Monthly Archives: April 2016

What do Cuba and China tell us about Communism and Infant Mortality Reductions?

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The first response to my last post was to point to Cuba’s low infant mortality rate; it is currently below the US’s rate. This seems like a refutation of the claim that competitive markets are a necessary condition for serious public health improvements.

There’s a propagandistic response to Cuba’s numbers, which I think is worth mentioning even if it’s still propagandistic: Cuba maintains its low infant mortality rate by strongly promoting abortions in any case of fetal abnormality. It’s really hard to establish the extent to which that is true, since only one researcher at the University of Oklahoma, Katherine Hirschfield, has claimed it while having her account sited in every case where Cuba’s infant mortality is discussed in the US media. But Cuba does have an abortion rate almost twice that of the US, so it may be a factor.

But Cuba’s pre-revolutionary infant mortality was already quite low: about 3.7% (37 under-five deaths per 1000 live births). These gains from the pre-industrial baseline were achieved under a pretty rotten colonialist capitalism. Thus, it seems to be the case the case that it’s possible to reduce infant mortality under a variety of economic systems. (Which is fine: we probably think too vaguely when we discuss these systems of communism and capitalism.)

I guess I’d add that Cuba does have free trade with everyone in the world who is not the US, so it doesn’t seem like a case of real protectionism. In fact, they actually export medical services in pretty significant ways, as well as benefiting from remittances.

The Chinese case is a more interesting one: the pre-revolutionary infant mortality rate was roughly equivalent to the background “natural evil” rate that I mentioned. Thus, the Maoist revolution drastically improved infant mortality! Through the training of midwives and later “barefoot doctors” rural infant mortality in China was brought from roughly pre-industrial levels (30% of live born children died before the age of 5) to roughly 70 in 1000 (7%) in 1978. That’s massive and worthy of serious praise. It’s also a serious challenge to the claim that only competitive markets can decrease infant mortality. The Chinese Revolution, in aggregate, was able to reduce infant mortality substantially: even including the Great Leap Famines which killed between 22 and 45 million people in three years (and likely increased fetal and infant mortality by similar levels), the gains are substantial.

Because I think capitalism is too highly specific, I often talk about competitive markets in the alternative. But the real key feature, it seems to me, is globalization: free trade with other countries. That is why I particularly balked at protectionism, without having much of a complaint about various ways to pay for medical services like single-payer plans or state-run hospitals.

Yet China reduced infant mortality significantly without free trade, and Cuba reduced it significantly with free trade. A long view obliterates any claim that infant health can be directly tied to any economic regime at all. On this, I was simply wrong, and glad to know it.

I started out to write a neoliberal theo-politics; rough and ready and trying to show where matters of relatively unchallenged beliefs about the world have led me. Challenges and data now force me to revise those beliefs. What could be more neoliberal and technocratic than that?

Beyond Sentimental Citizenship — A New Cooperative Education

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In our ongoing Bridging Differences conversation at Education Week about democracy in education, Deborah Meier has been stressing the centrality of decision making, what she describes as "rules of governance that could make it more or less likely that democratic norms will flourish." I agree with the importance of this. But if we look at democracy as an empowering way of life, more than decision-making is necessary.

Otherwise citizenship is sentimentalized and democracy is narrowed.

We need to combine the "head," which makes decisions, the "heart," moral imagination and emotion, and the "hand," civic muscles that power action in the world. This is, in fact, a core argument in Civic Studies. Peter Levine's essay, "The Case for Civic Studies," in the Civic Studies collection, has a splendid treatment. Peter shows how current education curriculum artificially separates the empirical disciplines, natural and social sciences; normative fields, the humanities; and strategic or action fields, the professions and vocations.

What does it look like to prepare students who integrate these domains? Let me tell a story and suggest a policy.

The late Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey traced his political career to his father's drug store in Doland, South Dakota (described in The Education of a Public Man). The drug store was a free space for talk and action. "I've listened to some of the great parliamentary debates of our time," Humphrey wrote, "but have seldom heard better discussions of basic issues than I did as a boy standing on a wooden platform behind the soda fountain." Humphrey's father was one of a handful of Democrats in a town with hundreds of Republicans. He became the mayor. But his life work wasn't running for office. He was building a democratic culture.

