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Monthly Archives: January 2015
Paradigm Shift
You don’t get it, we don’t want to end the exploitation – we want to become the exploiters!
That satirical utterance from a television character so eloquently captures one of the greatest challenges in tackling inequality in all its forms.
And if you doubt for a moment that people still believe that they can grow up to be multimillionaires, consider this excerpt from Senator Marco Rubio’s 2011 floor speech:
We have never been a nation of haves and have-nots. We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves, of people who have made it and people who will make it.
The American Dream has been a driver of great vision and innovation in this country, but it has also been a driver of great disparity.
Our system is not set up to have only “haves.” I suspect economists would argue that no system could be.
So we’re left with a system where we each desperately try to claw our way to the top, only to try to keep everybody else down once we get there. A sort of global King of the Hill.
And not only are we willing to elbow our way to success, we’re hesitant to support policies which address issues such as income inequality – because we believe that one day those policies might benefit ourselves.
As John Oliver recently joked, “I can clearly see this game is rigged, which is what’s going to make it so sweet when I win this thing!”
But is this the way things really need to be.
What if we started to generate a new culture? One where people worked to help those around them flourish? Where we each put our talents and resources to use supporting the growth and well being of others?
Could we then, bit by bit, shift this paradigm? Shift the every [person] for themselves mentally and find a system where we all had the opportunity to develop and live as our greatest selves?
Would that be possible?
why volunteering has gone up while other forms of civic engagement have declined
Because you get what you pay for. To elaborate. …
The Associated Press-GfK recently repeated survey questions that they had asked in 1984 about voting, volunteering, serving on a jury, reporting crime, knowing English, and keeping informed about news and public issues. Voting has been fairly flat, although turnout rates vary from year to year and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction depending on the competitiveness and importance of the election. Four of the measures have fallen since 1984. But volunteering is up, buoyed by a substantial increase in young people’s commitment to service.
As I said in the AP article, “That’s partly [because] we have built up our institutions for volunteering. … Something like 30 percent of high schools have service learning programs. They didn’t have that in the 1980s.” We could also cite a substantial investment in youth volunteering through AmeriCorps, Campus Compact’s member colleges, and so on. Proponents of service have won new funding and rewards for volunteering, positive media coverage, intensive research and evaluation, and favorable policies, including mandates in many school districts.
There has been no comparable investment in the other forms of civic engagement. That is why they have stagnated or fallen. If, for example, schools cease to emphasize news literacy education, and the news industry fails to encourage young readers, then “keeping informed about news and public issues” will fall. Measures of civic obligation are mostly proxies for the civic opportunities we offer people.
I’d also offer an observation about the obligation to know English, one of the variables in the AP survey that fell between 1984 and 2014. It’s unique among the items because everyone who took the survey did know English. (It was an English-language instrument.) Thus the decline is not attributable to falling levels of engagement among people in the sample. Instead, respondents essentially had to decide whether it was a civic obligation for others to know English. I can imagine that the decline is explained by a lessening belief that immigrants are obliged to learn English, although (importantly) young immigrants do learn the majority language. An alternative explanation is that people are less likely to see the purpose of learning English as civic because they see civic engagement as less salient than they did in 1984. That would be bad news–but again, more a symptom of declining opportunities for engagement than a moral slide.
The post why volunteering has gone up while other forms of civic engagement have declined appeared first on Peter Levine.
Officials’ Public Engagement Fears & 3 Reasons to Overcome Them
We want to share a great piece from our partners at Public Agenda – one of our NCDD organizational members that helped sponsor NCDD 2014 – that highlights some of the fears about public engagement that government officials shared during a workshop hosted by the Participatory Budgeting Project, another NCDD organizational member, at this year’s gathering of the National League of Cities. You can read how PA responds to such concerns – and get ideas for how you can, as well -in the post below.
We thank Public Agenda for their continued support of NCDD and for their leadership in the field, and we encourage you to read their piece below or find the original by clicking here.
Three Ways Deeper Engagement Improves the Relationship Between Officials and Residents
Our local public officials are thirsty for better and deeper ways to engage the people they serve. This is a sentiment I heard again and again during last month’s National League of Cities Congress of Cities in Austin.
