On May 1st, PCR director Elizabeth Lynn traveled to Ithaca, NY to lead a civic reflection discussion for a "Council Forum" on the public humanities, convened by the New York Council for the Humanities. Participants in the Forum included public humanities innovators at Cornell University, Syracuse University and Ithaca College, in addition to New York Council board members. Lynn led this group in discussion of two poems about "walls'" in civic life—Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" and Yusef Komunyakaa's "Facing It". The two poems provoked a thoughtful conversation on the walls between academy and the public, and whether those walls divide or connect us.