About

The Future Leaders Institute is a fully subsidized, one-week residential philosophy program at the University of New Hampshire, open to students entering grades 8 through 12. Founded in 2014 and housed within UNH's College of Liberal Arts, FLI runs Sunday through Sunday on UNH's Durham campus — July 26 through August 2 for 2026 — with students housed in university residence halls and eating in the campus dining hall. The program costs $200 for 2026, a fee made possible by substantial support from UNH's Responsible Governance and Sustainable Citizenship Project (RGSCP); students needing further financial assistance are invited to contact the program director directly. For what it provides, FLI is among the most affordable residential programs of its academic caliber in the country.

The program is led by two faculty with complementary profiles. Nick Smith is an award-winning professor of philosophy at UNH whose work centers on ethics, apology, and moral philosophy. Eden Suoth is a Fulbright Scholar who studied transitional justice and the Indonesian genocide, and currently teaches philosophy and social studies at Oyster River High School in Durham — giving the program an unusual combination of university-level research depth and secondary education experience. Together they lead a curriculum in social and political philosophy that applies rigorously to contemporary issues, with a new theme each summer. The 2026 theme is Governing AI: students examine how society should govern artificial intelligence, and how AI in turn governs human behavior — through algorithmic surveillance, military applications, classroom policy, population control technologies, and speculative futures. Reading materials span a wide range of perspectives, from Ruha Benjamin and Shoshana Zuboff to Ray Kurzweil and Eliezer Yudkowsky, with daily sessions structured around Socratic debate, original Ethics Bowl case studies, and evening discussions, films, and games tied to the day's themes.

Admission is highly selective and the cohort is comprised of domestic and international students. Applications open January 15 and close March 27, with decisions released in early April. The application requires two short essays: one on why the student wants to attend, and one asking the student to articulate their own position on AI policy in their school — a prompt deliberately designed to surface original thinking rather than rehearsed answers. The program notes that it already knows how ChatGPT responds, and wants to know how the applicant thinks. Cohort size is not published.

FLI occupies a distinct position in the catalog. It is not a research program, a credit-bearing course, or a credential in the conventional sense. What it offers is a week of genuine philosophical conversation, led by serious faculty, at a cost accessible to nearly any family, with a cohort selected for intellectual curiosity rather than academic rank. The Ethics Bowl pipeline is real — multiple FLI alumni have gone on to competitive Ethics Bowl participation, citing FLI as the entry point. For a student drawn to philosophy, ethics, political theory, or AI governance who has not yet found a summer program that takes those interests seriously, FLI is one of very few programs that offers an intellectual experience tailored precisely to these interests.