Monthly Archives: November 2015

Public Philosophy Is Worth It

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Logo for WLOV Tupelo.I’ve tried my hand at a few new kinds of public engagement efforts that have borne fruit. The latest example for me is in seeking TV interviews to talk about issues in public philosophy, particularly some ideas about how I think Mississippi could benefit from good democratic leadership. I’m headed to Tupelo, MS for an interview on WLOV’s This Morning show, Wednesday, November 18th. Then, on Monday, December 7th November 23rd, (updated), I’ll be heading to Biloxi, MS to give an interview on WLOX’s News at 4 show. After each I’ll be holding a book signing, though only the one in Tupelo has been scheduled at this point.

The Thinker, statue.Scholars or readers curious about higher education may wonder: why do all of this? We certainly have enough work to do teaching classes, researching and writing, applying for grants, and serving our institutions and professional associations (the work of a professor is a lot more than what folks see in the classroom). Why add on to that with “outreach” or public engagement?

In “The Search for the Great Community,” from The Public and Its Problems, John Dewey argues that democracy’s prime difficulty has to do with how a mobile, complex, and many layered community can come to define itself and its interests. He believed that the key to addressing democratic challenges was to make use of democratic means, particularly communication. Democracy can embody wise leadership, but only with widespread, maximally unhindered communication, especially emphasizing the developments of human knowledge — the sciences, broadly speaking. For that reason, it is a clear and crucial extension of his democratic theory to value the public engagement of scholars with their communities.

Scan of 'First Day of Issue' envelope honoring John Dewey in the 'Prominent Americans' series. The envelope bears Dewey's stamp, which was valued at 30 cents and issued on October 21, 1968.

When Dewey referred to public engagement, however, that did not mean only a one-way street. Communication takes listening too. So, the point isn’t only for scholars to speak to audiences, but for them also to learn from the people. When I write, I draw increasingly often from newspapers and magazines to illustrate my points about what people are saying and experiencing beyond the academy. Scholarly research is vital, but so is the world beyond the academy. Some circles have criticized me for it in peer-reviews, but so far I haven’t let that dissuade me from seeing scholars’ task as needing to draw also on sources and input from beyond the academy. In addition, talking with people around Mississippi and in other states about my work has revealed all kinds of interesting insights. Some people offer me great examples that I can use to strengthen my points. Others highlight challenges for bringing about the kinds of changes that I believe are needed.

A November 2015 article by John Corvino in the Detroit Free Press, titled "Why Marco Rubio Needs Philosophers."My point in this blog post is to give scholars and other writers a little nudge of encouragement to try something unusual: reach out to news stations and outlets. Some folks do this already. A great public philosopher, for example, is John Corvino. Few of us consider trying something that a mentor of mine encouraged me to try, though. John Lachs of Vanderbilt University said to me: “Plenty of people will read your op-eds, but vastly more people watch TV.” He encouraged me to pursue that direction for engagement. So, in addition to writing for newspapers I’ve been working on developing my “platform,” for which this Web site serves as a key tool. Along with that, there are ways to present oneself to news organizations, such as in creating a “press kit.” It was foreign to me too until I read Platform by Michael Hyatt (creator of my Web site’s WordPress theme, GetNoticedTheme).

With the help of a student research assistant, I wrote to a handful of TV news outlets to let them know about my latest book, a work of public philosophy — Uniting Mississippi: Democracy and Leadership in the South. In the letter, I explained a little bit about the book, as well as my interest in getting the word out about the issues it covers. I then enclosed a nice brochure about the book that the University Press of Mississippi designed for it. Finally, I included an abbreviated 1-page press kit, as well as a short, 1-page set of “interview resources,” that I learned about from Michael Hyatt’s book.  The letters went out in the last two weeks. A little over 10 days later, I got calls and emails from two TV stations inviting me for interviews. It worked.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: The point of public engagement as a scholar is not in itself to get attention, money, or fame. The latter two are highly unlikely anyway. The point is to get our ideas out there and to learn from others through that engagement. If the ideas that we develop in the academy are worthwhile, then they’re worth some effort to spread the word about them. Benefits come from doing these things, but by far the greatest of these are the effects, however small, that we can have on our culture and the relationships we can expand and develop through the effort to speak up about issues that we care about and study.