The sentiment was cast in sharp relief during a workshop on participatory budgeting that I attended as part of the conference. Our partners at the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP for short) presented to a variety of elected and appointed officials from cities across the country.
Participatory budgeting is a process through which residents are active partners in local budget decisions. We are partnering with PBP on research and evaluation of participatory budgeting processes in communities across the country.
During the workshop in Austin, PBP’s Josh Lerner and Maria Hadden provided participants with practical tools and training to launch participatory budgeting in their communities and better engage their constituents in local budget decisions.
Josh and Maria opened the workshop by asking participants about the barriers to constituent engagement that they face in their communities. Participants also talked about what they were hoping to get out of the conference to address those challenges. This conversation revealed a number of difficulties that local officials share when it comes to engaging their constituents in better and deeper ways, regardless of the size or demographics of their city, town, or county.
The concerns officials at the workshop named included:
- Civic participation is currently quite low. How can we get more people to show up or weigh in? And how do we get them to do so thoughtfully?
- City council meetings are boring. We need livelier, more energetic ways to bring the public into decision making.
- Interaction between officials and the public, at city council meetings for example, can often be resentful, angry, or filled with drama. Media depictions of these events don’t help. How can we keep interaction constructive?
- Past frustration on the part of constituents stands in the way of current relationship-building and future progress.
- How do we increase participation while making the best use of our time, energy, and money?
While these concerns may be anecdotal, we heard similar sentiments in a 2012 survey we conducted of local public officials in California. For example, survey respondents told us they saw most residents as not well informed about the issues affecting their communities. In fact, 72 percent said community members do not keep abreast of the issues that affect their community’s well being. Nearly 7 in 10 said that community members have become much angrier and mistrustful of local officials in recent years.
It’s no wonder healthier, deeper engagement with constituents seems a monumental task to officials.
Sure, deep, thoughtful and authentic engagement of constituents may not be easy. But these forms of engagement, through methods embraced by Public Agenda, the Participatory Budgeting Project, and our peers, can contribute to a more informed citizenry and stronger communities.
Better engagement improves the relationship between officials and their constituents in many ways. Here are three:
Constituents become more thoughtful and informed.
Both Public Agenda and the Participatory Budgeting Project embrace deliberative methods for public participation that, by their nature, help foster a more educated and thoughtful body of voters. Let’s take Choicework discussion starters, a resource that Public Agenda has created and used to structure dialogue for decades.
Choiceworks present people with a range of different approaches to solving a problem, from a variety of perspectives. We take care to also illuminate the values, interests, pros and cons inherent in each choice. Choicework dialogues help people acknowledge that there are no simple answers but many valid perspectives. They also foster a more collaborative, open-minded attitude, instead of the adversarial one we too often see in political discourse.
In the participatory budgeting process, residents develop ideas for spending a set amount of the local discretionary budget. Then they vote on proposals based on these ideas, forcing them to reckon with competing priorities and a limited budget. After the votes are tallied, the local government implements the top projects.
By obliging participants to confront limitations and prioritize options, both the Choicework and PB processes help people understand the tough decisions and trade-offs that local officials face when making decisions. Having a personal stake and role in decision making also fosters a sense of stewardship among participants – they end up having a greater concern for and interest in public issues.
Engagement builds trust and promotes equity.
One way to build – or rebuild – trust is to ensure that communities who haven’t had a seat at the table in the past receive one. Broad and diverse participation beyond the “usual suspects” is a key principle of deep engagement.
Public Agenda often works with local governments and community-based organizations to help them undertake a community conversation process. We work with officials and organizations on recruitment so that the demographics of participants resemble the communities they come from. In particular, we strive to bring low-income communities, communities of color, non-English speaking communities and immigrant communities into the process.
In addition to active recruitment, simply making a meeting more interesting and participatory goes a long way in increasing and broadening participation. In participatory budgeting, because residents are invited to directly weigh in on ways to improve their own community – repaving the basketball court on the next block over, buying more tables for the cafeteria at the school their child attends, installing better lighting on their sidewalks – they’re more likely to participate. The process is just more interesting because it’s personal and interactive!
