We have organized the essays that follow in this volume into nine themes or broad topical foci based on the subjects our RE: Reflections and Explorations authors selected for their efforts during 2013-2014. A brief overview of our contributors’ organizing issues follows.

Part 1 contains six essays that address the role(s) of the academy in society.

Part 2 offers six essays that address questions central to the relationships among art, culture and politics.

Part 3’s five essays treat issues linked to community building.

Part 4 includes five essays that explore the challenges of public leadership at multiple scales and in a variety of contexts.

Part 5’s eight essays examine a variety of concerns central to the characteristics and fundamentals of democratic citizenship and ethics.

Part 6 consists of six essays that explore different dimensions of international politics.

Part 7 of the volume comprises seven essays that directly or indirectly illuminate alternate facets of local and international development dynamics.

Part 8 includes six essays that together analyze several manifestations or implications of neoliberalism, the current dominant public imaginary or frame in American and indeed, Western, politics.

Part 9’s seven essays each afford readers alternate lenses into the dynamics and vicissitudes of change processes, as conceptualized at alternate analytical levels.

The 56 essays together address a variety of concerns central to democratic politics and self-governance. The topics are as varied as our contributor’s substantive interests and perspectives, and that diversity yields a complex array of analytical insights. We hope you enjoy reading this richly textured collection as much as we have enjoyed assembling it.