Tell me on my Facebook page or on Twitter about your public writing and engagement.

PCP Guide Offers Help for Red-Blue Holiday Conversations

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As we approach the holidays and the difficult conversations with relatives from opposite sides of the political spectrum, we could all use some support keeping the discussion civil. Thankfully the Public Conversations Project, an NCDD member organization, has produced a useful red-blue conversation guide along with the piece below that offer frameworks and starter questions to help those holiday dinner discussions – or any discussion – tend more toward dialogue than discord. We encourage you to check out the guide and the post below or to find the original piece here.

A Better Question: Dialogue Across Political Differences

PCP new logoElection Day: when we cast our voice on matters of public concern and celebrate democracy. It’s also when partisan bickering rears its ugly head, and we are reminded of the lack of civil conversation in politics, without knowing how to shift the dynamic. We exist in a world so starkly polarized that there are few models of dialogue between liberals and conservatives, and a void of nuance, uncertainty, or voices more centrist on the ideological spectrum. Instead, we overwhelmed by the extremes talking (loudly) past or over one another and refusing to acknowledge one another’s humanity, let alone consider collaboration or collective responsibility.

This trend is most visible (and perhaps most dire) in our civic spaces, from acrimonious policy debates in Congress that quickly devolve into mischaracterizations or to the petty partisan bickering of presidential candidates. But we also often experience the red/blue tension closer to home: we’ve all sat through at least one dinner where differences in political leanings have been a source of discord. Many people have an important relationship that has been frayed by painful conversations about political differences or constrained due to fear of divisiveness. With the belief that the changing the culture of political polarization could start at home, with everyday conversations and relationships, Public Conversations Project Founding Associate Maggie Herzig published Reaching Out Across the Red Blue Divide, One Person at a Time in 2009.

Strengthening democracy doesn’t just happen in the public sphere, but through individual choices, relationships, and communities. As the guide states, “you can let media pundits and campaign strategists tell you that polarization is inevitable and hopeless. Or you can consider taking a collaborative journey with someone who is important to you, neither paralyzed with fear of the rough waters, nor unprepared for predictable strong currents.” That starts with a new conversation framed by better questions than “how can you think that way?” Here are some better questions to open a conversation across political differences to invite genuine understanding, rather than recrimination and stereotypes.

  • What hopes and concerns do you bring to this conversation?
  • What values do you hold that lead you to want to reach across the red-blue divide? Where or how did you learn those values?
  • What is at the heart of your political leanings (e.g., what concerns or values underlie them) and what would you be willing to share about your life experiences that might convey what those things mean to you?
  • Within your general perspective on the issue(s), do you experience any dilemmas or mixed feelings, or are there gray areas in your thinking?
  • In what ways have you felt out of step with the party or advocacy groups you generally support, or in what ways do those groups not fully reflect what’s important to you?
  • During divisive political debates, are there ways that your values and perspectives are stereotyped by the “other side”? If so, what is it about who you are and what you care about that makes those stereotypes especially frustrating or painful?
  • Are there some stereotypes of your own party that you feel are somewhat deserved – even if they are not fully true – given the rhetoric used in political debates?

As a bonus, Maggie shared some insights she’s gleaned since the guide was published and offers her hope for the future.

1. What inspired you to write the guide at this particular time?

The guide was written in November 2004 at the time of the presidential election (Bush-Kerry). (It was slightly revised in 2006.) Both years, we were motivated by the dilemma many people faced when they gathered with family and others on Thanksgiving, typically across different political views and across 2 or 3 generations: To talk or not to talk about politics. And if political talk was inevitable, how could it occur in a spirit of dialogue? We wanted to offer a mini-guide that could easily be shared with a conversational partner, a guide that not only suggested some opening questions but also conveyed the importance the preparatory phase: reflecting on one’s own readiness to try a different kind of conversation, inviting the other to reflect on their readiness, finding a time and place, and, if sufficient interest and motivation exist, deciding together on communication agreements and some opening questions.

2. Have you seen any strides in fostering this more civil, curious dialogue across the aisle?

I’d like to say I see less polarization in politics. I think the forces that drive the media and electoral politics make change very difficult. But I do think that the typical citizen is more aware of these forces. For some, that awareness might lead to cynicism; for others I’d like to think it inspires rebellion against a culture of division and derision of the political “other.”

