Populism of this kind is a sharp challenge to conventional views which see populism as "us versus them" demagoguery. It also differs from dominant liberal and conservative frameworks used to interpret the Republican advance in the recent election.

Populism of this kind is a sharp challenge to conventional views which see populism as "us versus them" demagoguery. It also differs from dominant liberal and conservative frameworks used to interpret the Republican advance in the recent election.

Real populism is a politics of civic empowerment and deepening democracy. It weds strategies for challenging injustices and unaccountable power with programs of popular self-education and uplift, based on the premise that a commonwealth of freedom requires a commonwealth of citizens, to use the phrase of the 19-century African American poetess Frances Harper.

Populism of this kind is a sharp challenge to conventional views which see populism as "us versus them" demagoguery. It also differs from dominant liberal and conservative frameworks used to interpret the Republican advance in the recent election. Here are today's conventional views:

• The liberal interpretation. George Lakoff, a cognitive scientist who has helped make the concept of "framing," processing information through mental models, well-known, repeated his liberal frame to explain Democratic defeats in a blog essay, "Democratic Strategies Lost Big." In his view, Democrats got lost in the weeds of particular issues and forgot the bigger storyline. For Lakoff, the Democratic message is that our collective empathy is expressed through government. "For progressives, empathy is at the center of the very idea of democracy... a governing system in which citizens care about their fellow citizens and work through their government to provide public resource for all. Private life depends on... public resources."

Though Lakoff professes to be a voice in the wilderness, in fact progressive Democrats have been following his advice for years. At the Democratic convention in 2012, many voiced Lakoff's views almost word for word, arguing that "government is the one thing we all belong to." As Barney Frank, the liberal congressman from Massachusetts put it, "There are things that a civilized society needs that we can only do when we do them together, and when we do them together that's called government."

• The conservative interpretation. Yuval Levin, a prominent young Republican intellectual, skewered the Democrats during 2012 for exactly this "government-centered" view. He described its advocates as those who "would like to extend the web of federal benefits as far and wide as possible" and "make Americans dependent on government beneficence and the liberal politicians who bestow it." Levin also called for Republicans to reject go it alone individualism and remember their civic roots.

He proposed in the Weekly Standard, October 8, 2012, that conservative philosophy believes

What happens in the space between the individual and the government is vital... Local knowledge channeled by evolving social institutions -- from civic and fraternal groups to traditional religious establishments, to charitable enterprises and complex markets -- will make for better material outcomes and a better common life.

As Sam Tanenhaus described in the New York Times magazine last July 2, Republicans were listening. And according to the New York Times columnist David Brooks, Republican success in fact depended on remembering civic roots. "Republicans didn't establish this dominant position because they are unrepresentative outsiders," Brooks argued.

Republicans... re-established their party's traditional personality. The beau ideal of American Republicanism is the prudent business leader who is active in the community, active at church, and fervently devoted to national defense.

Populism, a politics of civic empowerment, shares with liberals a concern for justice and public resources. But it puts people -- not government -- at the center of the action, seeing government as a potentially empowering partner. It shares with conservatives a concern for "middle spaces" between individuals and government. But it sees these as potentially empowering civic sites, seedbeds for constructive social change.

As I argued previously in "Higher Education and the Politics of Free Spaces," it also emphasizes the transformative qualities of middle spaces when they become free spaces.

After the Civil War, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an organizer among African Americans for the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). As Sara Evans and I describe in our book, Free Spaces, the WCTU used the phrase "do everything." WCTU civic activities, from homeless shelters and clinics to schools, clubs and self-help groups, generated a vast array of free spaces. In these women of diverse backgrounds developed confidence, public skills and public assertiveness, crucial foundations for the women's suffrage movement.

Harper drew on such experiences to argue that African Americans must organize themselves and develop themselves to complete the work of Reconstruction. She most certainly would have understood Dorothy Cotton's song, "We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For," expressing the spirit of the free spaces in the 1960s civil rights movement which shaped me as a young college student.

On April 14, 1875, Harper addressed the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. She issued a challenge to injustice:

Ladies and gentlemen: The great problem to be solved by the American people... is this: Whether or not there is strength enough in democracy, virtue enough in our civilization, and power enough in our religion to have mercy and deal justly with four millions of people but lately translated from the old oligarchy of slavery to the new commonwealth of freedom; and upon the right solution of this question depends in a large measure the future strength, progress and durability of our nation.

She wedded this challenge to a call for collective self-development:

The most important question before us colored people is not simply what the Democratic Party may do against us or the Republican Party do for us; but what are we going to do for ourselves? What shall we do toward developing our character, adding our quota to the civilization and strength of the country, diversifying our industry, and practicing those lordly virtues that conquer success and turn the world's dread laugh into admiring recognition?

Harper's vision of people-centered, empowering, educative politics infused the free spaces and the uplifting rhetoric which I experienced in the black freedom movement.

Once again, we urgently need such people's politics and the vision of a deeper, more vibrant democracy.

Oct. 16 at Tufts University, the White House, working with the Department of Education, the Corporation for National and Community Service, and Tuft's Tisch College of Citizenship, organized a gathering on higher education's civic purposes. It was called "The White House Civic Learning and National Service Summit."

