Monthly Archives: December 2015

come work with us

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(Washington, DC) Tisch College is advertising two positions:

A Program Administrator for the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, who will manage essential responsibilities associated with NSLVE including recruiting campuses to join the study, distributing data to campuses in the form of reports, and working to develop resources for all campuses to access through the website. The Program Administrator will also be responsible for supporting communications including but not limited to managing the process for the newsletter, updating the website, and collaborating with the team on other publications.

A Coordinator for our Voting Initiative: This individual will coordinate efforts to increase voter participation among Tufts students in the 2016 presidential election through initiatives supported by faculty and staff at all Tufts campuses. Responsibilities will include: working with student groups to sponsor forums on campaign issues of interest; implementing a plan for comprehensive voter registration opportunities; administering a fund for student-driven initiatives (etc.)

Reclaiming “Citizens”

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Like many who work in the civic realm, I use the word “citizens” a lot. Usually with the clarification that I don’t mean the term as a legal status, but rather as a way of describing people who are part of the same community or who live in the same area.

This difference in meaning is significant. To talk about the work of improving communities as relying on the engagement of citizens (of legal status) has wholly different moral and political connotations than seeking the engagement of all citizens (who are connected to a community, regardless of legal status). .

For that reason, many civically-minded organizations have elected to drop or minimize use of the word “citizens.” In my days as a marketer I would have advised them to do so. It’s a bad enough sign if you have to explain a term to your audience, but you definitely don’t want people  to interpret something as exclusive when it is intended to be inclusive. That is not a miscommunication you want to have.

So why persist in using a term that is so widely understood to mean something different than what I mean by it?

First, there’s the poetry of it. “Citizens” is a simple word, and there is no other term that so concisely indicates “people who are part of a community.”

But more importantly, citizens have rights.

Again, this could be interpreted in the legal sense – legal citizens have legal rights – but the word has a broader civic meaning as well.

All people who are part of a community or who are affected by a decision have the right to participate in shaping that community or making that decision. Regardless of legal status, citizens have the right to participate as full members of the community.

I think of this non-legal use of the word “citizens” as a reclamation of sorts, though truth be told the word “citizens” has always been problematic.

It is a word whose function is to divide the haves from the have nots; to indicate who has power, who has the right of full participation. The precise legal and social understanding has changed – “citizens” were once only wealthy white men; our current understanding is only slightly more benevolent.

That’s why it’s so important to reclaim – or perhaps simply claim – this term. All people have rights; all people have the right and responsibility to participate in their communities as citizens.  This right is not bestowed by some legal definition; it is an intrinsic human right.

Until we recognize all our neighbors as true citizens and as equal partners in shaping our communities, we not only impinge upon this important right, we shut out important voices and energy, harming our communities through a narrowed perspective.

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The Aliveness of a Commons: My Shareable Interview

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I always appreciate it when interviewers force you to articulate things that lie just below the surface. That’s what happened when Cat Johnson of Shareable recently talked with me about Patterns of Commoning, the new book that I co-edited with Silke Helfrich that profiles dozens of notable commons around the world. Here is an excerpt:

Shareable: In the book, you and Silke focus on what is described as the consciousness of thinking, learning, and acting as a commoner as the heart of the commons movement. What does this mean to you?

It means breaking down some of the dichotomies that we take for granted, such as between public and private, between collective and individual, between rational and nonrational. In the commons, they start to blur.  You have to start talking about the commons as this organic whole, and not as this machine you can break down into parts or dissect. It’s a living organism and that’s precisely what needs to be studied: its aliveness.

Conventional, modern science refuses to explore aliveness, and instead has a lot of reductionist categories that don’t really get to the essence of, not only what it is to be a living human being, but a living human being on a living earth. I think the commons wants to speak to those kinds of concerns and, not surprisingly, it won’t fit into a lot of the conventional, intellectual boxes that academics, in particular, like to use.

A point in the book that I find very interesting is that policymakers and experts can’t design and build commons in a top-down fashion and expect them to thrive. Commoners must do this work themselves. What distinguishes an organic commons from a manufactured one?

The institutionally sponsored commons cannot have the same bottom-up sense of commitment, ownership, co-creation. To that extent, they will be subjects in somebody else’s drama with outside directors, as opposed to expressions of a creative upswell from people themselves, that serves their interests, their needs, their inner lives.