3. Where in particular do you see a need for it today (either issues or something like Congress, etc.)?

When relationships clearly matter, e.g., in families, communities, organizations and places of worship, reaching across divides with self-awareness, care and curiosity are acts of preservation of those bonds. The work of preserving and deepening relationships can happen in groups or in one-on-one conversations, thus our desire to provide guides for both settings.

4. Is there anything you would add to the guide or change, based on shifts you’ve noticed in our political climate?

I think the guide has stood the test of time but there’s always room for more questions! Here are a few ideas. So many controversial issues remain controversial because there are important considerations on both sides of a dilemma, like issues related to privacy and security, the role and size of government, and foreign policy. I like to ask questions that invite people to speak to both sides of a dilemma even if they customarily speak to only one side. For example:

  • What would most concern you about increased American involvement in countering ISIS? What would most concern you about curtailing American involvement in countering ISIS?
  • What most pleases you about the past decade in American public life?
  • Where have you seen progress, if only in “baby steps”? What most concerns or distresses you about the past decade in American public life? What trends would you like to see reversed?
  • What makes you feel proud/grateful to be an American? What embarrasses you or makes you uncomfortable about being an American?

You can find the original version of this PCP blog post at www.publicconversations.org/blog/better-question-dialogue-across-political-differences#sthash.vUVqOzPX.dpuf.

Glassy Landscapes and Community Detection

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In the last of a series of talks, Cris Moore of the Santa Fe Institute spoke about the challenges of “false positives” in community detection.

He started by illustrating the psychological origin of this challenge: people evolved to detect patterns. In the wilderness, it’s better, he argued, to find a false-positive non-tiger than a false-negative actual tiger.

So we tend to see patterns that aren’t there.

In my complex networks class, this point was demonstrated when a community-detection algorithm found a “good” partition of communities in a random graph. This is surprising because a random network doesn’t have communities.

The algorithm found a “good” identification of communities because it was looking for a good identification of communities. That is, it randomly selected a bunch of possible ways to divide the network into communities and simply returned the best one – without any thought as to what that result might mean.

Moore showed illustrated a similar finding by showing a graph whose nodes were visually clustered into two communities. One side was colored blue and the other side colored red. Only 11% of the edges crossed between the red community and the blue community. Arguably, it looked like a good identification of communities.

But then he showed another identification of communities. Red nodes and blue nodes were all intermingled, but still – only 11% of the edges connected the two communities. Numerically, both identifications were equally “good.”

This usually is a sign that you’re doing something wrong.

Informally, the challenge here is competing local optima – eg, a “glassy” surface. There are multiple “good” solutions which produce disparate results.

So if you set out to find communities, you will find communities – whether they are there or not.

Moore used a belief propagation model to consider this point further. Imagine a network where every node is trying to figure out what community it is in, and where every node tells its neighbors what communities it thinks its going to be in.

Interestingly, node i‘s message to node j with the probability that i is part of community r will be based on the information i receives from all its neighbors other than j. As you may have already gathered, this is an iterative process, so factoring j‘s message to i into i‘s message to j would just create a nightmarish feedback loop of the two nodes repeating information to each other.

Moore proposed a game: someone gives you a network telling you the average degree, k, and probability of connections to in- and out-of community, and they ask you to label the community of each node.

Now, imagine using this believe propagation model to identify the proper labeling of your nodes.

If you graph the “goodness” of the communities you find as a function of λ – where λ is (kin – kout)/2k, or the second eigenvector of the matrix representing the in- and out-community degrees of the nodes – you will find the network undergoes a phase transition at the square root of the average degree.

Moore interpreted the meaning of that phase transition – if you are looking for two communities, there is a trivial, globally fixed point at λ = 1/(square root of k). His claim – an unsolved mathematical question – is that below that fixed point communities cannot be detected. It’s not just that it’s hard for an algorithm to detect communities, but rather that the information is theoretically unknowable.

If you are looking for more than two communities, the picture changes somewhat. There is still the trivial fixed point below which communities are theoretically undetectable, but there is also a “good” fixed point where you can start to identify communities.

