About

The Thinking Project is not explicitly about politics, but, in many ways, politics—or rather the ideological practice of them—are the very thing we must resist in order to think clearly.

Consider this:

A citizen in the United States is shot by a police officer. We learn immediately that the officer is white and the suspect is black. Nothing more.

Now take a deep breath. Really. Do it—a deep breath—and examine what your brain, trip-wired by ideology, has perhaps already done.

Do you already “know” that the officer is guilty of an outrageous act? Or, alternatively, do you “know” that the citizen is guilty of provoking the officer into violence?

Even if you have relevant lived experience or know some statistics about crime or the police’s use of firearms, can you, at this point, possibly know what has happened in this instance?

Making us believe that we know things we cannot know is one of the powers of ideology.

Ideology—the simplification of reality into a story—is not only preventing us from being honest, not only stifling our views. It is preventing us from seeing the world we must fix. 

Each summer at The Thinking Project, we invite a small number of rising high school seniors to join us for an eight-week, online, interactive course. We are looking for young people who demonstrate an unusual willingness to challenge themselves, to confront ideas that are not their own and to engage with foundational research that has, thus far, withstood the rigor of scholarly or scientific examination.

The Thinking Project is not a utopian endeavor. 

We do not believe that we will turn out perfect thinkers or that a flawless society is achievable. We do not aim for unanimity, nor do we have a secret political agenda. Instead, we believe in the power of daring, assumption-challenging questions and in the rigorous pursuit of answers.  

No matter what political, racial, sexual, national, religious or gender labels you use to describe yourself, or even if all the labels leave you confused and wondering where to stand—if you’re ready to take the challenge of reshaping the way you think, we invite you to join us. 

Click HERE to APPLY.