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Civic Voice and Civic Duty

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Earlier this month, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) and the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) released research showing that Americans’ volunteering rate remains strong. Over a quarter of U.S. adults volunteered through an organization last year, while nearly two thirds volunteered informally.

This is welcome news, but also disconcerting: recent trends point to steady volunteering rates but drops in other civic activities. A December 2014 report found that “16 of the 20 civic health indicators dropped,” with volunteering as one of the few positive outliers. Collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, civic health indicators cover topics including voting, volunteering, political expression and group membership.

Personally, I am quite concerned about indicators related to civic voice. A 2010 NCOC report found that, among Americans who are not engaged with a community group, less than 15% express their political voice in one or more ways. This number rises significantly for those who are involved in a group (about 40%) and especially for those with a leadership role within a community group (nearly 70%).

But the disparity indicated by these gaps is alarming. Under 10% of the population falls into the category of “leaders,” raising important questions about the socioeconomic and gender disparities represented in that gap.

For example, a 2012 study by my former colleagues at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) looked specifically at the civic lives of young people with no college experience – some of the most underrepresented people in our society.

When one focus group was asked whether they had a voice in their school, they all simply laughed. One young man in Little Rock argued that student voice in school was a myth: “Even when you are class president and school president you still don’t have a say, so … it’s only a show.”

Another student is quoted as saying, “even if you do voice your opinion it won’t do any good—the suits are the ones who are gonna make all the decisions.”

That is deeply problematic for civil society.

Too many people feel as though their voice does not matter, as though their perspectives don’t add to the world.

This is a fallacy. A myth perpetuated by false social standards laying claim to what types of people have value and what types of views have value.

All people have value; all voices matter.

Unfortunately, too many people have been taught that their voices don’t have value – that they would only add to the noise if they ever dared to speak up. Once this message is internalized, the civic silence is hard to break.

But that’s why it’s important to remember – speaking out is not a luxury, its not an activity you do to show off how important you are. It is a civic duty. Sharing your own voice and perspective – particularly for those whose voice and perspective is often overlooked – is critical to transforming the state of civic dialogue. Everyone’s voice needs to be heard.

There’s this great and terrible irony in the world – it’s the people who worry about being rude or incompetent or otherwise being a terrible person who are the least likely to be rude, incompetent or an otherwise terrible person.

The same can be said about civic voice – if you never speak up because you are so convinced that your own voice can’t possibly add value, then you are depriving the rest of us of your wisdom. I know it is awkward, and I know it feels self-aggrandizing, but forget about all that: we need your words and your perspective. It’s a civic duty to share your voice. Really. We can’t tackle the hard problems without you.

 

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Designs on Kids and Culture: Cartoons

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Screen capture of Charlie Brown shaking hands with Franklin, the first African American character in Peanuts, introduced in 1968.

While I have been writing A Culture of Justice, so many examples have come up to illustrate what I’m concerned about. The latest is from Charlie Brown. At the same time, it’s true that culture is a funny thing to think about when it comes to justice.

When I first read Plato’s Republic, I found it so strange that Plato addresses oddly specific decisions about which kind of music and arts should be allowed in just city. It is one thing to be concerned about music that promotes violence or that demeans women, but what does the mode of the music have to do with justice? By modes, I’m referring to the dorian, the phrygian, or the mixolydian modes. Plato believed that it mattered profoundly which modes of music were taught to young people. Here’s a YouTube lesson on the modes of music – probably longer than you need, but you can stop whenever or jump ahead:

If you can’t see this video in your RSS reader or email, then click here.

Plato presented a highly authoritarian version of Socrates in the Republic, so much so that Karl Popper accused him of betraying his great teacher. Popper saw the real Socrates as an advocate for freedom and the open society. The early dialogues do seem to present a different Socrates from the late dialogues. Plato loved his great teacher, yet the Athenians killed unjustly. It is not surprising that he would be skeptical about the will of the people to lead wisely.

While I disagree with the extent of Plato’s heavy handedness, I think he was right to attend to culture’s relationship to justice. Today, we defend the freedom of expression to amazing lengths, protecting even hateful speech. The modes of music seem strange to think of limiting, sure, but it was once prohibited to show Elvis Presley’s shaking hips on television.

Star Trek kiss - Kirk kissing Uhura.The first interracial kiss on television was also a big deal at the time. I thought it was the one on Star Trek (photo on right), but it turns out that CNN has found one earlier. The funny thing is that today people belittle efforts to shape culture for the sake of justice. Presidential candidate Ben Carson has called political correctness “dangerous.” People joke about the silliness of calls for being “P.C.,” rolling their eyes.