And it draws underrepresented communities in. In New York City, a much higher proportion of low-income residents participated in the Participatory Budgeting process than in the traditional election. Almost 4 in 10 participatory budgeting voters reported household incomes below $35,000 per year, compared with 21 percent of 2013 local election voters.
Engagement saves costs and effort.
Naturally, public officials are concerned about the return on investment for their time, resources and money. Will I actually be able to reach more constituents? How much will it cost me?
Processes that engage constituents in meaningful ways, as partners in decision making rather than as consumers of decisions already made, take a lot of time and effort up front. Over the long run, however, they are well worth it.
During the conference workshop in Austin, Josh of PBP identified two concrete ways in which he has seen the participatory budgeting process pay off for local officials. First, creating more transparency around budgeting can stimulate greater efficiency and cost savings. When they’re helping to make budget decisions, residents may be willing to explore ways to get more bang for the buck and are more likely to collaborate on cost savings rather than complain.
Secondly, bringing residents into the decision making process from the beginning can prevent officials from funding projects that the community doesn’t actually need, or projects that face pushback. Instead, community members decide together their needs and prioritize accordingly.
A lot of times public officials may feel as though the struggles they are facing are unique to their context. My experience at the participatory budgeting workshop demonstrated that, regardless of the characteristics and demographics of their localities, local officials share many similar challenges.
Engaging constituents more deeply may seem daunting, but rest assured you are not alone in facing this challenge – we can help.
You can read the original version of this PA piece by visiting: www.publicagenda.org/blogs/three-ways-deeper-engagement-improves-the-relationship-between-officials-and-residents.
If we know how to cultivate intimacy, why don’t we?
Replication-gate continues, this time with a successful replication of Arthur Aron’s interpersonal closeness study: To Fall In Love With Anyone, Do This.
The odd thing is that the author tried it, found it caused feelings of intimacy with a potential sexual partner, and now calls that love. Because Aron’s whole point was that our brains look for explanations of feelings of emotional arousal, and create narratives and meanings to fill the gaps. This is the classic error theory of emotions (although William James had a precursor) in the sense that it distinguishes the feeling (intimacy) from the cause and identifies moments of misattribution, moments when we have a feeling for one reason but attribute it to another.
Error theories are one of my favorite philosophical tricks, and this is no exception. But it raises some important question in this context. For instance:
“It’s astounding, really, to hear what someone admires in you. I don’t know why we don’t go around thoughtfully complimenting one another all the time.”
I think it’s weird and awkward to demystify intimacy, but useful and illustrative, too. It seems at least one reason we don’t do this all the time is that this is a lot of intimacy to visit upon someone unawares. A lot of social niceties are about avoiding falling into love or best friendship with every single person, because you can’t afford to be in love or best friendship with everyone you meet! But thinking about it that way feels weird because of how stingy it is.
So in that sense it seems like we have a collective or social sense of the kinds of emotional errors we are prone to, and we have built politeness barriers–manners–to keep from being too easily fooled. But either this is an accidental side effect or these rules work best when we ignore that purpose. Either way, we’re better adapted to our social setting and conditions than the neo-Luddites* let on.
*(Autocorrect transforms “neo-Luddites” into “bro-Luddites” which kind of fits.)
Public Engagement Training from Annette Strauss Insitute Feb. 25-27
We hope that NCDD members will take advantage of a great public engagement training being offered this February 25th-27th by the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life – one of the NCDD organizational members who partnered with us to sponsor NCDD 2014. The early bird registration deadline for the trainings is January 30th, so make sure to register ASAP!
NCDD would like to thank the Annette Strauss Institute for their continued support of our work and for their leadership in the field. You can learn more about the training from ASICL’s announcement below or by clicking here.
Facilitating Civic Dialogue and Consensus Seminar
Are you often in a position where you’re making decisions that affect large populations? Do you frequently feel political pressure from multiple directions? Do you feel as if you are often unsure of what the public wants, or perhaps you only hear from the same, small group of citizens?
The Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life at The University of Texas at Austin is offering a 3-day seminar that will help you develop the knowledge and skills you need to enrich your engagement with the public. Join us to boost your skills on:
- Creating customized strategies for engaging the public;
- Facilitating difficult conversations involving competing viewpoints;
- Bringing an array of stakeholders to consensus; and,
- Utilizing innovative technology for public engagement.
This seminar will help you develop the knowledge, tools, and skill sets to enrich your engagement with the public. You’ll learn how to identify stakeholders and create customized strategies for engaging them; how to facilitate difficult conversations involving competing viewpoints; and how to bring an array of stakeholders to consensus. You will also examine some of the most cutting-edge technology for public engagement.
Register for the 3-day training or just one module!
Module One – Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Powerful, Productive, and Prudent: A New Paradigm for Public Engagement + Technology and Civic Engagement.
Module Two – Thursday, February 26, 2015
Designing Civic Engagement Processes
Module Three – Friday, February 27, 2015
Dealing with Difficult Civic Topics and Stakeholders
For more information on this the training or to register, please visit http://moody.utexas.edu/strauss/public-engagement-training.
2015 Summer Institute of Civic Studies
The annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies is now accepting applications for its 2015 session.
This two-week, graduate level seminar is an intensive experience – discussions cover about a thousand pages of reading over nine full days. But it’s an amazing experience for anyone interested in exploring an academic, interdisciplinary understanding of citizens and societies.
The seminar brings together an impressive range of scholars and practitioners, all with a variety of experience but with a shared commitment of improving societies.
Of course, there’s plenty to question, argue about, and discuss when it comes to questions of what is a good society or how we might get there.
And that’s what makes this Institute so fun.
The Summer Institute will take place from June 15-27, 2015. For best consideration, applications should be submitted by March 15, 2015.
You can read all about the Summer Institute here: http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/civic-studies/summer-institute/
Memory Against Power: The Potential of Adjunct Faculty
Milan Kundera begins his masterful novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, by describing a photograph from 21 February 1948, where Vladimir Clementis, long time activist, stands next to Klement Gottwald, chair of the communist party, on the podium at the pivotal moment when Gottwald announces changes which would usher in the socialist government in Czechoslovakia . Two years later Clementis was charged with treason because he opposed Stalinist demands. His image was erased from all photographs, including school text books, by the state propaganda office. Kundera observes, "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
In today's individualist, consumerist, technocratic societies, many more forces than state officialdom erode memory. And, as I have described in earlier blogs, forgetfulness is especially apparent in higher education. Its once vibrant public purposes have been largely forgotten.
There is an overlooked resource for helping to reverse amnesia: part-time or adjunct faculty who make up more than one half of all teachers in America's public and private colleges and universities.
Over the holidays in South Africa, I was fascinated to learn how experiences of my brother-in-law, Stephen Dugmore, as a part-time faculty member resemble those of adjunct faculty in the US.
Stephen is one of South Africa's most talented architects. One of three finalists for the design of the famous Robben Island Centre commemorating the jail experiences of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners of the anti-apartheid struggle, he and his team were recently awarded the contract for designing the icon at the southern-most tip of the continent.
Stephen loves to teach. But after eight years of teaching at the School of Architecture at the University of Cape Town, he is calling it quits.
Like adjunct faculty in the US, his remuneration bore little relation to the hours he put in teaching. The deepest frustration was the sharp separation between the tenured faculty, focused on what is called "research," and part-time faculty, whose own work is devalued and largely invisible in the mainstream academic culture. "I felt I simply wasn't able to build a long term relationship to the school," he explained.
Stephen's experience is common in South African universities, and it reflects forgetfulness about what makes for vital faculty work. As described in books like Glenn Moss's The New Radicals, and Billy Kenniston's Choosing to Be Free, faculty and students were often on the front lines of the struggle against apartheid. This meant involvement with communities in a myriad of ways, enlivening scholarship and teaching.
I thought about parallels in America. My friends among adjunct faculty in the Twin Cities include community organizers, historians, scientists, artists, writers, business leaders. Many are outstanding public intellectuals, as well as wonderful teachers. But their talents and experiences are largely invisible, in ways which contribute to the radically shrunken sense of the purposes and meanings of higher education in our society.
