Read 'The Bill Of Obligations: The Ten Habits Of Good Citizens'

CMC’s 2024 Common Reader engages students, staff, and community members with a series of events in spring and fall, culminating in a series of visits by author Richard Haass.

CMC’s Common Reader program selects one book every year and offers it for free distribution across the dozens of communities CMC serves – followed by a series of discussions, author talks and conversations at CMC campuses.

2024’s Common Reader will kick off with a livestreamed interview between New York Times bestselling author Richard Haass and Walter Isaacson, former editor of TIME and chair of CNN and the namesake of CMC’s Isaacson School for Communication, Arts & Media.

Given that 2024 is an election year, CMC plans to collaborate with other organizations in the state including media partners and generous financial sponsors to bring even more people across Colorado’s Western Slope together around civics and civil discourse.

About The Bill of Obligations

The United States faces dangerous threats from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, terrorists, climate change, and future pandemics. The greatest peril to the country, however, comes not from abroad but from within, from none other than ourselves. The question facing us is whether we are prepared to do what is necessary to save our democracy.

The Bill of Obligations is a bold call for change. In these pages, New York Times bestselling author Richard Haass argues that the very idea of citizenship must be revised and expanded. The Bill of Rights is at the center of our Constitution, yet our most intractable conflicts often emerge from contrasting views as to what our rights ought to be.