The structure is purely Socratic—no lectures, no lecturers; everyone is an equal contributor adding to each seminar's value. The sessions are led by an experienced moderator who uses the process of inquiry—asking questions and eliciting answers—to encourage, develop and challenge each participant's thinking.

The moderator—a trained professional whose knowledge of the material and ability to act as an orchestra conductor, rather than a player—provides a setting in which every participant contributes to the totality of the group experience.

Extracurricular activities may include dialogues with monks within a monastic setting, interaction with inmates in a correctional facility or visits to the sites of German concentration camps.

A book of especially selected readings is used as the basis for discussions in which excerpts from classical and contemporary writings are chosen to illustrate a variety of human inquiries.

• Plato's Republic, "The Allegory of the Cave" and "The Selection of Rulers," illustrate on one side the dilemma of narrow human perspectives and on the other how to select the best and the brightest to be leaders.

• Aristotle's Politics poses the question whether a good man and a good citizen can coexist.

• Moving to contemporary issues, Martin Luther King Jr., and Henry Thoreau, make the issues of just and unjust laws the focus of their writings in "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" and "on Civil Disobedience"

• Robert Kennedy's "Corporate Responsibility" and Milton Friedman's "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Profits" stimulate further thinking about current corporate dilemma.