Inspiring Institutional Courage
The Center for Institutional Courage was founded in early 2020. During our first five years we have eagerly pursued our mission:
Courage exists to conduct transformative research and education about institutional betrayal and how to counter it through institutional courage.
This mission is in service of our founding vision:
Courage sees a future where our institutions act courageously: with accountability, with transparency, actively seeking justice, and making changes where needed despite unpleasantness, risk, and short-term costs.
Now, nearly five years later, some of the seeds we planted are indeed blooming.
Research that Courage has funded is leading to new knowledge and, as part of that process, numerous peer-reviewed publications. We have created a new page for our website to highlight the Courage-funded published research. Researchers know that it can take years for a project to get to the point of publication in a scientific journal so this is just the beginning of the articles that we anticipate will eventually be published. I hope you explore our new page, “Published Research and Analysis Funded by the Center for Institutional Courage.”
We fund research and education because we believe it will ultimately have an impact on the world by inspiring institutions to address institutional betrayal and pursue institutional courage. All one needs to do is google the phrases “institutional betrayal” or “institutional courage” to see that this is happening not only in our own country but also around the globe. A new example has recently come to my attention: the European Museum Forum has added the term and concept of “institutional courage” to one of its primary annual awards: The Kenneth Hudson Award for Institutional Courage and Professional Integrity.
We have made good progress in our first five years but we have just begun. The state of the US and the world is highly vulnerable to institutional betrayal and desperately needs institutional courage.
Jennifer Joy Freyd, PhD
Founder and President
Center for Institutional Courage