The store functioned as a cultural center with music from his father's rickety phonograph, and many books and magazines. Humphrey wrote that "Time after time, when he read about some political development . . . he'd say, 'You should know this, Hubert. It might affect your life someday.'" His father was also a civic activist. "When most of the town wanted to sell the municipally owned power plant to a private utility, Dad...fought the idea tooth and nail...he would take me to the evening meetings of the council, install me in a chair by a corner window, and then do battle, hour after hour."

Humphrey's father was a "citizen pharmacist," who saw his career in civic terms. We've lost a lot of citizen careers and citizen professionals.

One remedy is a movement to revive "Cooperative Education."

Cooperative Education is a method that combines academic study and classroom learning with practical work experience for which students can receive academic credit. Co-op Education draws from Dewey's concept in Democracy and Education that education should be connected "with real things and materials" and his warning about "the tendency for every vocation to become exclusive...[emphasizing] technical method at the expense of meaning."

Cooperative Education, created by Dewey's contemporary, Herman Schneider, connects work and liberal learning. From 1965 to 1996 it was supported by federal legislation. Charles Grassley, Republican senator from Iowa, was a leading champion.

I asked Lois Olson, who long directed the Strommen Center at Augsburg College and was hired in 1985 to help implement a Cooperative Education grant from the US Department of Education, where she got her interest in this connection. "I grew up on a farm in Southwestern Minnesota where politics was everywhere," she said. "My dad often took me to the local pool hall, the civic site for the town. The conversations intertwined politics, religion and economics."

At Augsburg Lois helped to create an employer council and a prestigious faculty council including many liberal arts department chairs. Together they developed plans for student learning through work. She also posed questions to students to help them think about their careers in civic terms. "Describe the culture, policies, allocation of resources that might impact citizenship," she told them. She reported that "responses were very rich. Some said, 'I had no idea that my employer was doing all this.' Others said, 'I looked at the mission and realized it was mostly PR.' Some held discussions about this with their fellow workers."

In the 1990s, service learning, seen as "education for citizenship" in higher education, came to substitute for work-based learning in federal and state policies. The strength of service is to bring in "community," or a focus on human relationships and active learning. But if it loses work, experiential education citizenship becomes sentimentalized.

I saw this first hand in our partnership with the Clinton administration, which made the policy changes. Bill Clinton called for "Big Citizenship" and attacked "Big Government."

Democracy requires integrating head, heart, and hand.

In her piece "The Interdependency of Vocational and Liberal Aims in Higher Education," Kathleen Knight Abowitz proposes bringing liberal and vocational learning together. "Liberal education should be more vocationalized [with] social relevance and purposes in mind," she argues. "Vocational education should be liberalized [with] larger, holistic humanist aims and purposes." We also need stronger focus in both on civic agency, capacities to act collectively in and on the world.

A new Cooperative Education could help, while countering extremist attacks on education for being disconnected from "jobs."

It would also help to revive the idea of democracy as an empowering way of life, with government as the instrument of our collective work.

Politics in an Ideal World

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Not long ago, a friend asked me why anyone would want to engage in politics for politics’ sake. We worry about such things because we have to, but wouldn’t it be better, in some theoretical, ideal world, if we didn’t have to?

Imagine, for a moment, a perfect world; a society so flawless that it was always just and fair without any need for engagement from its citizens. In such a world, people would have no need for the frustrating practice of politics – they would be free, instead, to devote their time to more productive endeavors.

Now, such a thought experiment immediately raises all sorts of practical concerns; but let’s for a moment put those aside and assume that such an ideal society is both attainable and sustainable. In such a world, what would the role of citizens be?

In thinking about this question, it seemed natural to turn to John Dewey, philosopher, educator, and unwavering proponent of what he called the Great Community . Dewey’s 1927 book, The Public and It’s Problems defended democracy and responded directly to the skeptical critique of Walter Lippmann.

You’ll note here a subtle shift in language – is the thought experiment one of politics or one of democracy? Much lies, I suppose, in the definitions of these terms, but I’ll borrow here from Dewey in detangling them:

We have had occasion to refer in passing to the distinction between democracy as a social idea and political democracy as a system of government. The two are, of course, connected. The idea remains barren and empty save as it is incarnated in human relationships. Yet in discussion they must be distinguished. The idea of democracy is a wider and fuller idea than can be exemplified in the state even at its best. To be realized it must affect all modes of human association, the family, the school, industry, religion. 