In 1947 the Commission on Higher Education established by President Truman declared that "the first and most essential charge upon higher education is that at all levels and in all its fields of specialization, it shall be the carrier of democratic values, ideals, and process." This sounds today like a dusty museum piece. For all the service-learning projects, community research and other important engagement efforts connecting higher education to communities and the society in recent years, the democracy history and public purposes of higher education are largely forgotten.
We discovered such amnesia in discussions with thousands of citizens in an earlier conversation, "Shaping Our Future," and listening sessions leading up to the launch on Jan. 21 of the national conversation, "The Changing World of Work -- What Should We Ask of Higher Education?" Both conversations grow out of the American Commonwealth Partnership, dedicated to higher education's public purposes, which I coordinated on invitation of the White House, and the National Issues Forums Institute.
Many dynamics contribute to amnesia, including the ways colleges market themselves simply as tickets to individual success and rankings which put a premium on detached research. But changes in faculty cultures also play a role.
As Thomas Bender put it in the introduction to American Academic Cultures in Transformation, a study by leaders in four fields (Economics, English, Philosophy, and Political Science):
"The disciplines were redefined over the course of the half century following the [second world] war; from the means to an end they increasingly became an end in themselves, the possession of the scholars who constituted them...Academics sought some distance from civics."
Edwin Fogelman, then chair of the political science department at the University of Minnesota and I heard many examples of the consequences of this distancing when we interviewed dozens of senior faculty at UMN in 1997 and 1998. Many noted the erosion of community connections and public purposes. The interviews are described in Public Engagement in a Civic Mission, on the web.
As Charles Backstrom put it, "When I came to the University of Minnesota in 1959, the Political Science department gave students credit for working in the community and on political campaigns. I thought of my job description as including work with communities [and] worked with the extensive service in a rural public leadership program. I had examples of rising starts like John Bochert in Geography, who went on to become world-famous. John was working with communities to think through what factors make a small community grow and flourish or fail."
Backstrom also experienced "a war of cultures at the university," which made his public engagements suspect. Despite a distinguished career, including a stint as pollster for Hubert Humphrey's presidential campaign in 1968, when I interviewed him after his retirement party in 1998, he worried that his career had been "a failure" because it violated dominant norms of detached scholarship.
Today, as described recently in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Service Employees International Union and others are seeking to organize adjunct faculty to improve their working conditions and to gain voice in addressing the changes transforming higher education. The campaign aims at organizing faculty in multiple institutions in metropolitan areas such as Boston, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, and the Twin Cities.
These goals are about basic justice. Organizing also has potential to generate larger change, based on recognizing the roles which adjunct faculty often play as connectors between education and the larger society.
Such rootedness was the wellspring of the democratic story of higher education. Recognizing its importance will require adjuncts, as well as institutions, to name and claim the nature and importance of their work in new ways.
This process may reverse amnesia about what it means to be a faculty member with public goals and civic identity. It could also help lead to a broader democratic awakening.
In today's individualist, consumerist, technocratic societies, many more forces than state officialdom erode memory. And, as I have described in earlier blogs, forgetfulness is especially apparent in higher education. Its once vibrant public purposes have been largely forgotten.
There is an overlooked resource for helping to reverse amnesia: part-time or adjunct faculty who make up more than one half of all teachers in America's public and private colleges and universities.
Over the holidays in South Africa, I was fascinated to learn how experiences of my brother-in-law, Stephen Dugmore, as a part-time faculty member resemble those of adjunct faculty in the US.
Stephen is one of South Africa's most talented architects. One of three finalists for the design of the famous Robben Island Centre commemorating the jail experiences of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners of the anti-apartheid struggle, he and his team were recently awarded the contract for designing the icon at the southern-most tip of the continent.
Stephen loves to teach. But after eight years of teaching at the School of Architecture at the University of Cape Town, he is calling it quits.
Like adjunct faculty in the US, his remuneration bore little relation to the hours he put in teaching. The deepest frustration was the sharp separation between the tenured faculty, focused on what is called "research," and part-time faculty, whose own work is devalued and largely invisible in the mainstream academic culture. "I felt I simply wasn't able to build a long term relationship to the school," he explained.