Some efforts to address “political incorrectness” have offered cause for concern. The University of New Hampshire created a Guide for Unbiased Language, for example, which found the word “American” problematic, among many others. The university took down the guide, but not before the Washington Post released a piece on the subject.

While I appreciate calls for people not to be too swift or harsh in judging uses of language, they are extensions of sensible thinking. For example, when young people throw around the word “retarded” as a substitute for anything they think is bad or worthless, it hurts people with cognitive or other disabilities, as well as their family members like me. Some people may roll their eyes when a woman doesn’t appreciate being called “sweetheart,” yet when she is called “tootse,” most people balk. These things are matters of degree, and examples will vary.

Offensive children's book, "Ten Little [N-word] Boys"Reasonable people may wonder “What’s the big deal?” or “Why does culture matter?” I’ve answered already what I think a flag has to do with justice, addressing the Confederate Battle Flag in the South. Language matters too. So do cartoons and children’s books, such as these horrifyingly racist ones that I first learned about in the Atlantic Black Star. In the Ten Little N—-r Boys (cover image on right), for example, young white kids were taught to count by means of learning ten ways in which young black boys were killed or somehow lost. The drawings were meant to be humorous, but are horrifying.

For generations, young people have been conditioned from infancy to devalue others. You can see, therefore, why a school teacher and then African American readers wrote to Charles Schulz, urging him to introduce a “negro character” into his Peanuts comic strip. The latest story on the matter includes this short one on NPR. The more interesting stuff can be found in the actual letters that the story refers to, in which readers and Schulz went back and forth about how to incorporate a new character respectfully, without patronizing African Americans. Mashable.com put together a set of letters, sample comic strips that Schulz released, some story about the resistance he faced from disappointing editors, and a video of school teacher Harriet Glickman who first wrote to Schulz – find that stuff here.

Logo for Variety magazine.I understand that Variety called for more diversity in the new Charlie Brown movie. At the same time, I appreciated what I read of Schulz’s replies to his readers and the hard line he took with editors and agents who were resistant to his inclusion of the Franklin character in 1968, whom Charlie Brown greets in the featured image above. That makes me want to see his movie. Of course, Variety‘s criticism raised the ire of the conservative American Spectator.

I haven’t seen the film yet. Nevertheless, I think it is important that we consider the messages we present our kids and the kinds of cultural force that we need to push back against, from hundreds of years of conditioning young people to devalue some folks and to see others as deserving of privilege. Such designs on our culture begin as early as the cartoons we show our kids.

Follow me on Twitter @EricTWeber and on Facebook.com/EricThomasWeberAuthor.

is hope an intellectual virtue (or a virtue at all)?

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Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote recently that the “black political tradition is essentially hopeful,” yet the historical record gives many indications that injustice is tenacious and unlikely to yield. That means that a historian or a political analyst deeply cognizant of history should not be committed to hope:

A writer wedded to “hope” is ultimately divorced from “truth.” Two creeds can’t occupy the same place at the same time. If your writing must be hopeful, then there’s only room for the kind of evidence which verifies your premise. The practice of history can’t help there. Thus writers who commit themselves to only writing hopeful things, are committing themselves to the ahistorical, to the mythical, to the hagiography of humanity itself. I can’t write that way—because I can’t study that way. I have to be open to things falling apart. Indeed, much of our history is the story of things just not working out.

Coates is critical of “only writing hopeful things” and of assuming that “your writing must be hopeful.” He is not saying: abandon all hope, you who enter into historical thought. But he is distinguishing the cultivation of hope from the pursuit of truth. If hope emerges from truth, that is a matter of sheer chance and not to be counted on.

I have argued, more generally, that truth, justice toward others, and inner psychological wellbeing are distinct goods.* It would be wonderful if they could fit together neatly, and even better if each caused the others. That would be the case in a universe constructed by an omnipotent and just creator, which is why the Bible says things like “the truth will make you free.” But I see no particular reason to believe that truth will make you happy or just, that justice will make you happy or truthful, or that happiness will make you truthful or just. In many situations, knowing the full truth just causes sorrow and paralysis; committing fully to justice requires sorrow and untruth. In my view, all three goals are estimable, but they conflict, and that is one reason it is so hard to live well. This position is consistent with Coates’ admiration for both the truth-telling historian and the hope-instilling tradition of Black politics in the US.