To be clear, Dewey had little loyalty to the specific mechanisms of political democracy:

There is no sanctity in universal suffrage, frequent elections, majority rule, congressional and cabinet government. These things are devices evolved in the direction in which the current was moving, each wave of which involved at the time of its impulsion a minimum of departure from antecedent custom and law. The devices served a purpose; but the purpose was rather that of meeting existing needs which had become too intense to be ignored, than that of forwarding the democratic idea. 

So, if ‘politics’ is simply the act of engaging in a narrow system of political democracy whose mechanisms randomly sedimented over time, it’s unclear that Dewey would have much zeal for the idea of politics as an essential element of human life.

However, ‘politics’ can also be interpreted through the wider lens of democracy as a social idea; a concept to which Dewey was deeply committed.

For Dewey, democracy wasn’t a set of systems or an inventory of regulations; it was a way of life:

Regarded as an idea, democracy is not an alternative to other principles of associated life. It is the idea of community life itself.

In this sense, ‘politics’ is the very element which transforms the “physical and organic” stuff of “associated life” into the moral entity of community. The work of politics is the work of building the Great Community:

We are born organic beings associated with others, but we are not born members of a community. The young have to be brought within the traditions, outlook and interests which characterize a community by means of education…Everything which is distinctively human is learned…To learn to be human is to develop through the give-and-take of communication an effective sense of being an individually distinctive member of a community; one who understands and appreciates its believes, desires and methods, and who contributes to a further conversion of organic powers onto human resources and values.

Importantly, Dewey argues that the two senses of politics cannot exist separately; without the broader understanding of social democracy, the mechanisms of political democracy reduce to nonsense: Fraternity, liberty and equality isolated from communal life are hopeless abstractions.

It is only through the engagement of the people in this deeper politics, in democracy as a way of life, that we can ever achieve the mechanisms of political democracy we strive for.

If, some how, the ideal world described above were possible – if justice rained from the sky with no effort from below; such a society would still be lacking in the moral concept of democracy writ large.

Dewey was under no illusion that transforming the mechanisms of political democracy would be an easy undertaking – but it was a transformation he believed could only occur through the political work of the Great Community:

The highest and most difficult kind of inquiry and a subtle, delicate, vivid and responsive art of communication must take possession of the physical machinery of transmission and circulation and breathe life into it. When the machine age has thus perfected its machinery it will be a means of life and not a despotic master. It had its seer in Walt Whitman. It will have its consumption when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication.

 

 

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The Role of Instruction in Encouraging Civic Engagement

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The Florida Joint Center for Citizenship is quite proud to be a member of Florida’s Partnership for Civic Learning. One of the most promising research projects that the Partnership has undertaken is to explore the role of classroom experience in student civic participation. In other words, are students more likely to engage in civic life if they learn about civics in a classroom with a variety of instructional practices? This is a question that we believe deserves an answer, as it can help districts, schools, teachers, and other stakeholders what quality civics instruction should look like. And it is such an important one for Florida and the nation.

In the spring of 2015, the Lou Frey Institute administered the Civic Attitude and Engagement Survey to 7th grade students enrolled in Miami-Dade, Clay, and St. Lucie County schools here in Florida. 7,436 students in 75 middle schools across these three districts were surveyed. It should be pointed out here that a huge amount of the data sample was drawn from Miami-Dade schools, in part because of certain time and district issues. 88% of the schools that took part were in Miami-Dade, 10.7% in Clay County, and 1.3% in St. Lucie County. We are grateful to all those that participated.

The survey itself consisted of 20 items of question blocks that focused on a number of areas connected to civic attitudes, knowledge, dispositions, and engagement. Ultimately, we want to provide districts with a tool that would connect completion of Florida’s 7th grade civics course to student (1) civic proficiency and readiness for future engagement as informed citizens; (2) commitment to democratic values and rights; (3) knowledge of current events; (4) efficacy/self-confidence about one’s ability to contribute to society; and (5) experience with recommended pedagogies for civics. We hope to expand the number of participants in this survey, and to provide this as a yearly examination of what is happening in civic education classrooms.

So, what did this first offering of the survey find? Let’s take a look.

Learning in Classroom

learning This is, perhaps, no surprise. The more students are engaged in the practices of civic life through classroom instruction, the more they are likely to engage in the practices of civic life outside of the classroom. Of course, there are caveats that must be taken into account when considering this data. For example, it is highly unlikely that 10% of students are taking part in debates every day. I do not find it surprising however that 40% of students said that they NEVER engage in debate in the classroom, and that 58% of students never participate in a mock trial (though students in Florida are SUPPOSED to experience the jury process. See SS.7.C.2.3—Experience the responsibilities of citizens at the local, state, or federal levels) . In my experience, some teachers are uncomfortable with the structure of debates and simultations and the possibility that there could be controversial (and possibly job-threatening, especially in a state with no tenure) topics involved. And of course, there is the time factor!