Stephen's experience is common in South African universities, and it reflects forgetfulness about what makes for vital faculty work. As described in books like Glenn Moss's The New Radicals, and Billy Kenniston's Choosing to Be Free, faculty and students were often on the front lines of the struggle against apartheid. This meant involvement with communities in a myriad of ways, enlivening scholarship and teaching.
I thought about parallels in America. My friends among adjunct faculty in the Twin Cities include community organizers, historians, scientists, artists, writers, business leaders. Many are outstanding public intellectuals, as well as wonderful teachers. But their talents and experiences are largely invisible, in ways which contribute to the radically shrunken sense of the purposes and meanings of higher education in our society.
In 1947 the Commission on Higher Education established by President Truman declared that "the first and most essential charge upon higher education is that at all levels and in all its fields of specialization, it shall be the carrier of democratic values, ideals, and process." This sounds today like a dusty museum piece. For all the service-learning projects, community research and other important engagement efforts connecting higher education to communities and the society in recent years, the democracy history and public purposes of higher education are largely forgotten.
We discovered such amnesia in discussions with thousands of citizens in an earlier conversation, "Shaping Our Future," and listening sessions leading up to the launch on Jan. 21 of the national conversation, "The Changing World of Work -- What Should We Ask of Higher Education?" Both conversations grow out of the American Commonwealth Partnership, dedicated to higher education's public purposes, which I coordinated on invitation of the White House, and the National Issues Forums Institute.
Many dynamics contribute to amnesia, including the ways colleges market themselves simply as tickets to individual success and rankings which put a premium on detached research. But changes in faculty cultures also play a role.
As Thomas Bender put it in the introduction to American Academic Cultures in Transformation, a study by leaders in four fields (Economics, English, Philosophy, and Political Science):
"The disciplines were redefined over the course of the half century following the [second world] war; from the means to an end they increasingly became an end in themselves, the possession of the scholars who constituted them...Academics sought some distance from civics."
Edwin Fogelman, then chair of the political science department at the University of Minnesota and I heard many examples of the consequences of this distancing when we interviewed dozens of senior faculty at UMN in 1997 and 1998. Many noted the erosion of community connections and public purposes. The interviews are described in Public Engagement in a Civic Mission, on the web.
As Charles Backstrom put it, "When I came to the University of Minnesota in 1959, the Political Science department gave students credit for working in the community and on political campaigns. I thought of my job description as including work with communities [and] worked with the extensive service in a rural public leadership program. I had examples of rising starts like John Bochert in Geography, who went on to become world-famous. John was working with communities to think through what factors make a small community grow and flourish or fail."
Backstrom also experienced "a war of cultures at the university," which made his public engagements suspect. Despite a distinguished career, including a stint as pollster for Hubert Humphrey's presidential campaign in 1968, when I interviewed him after his retirement party in 1998, he worried that his career had been "a failure" because it violated dominant norms of detached scholarship.
Today, as described recently in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Service Employees International Union and others are seeking to organize adjunct faculty to improve their working conditions and to gain voice in addressing the changes transforming higher education. The campaign aims at organizing faculty in multiple institutions in metropolitan areas such as Boston, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, and the Twin Cities.
These goals are about basic justice. Organizing also has potential to generate larger change, based on recognizing the roles which adjunct faculty often play as connectors between education and the larger society.
Such rootedness was the wellspring of the democratic story of higher education. Recognizing its importance will require adjuncts, as well as institutions, to name and claim the nature and importance of their work in new ways.
This process may reverse amnesia about what it means to be a faculty member with public goals and civic identity. It could also help lead to a broader democratic awakening.
Memory Against Power: The Potential of Adjunct Faculty
There is an overlooked resource for helping to reverse amnesia: part-time or adjunct faculty who make up more than one half of all teachers in America's public and private colleges and universities.
Memory Against Power: The Potential of Adjunct Faculty
There is an overlooked resource for helping to reverse amnesia: part-time or adjunct faculty who make up more than one half of all teachers in America's public and private colleges and universities.