Between the trivial fixed point and the good fixed point, finding communities is possible, but – in terms of computational complexity – is hard.

Moore added that the good fixed point has a narrow basin of attraction – so if you start with random nodes transmitting their likely community, you will most like fall into a trivial fixed point solution.

This type of glassy landscape leads to the type of mis-identification errors discussed above – where there are multiple seemingly “good” identifications of communities within a network, but each of which vary wildly in how they assign nodes.

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The City as Commons: The Conference

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To judge from the fascinating crowd of 200-plus commoners who converged on Bologna, Italy, last week, it is safe to declare that a major new front in commons advocacy has come into focus – the city.  The event was the conference, “The City as a Commons:  Reconceiving Urban Space, Common Goods and City Governance,” hosted by LabGov (LABoratory for the GOVernance of the Commons), the International Association for the Study of the Commons, the Fordham Law School’s Urban Law Center and the Roman law school LUISS.

While there have been a number of noteworthy urban commons initiatives over the years, this event had a creative energy, diversity of ideas and people, and a sense of enthusiasm and purpose. 

The City of Bologna was a perfect host for this event; it has long been a pioneer in this area, most notably through its Regulation on Collaboration for the Urban Commons, which invites neighborhoods and citizens to propose their own projects for city spaces (gardens, parks, kindergartens, graffiti cleanup).

What made this conference so lively was the sheer variety of commons-innovators from around the world.  There was an urban permaculture farmer…..a researcher who has studied the conversion of old airports into metropolitan commons….an expert on “tiny home eco-villages” as a model for urban development…..Creative Commons leaders from the collaborative city of Seoul, Korea….an expert describing “nomadic commons” that use social media to help Syrian migrants find refuge with host families in Italy. 

We heard from a city official in Barcelona about Barcelona en Comú, a citizen platform that is attempting to remake the ways that city government works, with an accent on social justice and citizen participation. As part of this new vision of the city, the Barcelona government has banned Airbnb after it drove up rents and hollowed out robust neighborhoods into dead zones for overnight tourists.

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Difficulties and Dissension

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There are two elements were are often – explicitly or implicitly – discouraged in public life. They are separate, but deeply inter-related and their absence or existence really get to the heart of what “good deliberation” should be.

The first issue I’m thinking of is problematizing: raising challenges and concerns that you don’t have solutions for, put time towards issues that seem insurmountably difficult (though worthwhile) to tackle.

The second issue is dissension – disagreement or conflict within a deliberation.

From what I can tell, there has been more thought put towards this second issue, with many notable theorists arguing that debate is in fact critical to the deliberative process.

In Bernard Manin’s Democratic Deliberation, he argues that diversity of perspectives – a common requirement of good deliberation is not enough. “If we wished to keep in check the force of the confirmatory bias, to which groups are particularly susceptible, we should take deliberate and affirmative measures, not just let diverse voices be heard. Conflicting arguments do not automatically get a fair hearing,” he writes.

In this way, the presence of conflict might mitigate Lynn Sanders’ concerns about power inequities going unchecked. In her article, Against Deliberation, Sanders’ eloquently outlines the core problem of assuming respect among diverse views as a core element of deliberation:  “If we assume that deliberation cannot proceed without the realization of mutual respect, and deliberation appears to be proceeding, we may even mistakenly decide that conditions of mutual respect have been achieved.”

This danger is particularly present in contexts where there is no spoken conflict – that is, as Manin argues, if there no opposing views are voiced it’s not intrinsically because no opposing views are held.

If conflicting views are brought to the fore – encouraged and regularly voiced by all present – then this could dissipate concerns about unequal power leading to the exclusion of certain voices.

On its face, resistance to raising problems that are to solve may seem like a wholly different phenomenon. But I’ve been struck by Nina Eliasoph’s observations in this regard. In her sociological work with community volunteer groups, she notes how volunteers constantly silenced discussion of big problems – with good intentions, but ultimately to the detriment of the community.