It is important to note having even one visitor from the community seemed to have a positive impact on broader civic engagement. This suggests to us that perhaps the FJCC should work on making that more possible (hint: we are).

Best Bang for Your Buck 

best impact

So, what sorts of activities did seem to have the greatest impact on promoting student engagement? Preliminary review and analysis of survey data suggests that, as mentioned above, having a visitor from the community come to a class was huge. These visitors, of course, should be connected in some way to civic life (perhaps a mayor, city manager, council member, school board member, elections supervisor, etc). Naturally, actually participating in some sort of civic project was huge, as students are more likely to continue engaging in civic life once they have been out in the community. Personally, I expected a greater correlation with playing civics-oriented games (in this case, likely to have been iCivics), but I suspect that some of that could depend on how the game is actually used in class, and how often it is used. This is an area for further research on our part.

Best Practices

best practices

Best Practices in Civics, at least according to the most recent research from our friends at CIRCLE , Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, and others, tends to emphasize the Six Proven Practices in civic learning:

1. Classroom Instruction: Schools should provide instruction in civics & government, history, economics, geography, law, and democracy. Formal instruction in these subjects increases civic knowledge and increases young people’s tendency to engage in civic and political activities over the long term. However, schools should avoid teaching only rote facts about dry procedures, which is unlikely to benefit students and may actually alienate them from civic engagement.

2. Discussion of Current Events and Controversial Issues: Schools should incorporate discussion of current local, national, and international issues and events in to the classroom, particularly those that young people view as important to their lives. When students have an opportunity to discuss current issues in a classroom setting, they tend to have a greater interest in civic life and politics as well as improved critical thinking and communication skills.

3. Service-Learning: Schools should design and implement programs that provide students with the opportunity to apply what they learn through performing community service that is linked to the formal curriculum and classroom instruction.

4. Extracurricular Activities: Schools should offer opportunities for young people to get involved in their schools or communities outside of the classroom. Studies show that students who participate in extracurricular activities in school remain more civically engaged then those who did not, even decades later.

5. School Governance: Schools should encourage meaningful student participation in school governance. Giving students more opportunities to participate in the management of their classrooms and schools builds their civic skills and attitudes.

6. Simulations of Democratic Processes: Schools should encourage students to participate in simulations of democratic processes and procedures. Evidence shows that simulations of voting, trials, legislative deliberation and democracy, leads to heightened civic/political knowledge and interest.

As the chart suggests, engaging students in a greater number of school and classroom-oriented civic practice opportunities tends to encourage greater engagement. Is there a point at which we receive diminishing returns however? Do students who might otherwise fall on the low end of civic engagement suddenly jump to moderate or high levels if they take part in all six elements of the proven practices? Just how can we get a control group for this? No one wants to, not should they want to, provide future citizens with a lower quality civic education for the sake of further research. Nonetheless, this remains an area of inquiry that we need to further explore.

Outcomes

particoi

So, what does it all mean. Basically, engaging students in civic practice, even to a low degree, encourages further participation within the broader community!  Now, we must consider that all of this information we have discussed relies on self-reported student data, and the Lake Woebegon Effect should always be in the back of our minds. Still, there are promising methods which can encourage greater student engagement in civic life; teachers just need to do them, and curriculum should be written in such a way that we give students that opportunity.

This is, certainly, a great deal to take in. The Partnership for Civic Learning is eager to continue this research and to see how these findings compare to data gathered from the next iteration and administration of the survey, especially outside the three districts that took part here. We are in the process of developing a brand new website that will share Partnership for Civic Learning research and projects, and this post will be updated to reflect where you can find this entire infographic, among other things.


two theories of American political parties

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Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have almost nothing in common, except that each campaign is now struggling with its respective party over the rules for selecting and binding delegates. Google News finds these recent headlines: “Trump backers: ‘There will be war’ over disputed delegates,” “Superdelegate system favors Hillary Clinton, say Bernie Sanders voters”–and more than 100,000 more.

Many people will take a side in this argument depending on who they want to win the nomination. They don’t necessarily have an opinion about parties in general. But some Sanders and Trump voters may believe–as a general principle–that the major parties should play very limited roles. That stance is consistent with other aspects of their candidates’ general worldviews. In that case, they will have principled (not merely tactical) reasons to want to strip the parties of discretion.

