ABSTRACT
Civic education and community involvement programs in higher education are often assumed by community involvement practitioners, political scientists, and students alike to adopt an apolitical positioning, or at least to not be directly integrated with political engagement outside of encouraging people to register and vote as an individual behavior. The Center for Civic Leadership (CCL) at Rice University has long held that community-based civic engagement is, by necessity, political engagement. In spring of 2020, CCL staff engaged in a deliberative process to consider how best to serve students in a remote environment due to COVID-19. Critical service-learning is part of a larger effort by civic engagement scholars and professionals to develop theories and practices that prepare students to be informed and responsible members of their communities and active participants in democratic societies.