Furthermore, she connects this aversion to seemingly unsolvable problems to the tendency to avoid conflict in discussion:

“To show each other and their neighbors that regular citizens really can be effective, really can make a difference, volunteers tried to avoid issues that they considered “political.” In their effort to be open and inclusive, to appeal to regular, unpretentious fellow citizens without discouraging them, they silenced public-spirited deliberation…Community-spirited citizens judged that by avoiding “big” problems, they could better buoy their optimism. But by excluding politics from their group concerns, they kept their enormous, overflowing reservoir of concern and empathy, compassion and altruism, out of circulation, limiting its contribution to the common good.”

 

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college and the contradictions of capitalism

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National attention has turned to political debates and conflicts at one flagship Land Grant state university and one Ivy League. Mizzou and Yale exemplify the whole higher education system, which is a political flashpoint–for good reasons.

On one hand, universities are designed to stand somewhat aside from the political/economic system, to be independent of the usual power structures, and to supply, teach, and encourage critical analysis. On the other hand, they are absolutely pivotal to maintaining the political/economic system that exists, with all of its flaws as well as its virtues.

Racism is the main topic of the current activism. I fully concur with the importance of racial injustice on campuses. (See Jelani Cobb‘s summary, although Conor Friedersdorf‘s response is also valuable and not diametrically opposed.)

If you want a detailed, sophisticated, critical view of racism in America, higher education is one important place to find it. Many faculty share the critical diagnosis. And the most prestigious universities supply some of the most sophisticated and trenchant criticism.

At the same time, only 4 percent of full professors in America are Black. Young White adults are twice as likely to have a college degree as young African Americans (40% versus 20%), due to an accumulating series of racial gaps in k12 promotion and retention, high school graduation, college admission and retention, and on-time graduation. Their lower college graduation rates are one indication of a generally less supportive and satisfying educational experience for students of color. Given the demographics of faculty and students, the culturally dominant group is almost always White, and they have the whole symbolic heritage of the universities behind them. Finally, these institutions exist in blatantly unjust larger communities. Mizzou is the flagship university of the state that encompasses Ferguson. Yale is in the heart of New Haven, where the NAACP reports that 25% of Black families live below the poverty line, 18.9% of Black children have asthma, and no public school sees more than 28% of its graduates achieve a college degree.

Racial issues are thus unavoidable and supply telling examples of the contradictions built into higher education. But the contradictions extend further. For instance, if you want a trenchant and sophisticated critique of Wall Street, an excellent place to look is in the classrooms and journals of the finest American universities. One stream of critique is economic, but you can also find critical views of the culture, psychology, and even the aesthetics and spirituality of 21st century capitalism. An institution like Mizzou or Yale is designed to be safe from the incentives and pressures that dominate contemporary capitalism so that it can provide an independent view; hence the rules that govern tenure, academic freedom, etc.

Yet these institutions produce the people who actually take over and profit from contemporary global capitalism. The financial services industry employs more members of the Yale class of 2013 (14.8%) than any other other field. Consulting employs another 11.6% of that class. Many more Yalies apply to but don’t get Wall Street jobs right away. And of the 18.2% who go straight to graduate school, many are heading to finance via law school or business school. From a different perspective, we can say that Wall Street is dominated by graduates of institutions like Yale.

So these colleges select the global economic elite, disproportionately choosing the children of the current elite. They expose them to four years of critique of the global economic system–some of it very gentle and subtle, and some fairly blatant. Students see implicit alternatives to contemporary capitalism when they study Dante or Buddha in a seminar room, and they get direct criticisms in social science and philosophy classes. These experiences probably sharpen their minds and skills before they proceed in disproportionate numbers to take over the dominant political/economic institutions of the world and to fund the universities that chose and prepared them so well.

All kinds of odd practices and situations arise. For instance, Yale has $2.4 million of endowment per student, sufficient to generate about $112,000 of annual revenue per student. Given Yale’s faculty/student ratio of 6.1:1, that means the university gets about $683,000 per professor per year from its endowment funds. Yet it charges the students a sticker price of more than $50,000 and constantly solicits its alumni for donations to make enrollment affordable. The institution presents itself as a tax-deductible nonprofit philanthropy devoted to light and truth, yet it is also a corporation with $23.9 billion in the bank. Many of its faculty see themselves as critics of the status quo, yet they work in an institution that replicates it.