There are at least two general and current theories of political parties in the US.

On the older view, a party is an association in civil society. It is entitled to organize itself according to its own rules, and people will join if they agree or can stay away if they don’t. Like all associations, a party should consider rules that empower its leaders and core members over casual participants. For one thing, associations want to reward dedicated service. One reason that Democrats have Superdelegates is to make sure that their most devoted members–the ones who have given lots of time to the party itself–can attend and vote at the Convention. Second, like other associations, a party can select individuals to be trustees of its long-term interests. In acting as trustees, the leaders are empowered to check majorities to protect what they consider the best interests of the association. So Republican Rules Committee members who block Trump can argue that they are protecting the GOP.

On the newer view, the parties simply manage the first stage of a two-stage electoral process. In the US, we could use nonpartisan general elections in which all qualified candidates appeared together on the ballot. But then, in most elections, no one would get a majority, and we’d either have to organize a run-off election for the two top vote-getters or allow a person with well under 50% of the vote to take office. Instead, we structure elections so that people first have to compete within one party, and then the parties’ nominees square off in November, producing (usually) a clear winner. Insofar as this is simply a mechanism for organizing a two-stage election, the parties are responsible to the whole public for managing an open, equitable process. The candidate with the most primary votes should always win each party’s primary, and probably the primary should be open to anyone regardless of party registration. That allows any citizen to exercise an equal right to vote in a two-stage election.

Note that the second theory would be appealing to anyone who holds the view of the American Framers or French republican revolutionaries–that parties are odious factions that shouldn’t really exist at all. If parties evolve into highly regulated means for managing two-stage elections, they will cease to be factions, in the bad sense. But then it would be odd that in addition to managing one stage of our election system, they are also expected to campaign for candidates and issues.

The theory of parties as voluntary associations sustained a heavy–and well-deserved–blow when the Supreme Court made a series of rulings against discriminatory practices within the Democratic Party. The Texas party, for instance, had restricted primary voting to whites on the basis that it was a private association devoted to white supremacy. Thurgood Marshall argued successfully against that rule in Smith v Allwright (1944), in which the Court found:

The United States is a constitutional democracy. Its organic law grants to all citizens a right to participate in the choice of elected officials without restriction by any state because of race.  This grant to the people of the opportunity for choice is not to be nullified by a state through casting its electoral process in a form which permits a private organization to practice racial discrimination in the election.

That was only one of a long series of cases, and I am not well informed about all the constitutional issues. However, I think that Smith v Allright is consistent with both theories of parties that I outlined above. One reading of the case is that parties are private associations that can make their own rules; they just cannot discriminate on the basis of race (or other constitutionally relevant characteristics that may arise in other cases). An alternative reading is that the parties now fulfill a state function in our “constitutional democracy,” and they must fully honor the equal rights of all voters. Then any rule or practice that stands in the way of open primaries and majority rule would be unconstitutional.

The courts have not gone so far as reach that second conclusion. What we have in practice is a hybrid. Parties are voluntary associations in civil society that are allowed to protect their own interests and favor their core members. Yet they are seen as performing an essential function for the democracy as a whole and must honor democratic principles. That means there is room for constant debate about party rules, and the disagreement is not just about who should be nominated but also about what kind of thing a party should be.

See also my article from last week, “The waning influence of American political parties,” in The Conversation and in US News.

The Problem of Natural Evil, Charity, and Free Trade

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I’ve recently been arguing for the comprehensible beauty of theological fatalism. The standard response to the problem of evil is that evil is the result of human willing: thus the Holocaust or American racism cannot be laid at the feet of an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly benevolent God. But I think this seriously ignores the problem of natural evil.

In a world that is literally full of unexplained and uncontrolled phenomena, there’s something sensible in taking the attitude that God’s will requires submission and respect in the face of suffering. If the best guess you’ve got about the fundamental truths of the universe is that nature (and Nature’s God) is capricious and inexplicable, then your attitude to that caprice is going to matter a lot. Can you love your fate without understanding it? Can you avoid telling just-so stories of desert and blaming the sufferer for her suffering? Non-karmic theological fatalism has the major theme that the world is love-able despite the fact that it is full of mysterious natural atrocities.