In the previous paragraph, I wrote about happiness in contrast to justice and truth, dropping the word “hope.” For some, hope is a form or close relative of happiness. But one can debate whether hope is a good at all. Neither the classical Greeks nor the ancient Indian thinkers thought that it was. Hannah Arendt observed that “Greek antiquity ignored [faith and hope] altogether, discounting the keeping of faith as a very uncommon and not too important virtue and counting hope among the evils of illusion in Pandora’s box” (The Human Condition, p. 247.).

Indeed, a Stoic or a Buddhist can endorse a strong argument against hope. First, hope is a thought about the future, but wisdom lies in fully experiencing the present, which alone is real. Like nostalgia and regret, hope is a source of irrational disquiet.

Second, hope is about matters beyond our control. For instance, it makes no sense for me to “hope” that I will answer a question honestly. If I am an honest person, I will just answer it honestly. To hope about our own actions is to renounce responsibility. By the same token, we ought to spend no energy hoping that others will be honest–or otherwise ethical–because that is beyond our control. They will do what they will do, and we should respond in the best possible way.

Third, we should not make hope the precondition of acting right, for that is moral weakness. We must do right regardless of the odds of things turning out well.

Most pre-Christian thinkers of the Mediterranean and Northern India ignored or opposed hope. Christians then turned hope into one of the three greatest virtues. That made sense because of their theistic commitments. Indeed, hope is closely connected to faith and charity because it is faith in the Creator’s charity or grace that (alone) substantiates hope in a world of evident suffering.

Arendt was a non-Christian author who thought that the Christian concept of hope had been a positive contribution, related to her own core virtue of amor mundi–love of the world. Notwithstanding the Stoic and Buddhist arguments against hope, and notwithstanding the real tensions between hope and truth that Coates explores–hope could be a virtue. It could be a virtue if it is a resource that human beings need in order to act well. Then instilling hope increases the odds of good action, just as giving people courage does.

In both Stoicism and at least some classical Indian thought, quietism is a common theme. The wise person accepts what is–in which case, hope is irrelevant and distracting. But activists must think about more than the present. They must form plans, which requires estimating the probability of success. When the probability approaches zero, it is time to form a new plan. That means that hope is a rational precondition of action.

And possibly hope is an intrinsic virtue. By Act IV, Scene 1 of King Lear, Edgar has already suffered much, having been cast out of his family and society and onto the wild heath. He convinces himself that he can still be happy because he can still have hope (“esperance”):

Yet better thus, and known to be contemn’d,
Than still contemn’d and flatter’d. To be worst,
The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,
Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear.
The lamentable change is from the best;
The worst returns to laughter. Welcome then,
Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace!
The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst
Owes nothing to thy blasts. 2255

Immediately following these lines–in a perfect illustration of tragic irony–Edgar’s father stumbles into view. We have watched his eyes being deliberately thumb-wrenched out of their sockets, and now we see him “Enter …, led by an Old Man.” Edgar cries:

But who comes here?
My father, poorly led? World, world, O world!
But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,
Life would not yield to age.

It was not true that Edgar had seen the worst or that the subsequent changes would be for the better. Things were about to get much worse. And things ultimately get worse for all of us. Yet it was better for Edgar to have those moments on the heath than not to have had them. It was to his credit that he could forgive and “embrace” life. He chose to describe his state as hope, and that seems praiseworthy. Hope wasn’t an accurate prediction of the future but rather a choice and a disposition.

To return to the beginning: I agree with Coates that history is not hope-instilling and that the rigorous empirical historian should not go looking for hope in the record of the past. At the same time, a human being who manages to be hopeful seems to be praiseworthy and a gift to others. The historian is a human being, and like all of us, must navigate these two inconsistent values.

*See also: on hope as an intellectual virtue (with the opposite thesis from today’s post); unhappiness and injustice are different problems; why we wish that goodness brought happiness, and why that is not so; three truths and a question about happiness; and all that matters is equanimity, community, and truth.

Embracing Your Civic Privilege

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CWMDJgWWwAA0tZz.jpg large“I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet
imagined by man, by which a government can be
held to the principles of its constitution.”–Thomas Jefferson

So today I have the distinct pleasure of sitting for jury duty. I say this without any snark whatsoever. This is actually my first time ever, in my now 42 years of life, being called for service. I am greatly excited.