I love these places. They have been very good to me–Yale more than any other institution. They have broadened my mind and given me whatever skills and passions I have for analyzing social justice. They create zones of debate and critique that are freer and more vibrant than most other sectors of our society, and they encompass more diversity than most of our neighborhoods and work sites. To the extent that we have any upward mobility, they provide some of the upward paths. They permit and even encourage the criticism that is directed at themselves. At the same time, they are pillars of social injustice. No wonder they stand in the crosshairs today.

Is Local Engagement Weakening National Engagement?

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The team at the Davenport Institute, one of or NCDD member organizations, recently shared what some might see as a provocative interview by NCDD Supporting Member Caroline Lee on the pitfalls of what she calls the public engagement industry. Caroline’s new book worries that wider spread public participation may encourage average citizens to focus solely on local politics while leaving larger scale politics to big organizations and institutions.
Are there negative impacts of public participation work that we need to pay more attention to? If so, what are they? Let us know what you think – read the Davenport piece and the interview linked below, and share your reactions in the comments section.

On The Public Engagement Industry

DavenportInst-logoCaroline Lee, a sociologist at Lafayette College, has a thoughtful and critical view of what she’s dubbed the “Public Engagement Industry.” In her book Do-It-Yourself Democracy: The Rise of the Public Engagement Industry, she considers the successes of the rise of public engagement and poses worthwhile questions about its future. On the one hand, public engagement efforts generate a sense of tangible involvement, lacking from traditional public hearings:

A public hearing where everyone gets three minutes at a microphone is really unsatisfying. This new kind of public engagement involves people talking in small groups, telling their stories, giving reasons for their ideas and maybe even changing their minds.

On the other hand, she argues, “some problems are too big for individuals to fix.”  She argues that if citizens focus too much on the local level, important national issues will take a backseat:

These processes have short-term impacts on people’s attitudes towards politics and their sense that individuals are key to social change, but this new kind of public engagement shifts people’s expectations of the institutions that we all rely on. Participants tend to see the local level as the only reasonable place for action and to leave the larger politics of public life up to those organizational clients and institutional sponsors. We face such challenging systemic problems – climate change, the global financial crisis – that we just can’t afford for the ambitions of the electorate to be limited that way.

This is a very different take on local engagement from that of 19th century observer Alexis deToqueville who saw in the ability to collaborate on small local concerns a training ground for large scale undertakings.  Is local engagement really drawing people away from areas of national interest? Or is, as Tocqueville might have suggested, an era where voter turnout is much lower for local than national elections an era where decreased civic engagement at all levels should be expected?  

You can see Lee’s interview with U.S. News and World Report is here, and her website is here.

You can find the original version of this Davenport Institute post http://incommon.pepperdine.edu/2015/10/on-the-public-engagement-industry. 

Featured D&D Story: Affording Johnson County

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Today we’re pleased to be featuring another example of dialogue and deliberation in action. This mini case study was submitted by NCDD member David Supp-Montgomerie of the University of Iowa’s Program for Public Life via NCDD’s new Dialogue Storytelling Tool. Do you have a dialogue story that our network could learn from? Add your dialogue story today!

ShareYourStory-sidebarimageTitle of Project

Affording Johnson County

Description

Johnson County has the highest portion of residents paying over 50% of their income on housing costs in the entire state of Iowa – and the number for its renters is far higher than the national average. In partnership with several community organizations, this year-long public conversation project began with local discussions in several communities and culminates this April in a County Wide Deliberative Summit.

We have held our first meeting so far and it drew business owners, faith leaders (local churches, the synagogue, and the mosque), elected officials at the state and local level, community organizers, and ordinary folks passionate about the topic. City council members were sitting across from refugees and graduate students – this is what democracy looks like.

Which dialogue and deliberation approaches did you use or borrow heavily from?

  • National Issues Forums
  • Open Space / Unconference
  • World Cafe

What was your role in the project?

Co-Organizer, Primary Facilitator, and Sponsoring Organization

Who were your partners for the project (if any)?

Johnson County Affordable Homes Coalition, PATV Channel 18 (local public access station)

What issues did the project primarily address?

Economic issues

Lessons Learned

Some of the small communities had few traditional aspects of civic infrastructure used to organize an event, but we had success when we recruited several faith leaders to help plan and recruit members to participate.

Where to learn more about the project:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1623032817948781.1073741828.1608100846108645&type=3