The predominance of human-caused evils like genocide and slavery have only rivaled natural evils for a few centuries; the long human time span is overwhelmed with misfortunes that could not be understood or even effectively planned against, only endured. Today, it makes sense to try to give a different account, one that enables intervention and prevention. But that modern perspective is rooted in our relatively limited success in rendering explicable and changeable the tremendous amount of suffering that surrounds us.

And there’s still quite a lot of it. I usually only discuss global poverty in the context of utilitarian arguments for rich-world charity obligations. But in fact there’s good reason to think that these rich-world obligations extend infinitely further to an imnipotent and omniscient God. If I can and should save a child in Pakistan or Nepal by forgoing a cell phone upgrade, think how much greater the obligation would be for an omnipotent God.

In 1990, the global under-five mortality rate was 12.7 million annually. Today it is 6.3 million. Because it’s hard to think in terms of such large numbers, I often describe that change this way: every day in 1990, 34,000 children under five died, mostly from easily-treated poverty-related diseases; today it’s more like 17,000. Nearly half of these deaths are directly attributable to undernutrition; other causes include malaria, diarrhea (from unsanitary water,) and asthma (from dung-based indoor cooking fires.) This is pretty obviously evil.

It is probably the case that the contemporary rich could alleviate much of this through charitable action (although this is significantly less effective than we’d like.) In any case, these child deaths could be attributable to human willing, specifically the inaction of rich countries. Yet, even to the extent that that is true today, humanity has not been rich enough to afford to address poverty-related disease for the vast majority of human history.

While it’s hard to measure historical child mortality, estimates suggest something like 300 to 500 child deaths per 1000 live births in pre-industrial societies. That means the 1/3 to 1/2 of all children born would die before their fifth birthday; this even extends to newly industrializing societies: that’s the rate that was observed in Europe through the 19th Century. For every person born under modern conditions, it’s likely that about 15 were born and died in pre-modern times. So roughly 100 billion people have been born and died before the currently living 7 billion. Probably 30 to 50 billion of them died before their fifth birthday. (It’s somewhat surprising that anyone could believe that their God would deplore abortion, given God’s role in this mass infanticide.)

What’s more, it turns out that even if our newfound global wealth enables charitable alleviation of natural evil, these efforts are themselves quite difficult and expensive, and often have very bad unintended side-effects. Often it seems we are forced to respond to this tremendous evil with very imperfect efforts: gifts tend to be less effective than economic development, and competitive global trade has done more than anything else to reduce under-five mortality.

Here’s a sentence I think most of my readers will reject, but I’m never impressed by their reasons: we’ve never found a compassionate system that is as effective as competitive markets for alleviating the specific evil of child mortality, even if it comes with a host of other evils.

In 1969, China alone had 2.3 million deaths for children under-five. In 2012, only 0.2 million children under-five died. That’s directly attributable to US trade with China. Yet we are frequently reminded of how much disruption and inequality that has caused without celebrating the benefits. These policies are described as “off-shoring” or “exporting American jobs.” It’s almost certainly driven massive domestic inequalities that are currently disrupting our democracies. Yet the role of trade in reducing child mortality strikes me as often ignored in these debates.

This is supposed to be something upon which Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump agree: that we should massively reduce trade with countries like China, not to mention Pakistan, India, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Yet those five countries are the ones with the highest child mortality. India and Nigeria alone account for half of the 17,000 under-five deaths each year. Even newly-rich trade-enemy China is still the fifth largest source of child mortality, with twice the under-five mortality rate of most industrialized societies.

Thus, the problem of natural evil strikes me as good evidence that the omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent God does not exist; such a God would never force us to choose between the evils of capitalism and the evils of watching our children die. Yet if we truly live in such a tragic world, I doubt we should countenance trade protectionism until we can identify an alternate way to address child mortality.

The Dartmouth Conference (Connections 2015)

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The five-page article, The Dartmouth Conference by Harold Saunders and Philip Stewart was published Fall 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter, “Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”. Saunders and Stewart describe how the Dartmouth Conference came to be a long-time ongoing dialogue between the US and Russia since 1959. Read an excerpt of the article below and find Connections 2015 available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

KF_Connections 2015From the article…

[The] Dartmouth [Conference] is designed not only to reflect American public thinking to our Russian/Soviet partners, but also to share with the American public insights about the experiences, ideas, and thinking behind Russian policy and behavior gleaned from the dialogue. The Americans tend to see a two-way relationship—on the one hand, nearly all US participants accept as part of their responsibility to raise concerns prevalent among the US public. These ranged in Soviet times from Soviet treatment of prominent authors, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, to pressing for the emigration of Soviet Jews, as well as other human rights issues; and today, from concerns about Russia’s role

…

The Dartmouth Conference produces three essential kinds of “products.” First, it produces creative proposals to convey to our governments and larger societies that address specific issues in our relationship. Many of these proposals have found constructive resonance in the policy arenas on each side. The March 2015 dialogue at Dartmouth XIX, for example, persuaded the participants that the absence of high-level working groups in those areas where the United States and Russia share interests, such as Syria, ISIS, and the arms control arena, is having a negative effect on the United States’ ability to address subjects clearly in our national interest, as well as the interests of our relationship with Russia.