You have to think about it like this. If, God forbid, YOU were to face a jury trial, wouldn’t you want someone like YOU on the jury? Jury service matters. I find all of the jokes about getting out of jury duty, and the many ways in which people try to get out of it, to in many ways reflect the lack of civic feeling we seem to suffer from today. Of course there are plenty of valid reasons for not being able to serve, but we have to remember, ultimately, that our civic health and civic life as a nation relies on citizens fulfilling their obligations and embracing the importance of ensuring our fellow citizens enjoy the protections granted by our Constitution.

And of course, if you are a Florida civics teacher, what better way to teach the benchmarks concerning our system and the responsibilities of citizens than to experience them!

7.C.2.2: Evaluate the obligations citizens have to obey laws, pay taxes, defend the nation, and serve on juries.
7.C.2.3: Experience the responsibilities of citizens at the local, state, or federal levels.
7.C.2.6: Simulate the trial process and the role of juries in the administration of justice.

A final thought. The judge that swore us in today made the point that the right to a jury trial in this country has evolved over time. As I look around the room, many of us in here could not have served on a jury at the founding of this country, not being landed white men. It is a privilege and an obligation. As Andrew Guthrie Ferguson has argued:

A jury summons is an invitation to participation. Jurors are asked to involve themselves in some of the most personal, sensational, and terrifying events in a community. It is real life, usually real tragedy, played out in court. Jurors confront disturbing facts, bloody images, or heart-wrenching testimony. A jury may have to decide whether a man lives or dies, or whether a multimillion-dollar company goes bankrupt. A jury will have to pass judgment in a way that will have real-world effects on both parties before the court. This active role was not accidental. Participation in jury service teaches the skills required for democratic self-government. Being a juror lets you develop the habits and skills of citizenship.

And isn’t that what matters?


Sign Up for Next D&D Climate Action Network Calls Today!

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As we shared last month here on the blog, NCDD is supporting an important new initiative called the D&D Climate Action Network (D&D CAN) that is being led by NCDD supporting member Linda Ellinor of the Dialogue Group. The Network’s purpose is to build a networked community of practice that connects members, fosters learning from each other, and stimulates collaboration. Ultimately, the goal is to build a community of practice that fosters mutual learning, sharing, and inspires collaboration around the complexities of climate change, and in light of last week’s historic Paris climate deal and all the work ahead that it entails, the D&D CAN initiative couldn’t come at a more relevant time.

We highly encourage our NCDD members to get involved in D&D CAN, and one of the best ways to to do that is to join their monthly networking and discussion conference calls. The calls are focused on a different climate-and-dialogue topic every month, but spots are limited to 20 as of now, so make sure you sign up ASAP!

This month’s call is topic is “Talking about Climate Change”, and will be taking place tomorrow, December 15th from 5-7pm Eastern / 2-4pm Pacific. Here are a few words the Linda used to describe the call:

Let’s discover how we can bring our dialogue and conversational skills to meet climate change. As many of us know, climate change is one of the hardest topics to bring up in everyday conversation for a variety of reasons. Please come prepared to offer experiences that have helped you be successful in facilitating conversations about climate change.

The only requirement for joining is a desire to use conversational leadership or participatory processes in climate-change related work.  Our main goal is to help all of us work more strategically in transforming our world to greater resiliency.

Space on the call is going fast, so make sure you register online today by clicking here.

D&D CAN has also announced the next two calls for January and February 2016, so save the dates:

  • January topic: “What are we learning about large-scale civic engagement from the Paris Climate Talks?”
    Date: January 19, 2016, 2-4pm Pacific Time / 5-7pm Eastern
  • February topic: “What are we learning about working with faith-based communities?”
    Date: February 16, 2016, 2-4pm Pacific Time / 5-7pm Eastern

In case you need help signing up, here are the directions for registering for the calls:

Once you create your own password, please fill out the profile. If you have already joined, you can find the profile questions by going to “my page” and clicking on “options” at the top right of the page and then clicking on “edit my profile”.

If you have already joined our Ning group, please register for Tuesday’s call by going to the Ning site and clicking on the “Register here” link at the top left of the home page.

We can only take the first 20 people who sign up, so please do so ASAP, if you are interested in participating. If you have to cancel for any reason, please contact Linda Ellinor at lellinor25@gmail.com.

We encourage you to learn more about the D&D Climate Action Network by visiting http://ddclimateactionnetwork.ning.com. You can also learn more from our first announcement about the network at www.ncdd.org/19299.