Founded by faculty, students, and staff at four liberal arts colleges, and supported by the Mellon Foundation from 2016-2024, the CFMDE created a cross-campus learning ecosystem. Our consortium stakeholders collaborated to generate scalable social responses to forced migration, alongside and in support of displaced people. Together, we created a groundbreaking curriculum in migration studies totaling 190 courses across four colleges. Our campuses hosted 17 displaced scholars and artists through in-person and virtual fellowships. CFMDE pedagogy also extended outside of the classroom. Our applied pedagogical environments ranged from legal clinics for asylum seekers in the Hudson Valley to mental health programs for clinicians who care for migrants and refugees in Switzerland. From cosmopolitan Malaysia to Vermont farms, the CFMDE prepared undergraduates for impactful professional trajectories that connect social justice commitments to rigorous research and practice. Simultaneously, it leveraged the distinctive capacities of liberal arts institutions to support displaced scholars, artists, and students.

The CFMDE exemplified how a global liberal arts education persists as a model of excellence for cultivating civic engagement.