Second, and as important, the Dartmouth Conference, by engaging many of the same individuals over time, enables each side to understand the experiences, the processes, and the reasoning that ultimately shape policy on each side. Especially today, this kind of in-depth understanding is sorely needed. At Dartmouth XIX, for instance, influential elements in the Russian leadership made clear that they continue to see Russia as a part of the broader Euro-Atlantic community. Russia continues to seek security arrangements within the Euro-Atlantic world that will permit Russia and its region to determine their own political, economic, and cultural future and looks at the future in that context. However, Russia also has its own regional relation- ships, interests, culture, history, traditions, and values for which it demands respect. It will defend these and will reject efforts by others to impose their models and values on Russia and its region.

Third, the diversity of backgrounds, experience, and outlooks represented in the Dartmouth delegations encourages the spread of insights into the “other” throughout our societies. Within a few days of the March 2015 conference, one American participant had been interviewed by CNN—one of a number of articles and blogs that appeared in other media.

…

The agenda at Dartmouth is cumulative, with issues raised but not fully explored at one session forming the basis for the next round. These include arms control, terrorism, regional issues, and opportunities for increased exchanges in fields like preventable diseases, journalism, religion, and others. Beyond these, at Dartmouth XX a central focus was deepening our exploration of how our Russian colleagues understand what they describe as “values” particular to Russia, how these values relate to their behavior toward neighbors, and how they impact their understanding of what it means in practical terms to be “part of the Euro- Atlantic economic, political, and security space” to which they claim to be committed. By pursuing this agenda with persistence, honesty, and integrity, the Dartmouth Conference will continue to play a vital role in enabling Russia and the United States, the only two powers with global reach and global commitments to collaborate more constructively to address critical global issues, from peace and security, to terrorism and development.

About Kettering Foundation and Connections
KF_LogoThe Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit operating foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. Kettering’s primary research question is, what does it take to make democracy work as it should? Kettering’s research is distinctive because it is conducted from the perspective of citizens and focuses on what people can do collectively to address problems affecting their lives, their communities, and their nation.

Each issue of this annual newsletter focuses on a particular area of Kettering’s research. The 2015 issue, edited by Kettering program officer Melinda Gilmore and director of communications David Holwerk, focuses on our yearlong review of Kettering’s research over time.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Saunders-Stewart_2015.pdf

Everyday Democracy Hosts Conn. Civic Health Town Hall

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The good people at Everyday Democracy – an NCDD member organization – recently shared an announcement about a great town hall event they are planning to host with the support a recent grant. The event will share the results of a recent study on Connecticut’s civic health and hopes to spark dialogue about making progress in the state’s public participation. We encourage you to read an excerpt of the announcement below or read the full original post here.

Connecticut Humanities Awards Public Presentation Grant to Everyday Democracy

EvDem LogoConnecticut Humanities has awarded Everyday Democracy a public presentation grant in the amount of $13,500 in support of its humanities program “Connecticut’s Civic Health: A Humanities Perspective.”

The grant will fund a Town Hall Meeting event scheduled for Thursday, June 9, 2016, at Connecticut’s Old State House.  At this event, community and civic leaders, public officials, and humanities scholars will engage in a conversation about civic health data and findings from the newly published 2016 Connecticut Civic Health Index report.

According to Martha McCoy, Executive Director of Everyday Democracy, “learning about civic health through the lens of the humanities helps us bring the past and present into perspective. As we reflect on the changing role of civic associations and participation and on what citizenship and the common good can mean, we can create a more vibrant and robust civic life in our state.”

