American universities have spent a long time trying to figure out how citizenship can be taught.
There has never been one answer.
Some schools created public service programs. Others built leadership institutes, civic engagement centers, or service-learning requirements. According to federal education data, more than 15 million students attended colleges and universities in the United States during the 2023-24 academic year. Many of them participated in some form of experiential or community-based learning.
Civil rights education developed along a somewhat different path.
The history of the civil rights movement has been taught in American classrooms for generations. Educational programs devoted specifically to nonviolent leadership, however, have remained comparatively uncommon. Even fewer have attempted to organize an entire curriculum around the philosophical ideas associated with leaders of the movement.
That is part of the context in which the Ambassador Young Fellows Program was created.
The fellowship, launched in 2025, was developed under the leadership of Matthew Daniels with the endorsement of Ambassador Andrew Young. The program began at Anderson University in South Carolina and recruits undergraduate students from historically Black colleges and universities, Christian colleges, and other institutions throughout the United States.
Its subject matter is familiar enough.
Civil rights history. Civic engagement. Leadership. Public service.
Its structure is not.
Rather than organizing instruction around academic departments or conventional courses, the fellowship uses six themes that appear repeatedly throughout the program: love, conscience, freedom, justice, perseverance, and hope.
The number six is important because those themes are not presented as separate units. They function more as recurring ideas.
Students encounter them in lectures.
Then again, in discussions.
Then again, in service projects.
And then again in presentations and collaborative assignments.
The approach reflects educational work that Daniels has discussed publicly for several years. Beginning in the late 2010s and continuing into the 2020s, Daniels published articles and commentary in national and regional publications advocating educational models grounded in principles associated with Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. Those writings appeared in outlets including USA Today, The Hill, The Tennessean, The Post and Courier, and other publications.
The first principle taught within the fellowship framework is love.
That word can create confusion because its meaning within the history of nonviolent philosophy differs from its everyday use. King frequently described love as a public ethic and a social commitment rather than simply an emotion. Historians of the civil rights movement have long identified this understanding of love as a central component of King’s philosophy of nonviolent action.
The fellowship curriculum places that concept at the beginning of its instructional framework.
Conscience follows.
Questions of moral responsibility occupied an important place throughout the twentieth-century civil rights movement. Participants in the movement often described political action in ethical terms. Published descriptions of the fellowship indicate that students examine questions involving leadership, responsibility, public life, and ethical decision-making through both historical and contemporary examples.
Then come freedom and justice.
Perhaps unsurprisingly.
Few ideas appear more often in the history of American civil rights activism. King’s speeches returned to both themes repeatedly. So did the public career of Young, whose work extended from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference into diplomacy, elected office, and international affairs.
The fellowship curriculum approaches these ideas through several methods.
There are lectures.
There are structured discussions.
There are collaborative projects.
There are also experiential components.
The program’s organizers have emphasized that participants are expected not only to study historical ideas but also to discuss how those ideas have been interpreted and applied across different contexts and historical periods.
The final two principles are perseverance and hope.
Both played visible roles in the language of the civil rights movement itself. Hope appeared throughout King’s speeches and writings. Perseverance reflected something more practical: the reality that social movements often require sustained effort over long periods of time.
Neither concept was treated as abstract by many civil rights leaders.
Both were discussed as necessities.
The fellowship’s educational structure reflects broader trends within American higher education. During the past two decades, colleges and universities have increasingly incorporated experiential learning, collaborative projects, civic engagement initiatives, and service-learning programs into undergraduate education. Organizations studying higher education have documented growing institutional interest in educational models that combine classroom instruction with practical experience.
In that respect, parts of the fellowship resemble developments occurring elsewhere in American higher education.
Other parts do not.
The choice to use the six principles commonly associated with the civil rights movement to develop an educational program is fairly rare.
Instead of dividing history, ethics, leadership, and civic engagement into separate areas, these aspects are incorporated into a single teaching strategy within the program.
The first group of fellows was chosen to reflect the concept outlined above.
According to published sources, fellows were selected from historically black colleges and universities, Council for Christian Colleges and Universities member schools, and other participating schools. The students collaborated within the common curriculum despite their diverse backgrounds.
The program itself remains new.
Its first fellowship took place in 2025. Additional programming followed in 2026.
Even so, one characteristic has remained consistent from the beginning. The Ambassador Young Fellows Program has defined itself not through traditional academic disciplines, degree pathways, or professional specializations, but through six concepts that have occupied a prominent place within American discussions of leadership, citizenship, public service, and nonviolent social change for more than half a century.
