being expected to reach artificial consensus.
• Access captioned recordings, editorial summaries, readings, and related resources after each event.

Public events

Year One will include five free, professionally produced events. Events will be free and held primarily in prominent, physically accessible U-M venues. At least one event may take place in Dearborn, Flint, Detroit, or another Michigan community when the topic and partnerships make that location especially meaningful.

Formats may include keynote conversations, journalist-led interviews, fireside chats, or discussions among speakers with meaningfully different perspectives.

Potential themes include:

• Who Controls the Public Square? Speech, safety, platform power, and online expression.
• Democracy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Deepfakes, persuasion, elections, and shared evidence.
• Can Americans Still Share a Common Reality? Journalism, fragmented media, political identity, and public trust.
• Leadership Under Permanent Scrutiny: How leaders make decisions when every action becomes content.
• Technology, Childhood, and the Attention Economy: Regulation, family choice, responsibility, and youth well-being.
• Celebrity, Creators, and the New Architecture of Influence: Cultural power, benefits, and accountability.
• The Future of News and Public Voice: Local journalism, independent creators, and the changing information commons.
• Governing Technology Before Technology Governs Us: Innovation, regulation, institutional responsibility, and the public interest.

Five final themes will be selected according to urgency, speaker availability, public interest, and their ability to illuminate meaningfully different perspectives.

Impact on the public good

The New Public Square will expand public access to serious ideas and create a trusted setting where people with different perspectives can gather voluntarily. Success will be measured not by whether everyone agrees, but by whether participants encounter credible viewpoints they might not ordinarily hear, better understand consequential challenges, and see disagreement modeled with rigor and respect.

The series will also:

• Broaden participation beyond traditional university audiences;
• Strengthen open-mindedness, perspective-taking, and informed civic discussion;
• Connect public leaders with the systems reshaping American life;
• Create durable educational resources through recordings and summaries; and
• Establish a signature U-M platform for addressing complex public challenges.