The June 2016 event will feature the nationally renowned civic leader Eric Liu, co-author ofThe Gardens of Democracy, as keynote speaker; Ms. Martha McCoy of Everyday Democracy; and a distinguished panel that includes: The Honorable Secretary of the State Denise Merrill; Dr. Richard D. Brown, Professor Emeritus of History, UConn; Dr. Bilal D. Sekou, Professor of Political Science, University of Hartford; and Ms. Alma Maya, Latino community advocate and Former Bridgeport Town Clerk. The program will be moderated by award-winning journalist and producer Diane Smith and produced by The Connecticut Network (CT-N). It will be aired live-and live-streamed on CT-N and will accessible for viewing during the month of June through CT-N on demand.

The program will offer various humanities perspectives on the importance of civic health to the economic resiliency of Connecticut communities. It will also examine opportunities and barriers to civic participation and draw strategies and best practices from Mr. Liu’s talk and the panel discussion. Topics that will be addressed include the meaning of “great citizenship,” the importance of inclusive civic engagement and public participation, and the role of everyday people in finding solutions to local problems. The conversation will also highlight the essential voices of communities of color and young people in our state and will help concerned citizens and groups and associations from all sectors chart strategies and welcoming pathways for participation in public life.

The program draws from the underlying message of William D. Adams, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, that “the common good is central to democratic political theory and expresses both the right and the obligation of citizens to debate and determine the general welfare; it is the aspirational goal, the guiding ambition that anchors citizenship and participation in democratic politics.” Hence, the program will also create a space for learning on how the humanities can play a vital role in public life…

 

You can find the full version of this Everyday Democracy post at www.everyday-democracy.org/news/connecticut-humanities-awards-public-presentation-grant.

The Ethics of Personalization

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Near the beginning of the week, someone asked me about the ethics and effect of algorithms which filter your content for you; “helpfully” prioritizing those items which fit into your existing world view.

I was reminded of that question yesterday when I had an interesting and somewhat similar conversation with computer scientist Vagelis Papalexakis, whose work explores the way different people’s brains respond to various stimuli. Papalexakis discussed the possible implications for improving education: a classroom where teachers could tailor their lessons to the particular neural responses of their students.

While I can see the potential good in such technology, being somewhat cautious of the ills of human nature, I asked Papalexakis about the ethical implications – with access to student neural readings, what would stop ‘big brother’ from punishing children whose minds tend to wander?

While there’s no guaranteed way to prevent such abuse, Papalexakis rightly pointed to this as a broader ethical question – the ethics of personalization.

Filtering algorithms, for example, could easily be misused as tools for efficiently delivering propaganda. There is a value in having this personalization available, but there is also a risk.

What I find particularly interesting about the challenge of filtering is that it is not at all clear that there is a neutral solution to the problem.

In 2012, an estimated 2.5 billion gigabytes of data were generated every day – far more than we would expect ourselves to be able to handle. The reality is that some type of filtering is necessary – so the question becomes one of what type of filtering we think is best.

Imagine for a moment, the “things you wouldn’t enjoy…” filter. That is, rather than having an algorithm that tracks what you like and presents you with similar content, it tracks what you like an intentionally presents you with divergent views.

In theory, I would love to have this. It is a problem that we each tend to fall into our own little filter bubble, with little exposure to opposing views.

But, how would such a tool play out in practice? First, no algorithm can remove the need for human agency – I might be presented with opposing articles, but I would need to actually click on them.

This presents a real challenge for content providers who – even putting aside profit motive – need to serve their customers. If people don’t like the content that is being filtered for them, they will leave for a different service.

Furthermore, research indicates that even when interacting with conflicting information, people are likely to interpret the results with a bias that favors their initial view and even double down on their initial opinion.

So it’s not clear at all that changing a filtering algorithm in such a way is sufficient to relieve polarization and bias.

That’s not to say either, that we should just let filtering algorithms off the hook. They by no means a full solution to the challenges of information bias, but they do play a critical role in shaping the information atmosphere around us.

Markus Prior, for example, has show that when it comes to factual matters, a less-personalized media environment increases people’s political knowledge. On the other hand, he has also found that “there is no firm evidence that partisan media are making ordinary Americans more partisan.” So again, the personalization of the media environment is only part of the solution.

What does all this have to do with using brain scans to tailor information to recipients?

Well, I guess, we need to find ways to get all these moving pieces to work together. Personalization is good. It has real benefits and helps each focus on the signal in a sea of noise. But we should also be weary of too much personalization – a little noise and inefficiency should be intentionally built into the system. And, of course, we have to remember that we are our own agents in this work as well – systems of personalization can shape the broader context, but they cannot determine how we each choose to act.

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