Alan Solomont, former ambassador to Spain and now dean of Tisch College, gave an impassioned opening address on how democracy is endangered. Peter Levine, Associate Dean of Research and director of the CIRCLE research center, played a central role in organizing the meeting.

The meeting on Oct. 16 brought together about 50 White House aides, agency officials and staff, higher education leaders and community activists and civic leaders. Jonathan Greenblatt, director of citizen participation in the White House, and Robert Rodriguez, Obama education policy adviser, gave opening remarks.

The title of the gathering may have revealed a shrinking of the sense of possibility in the administration. The name of the event, "Civic Learning and National Service," is smaller than the earlier meeting on which it built, "For Democracy's Future," at the White House in 2012.

But the discussions were lively. Jamienne Studley, Deputy Under Secretary for Higher Education, made a strong pitch for the continuing bully pulpit role of administration officials in promoting change.

Studley chaired a panel which including Carol Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and Richard Freedland, Commission of Higher Education in Massachusetts. Both discussed what has happened since the earlier White House meeting, January 12, 2012, when AAC&U unveiled the report, A Crucible Moment, commissioned by the Department of Education, calling for civic learning to become "pervasive" in colleges and universities. Perhaps the most significant development in the intervening time was the strategic plan developed among public universities in Massachusetts, which calls for pervasive civic learning and will evaluate presidents' performance based on progress toward that goal.

"For Democracy's Future" also launched the American Commonwealth Partnership (ACP), a one year alliance to commemorate the 150th anniversary of land grant colleges.

ACP developed strategies to revitalize the democracy story, purposes, and practices of higher education. In the breakout session I participated in, chaired by Andrew Seligsohn, new president of Campus Compact, I described these democracy initiatives. These include the initiative on civic science detailed in a recent blog, Citizen Alum, an effort to broaden alumni's roles coordinated by Julie Ellison of the University of Michigan, and the forthcoming book collection from Vanderbilt University Press, Democracy's Education: Public Work, Citizenship, and the Future of Colleges and Universities.

They also included a conversation in communities across the country on the purposes of higher education, "Shaping Our Future," undertaken with the National Issues Forums, the Kettering Foundation, and Martha Kanter, Under Secretary for Post Secondary Education. We launched "Shaping Our Future" on September 4, 2012.

My take-away from the October 16th meeting was that the civic engagement movement in higher education has a more urgent sense of the importance of higher education's contribution to revitalizing and deepening the democratic story, purposes, and practices of colleges and universities than two years ago. My group strongly supported the proposal of Barbara Vacarr, past president of Goddard College, that presidents need to articulate a bold vision of their colleges' democracy role. Participants also agreed strongly with the remarks of Carolyne Abdullah of Everyday Democracy that faculty need to learn skills of collaborative partnership with communities, becoming democratic role models for students.

Today the democracy identity of colleges is largely counter-cultural. While many pundits express alarm these days about higher education and its purposes, few mention any relation to democracy.

In contrast, the Commission on Higher Education created by President Truman declared in its 1947 report, Higher Education for American Democracy, "the first and most essential charge upon higher education is that at all levels and in all its fields of specialization, it shall be the carrier of democratic values, ideals, and process." This reflected a broad national discussion growing out of land grant colleges, the City College of New York, community colleges and elsewhere that highlighted higher education's multiple public roles.

For all the service-learning projects, community research and other worthy efforts over the last two decades connecting higher education to communities and the society, the democracy history and purposes of higher education are now largely forgotten. Most institutions advertise themselves as tickets to individual success.

At the Summit I described "The Changing World of Work: What's Higher Education's Role?" the forthcoming dialogue on how colleges can be resources for communities in dealing with radical changes in work and workplaces. "The Changing World of Work" will be launched by the Kettering Foundation, Augsburg College, and the National Issues Forums on January 21 at the National Press Club.

Our earlier dialogue, "Shaping Our Future," and the listening process for "The Changing World of Work" have involved thousands of citizens. We found widespread sentiment that the current policy debate is too short term. It narrows the focus to immediate issues like student debt, distance learning, and vocational education and neglects ways in which higher education can prepare students for a rapidly changing world.

We discovered that public knowledge of the once vibrant democracy story of higher education has largely disappeared, but there is hunger for this narrative.

Participants in the White House civic summit on October 16 believed that it is imperative for higher education to reaffirm its democracy purposes and educate about the democracy-building story of higher education. Our discussions with citizens outside higher education suggest that people may respond.

This means that leaders and others associated with higher education will need to communicate a much deeper and richer understanding of democracy itself, in which citizens are the central agents.

As Solomont intimated, democracy's advance can no longer be taken for granted, in the United States or around the world.

Higher education needs to step up to the plate to help revitalize both the meaning and the practice of democracy.

Harry Boyte coordinated the American Commonwealth Partnership in 2011 and 2012.

The meeting on October 16 brought together about 50 White House aides, agency officials and staff, higher education leaders and community activists and civic leaders.

The meeting on October 16 brought together about 50 White House aides, agency officials and staff, higher education leaders and community activists and civic leaders.

Science is not value neutral. It depends on democratic values of cooperation, free inquiry, and a commonwealth of knowledge.