Author Archives: Peter

game theory, naval warfare, and Derek Walcott

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I am in Washington, DC but remembering our winter vacation in Les Saintes, near Guadeloupe, because I am reading Derek Walcott’s astoundingly good epic, Omeros.

In the channel with three islets christened “Les Saintes”
in a mild sunrise the ninth ship of the French line
flashed fire at The Marlborough, but swift pennants

from Rodney’s flagship resignalled his set design
to break from the classic pattern … (XV)

Walcott is referring here to a major naval battle in 1782. When we saw the dioramas of the battle in the local history museum, I wondered why the “classic pattern” was for enemy fleets to form neat parallel lines and blast away at each other.

BattleOfVirginiaCapes

Was this some kind of courtly custom of the Baroque era? (Walcott writes, “the young midshipman … thought there was no war  /as courtly as a sea-battle.”) I think game theory offers a better explanation. The opposing players chose the best available strategies, each on the assumption that his opponent would make the best choice for him–which is what game theorists call a Nash Equilibrium.

Recall that sailing vessels cannot maneuver with perfect control because they are driven by the wind. Most of their lethal fire is directed from their sides. If they independently choose their own courses during a battle, they can easily get in each others’ way. In principle, each could be given complex directions from some central point, but inter-ship communication was badly limited before radio. It therefore made the most sense to set one simple rule that would guarantee coordination. The inflexible rule of the Royal Navy was to form a line of evenly spaced vessels.

Lord Howe’s Explanatory Instructions (1799) explained, “The chief purposes for which a fleet is formed in line of battle are: that the ships may be able to assist and support each other in action; that they may not be exposed to the fire of the enemy’s ships greater in number than themselves; and that every ship may be able to fire on the enemy without risk of firing into the ships of her own fleet.”

If one fleet had a good reason to form a line of evenly spaced ships, so did its opponent. Both wanted to sail in front of the other’s line, or “cross the T,” so as to be able to rake the enemy’s ships without receiving fire in return. But if two fleets are both trying to cross in front of each other, what you get is a pair of parallel lines.

The result of such a battle was pretty predictable, a function of the number of guns on each side. That meant that a clearly smaller fleet had a strong incentive to avoid battle or, if forced into it, to break the line and take a chance at prevailing in a chaotic melee. A melee could also develop by accident as a result of weather conditions, geographical obstacles, or sheer chaos. At the Battle of the Saintes (1782), the lines got mixed up. Walcott says this was Admiral Rodney’s plan, his “set design.” Wikipedia says the reason was a gusty wind that broke up the lines. Whether by chance or design, the Royal Navy ended up killing 8,000 French to their own losses of just 243 men.

Trafalgar (1805) was another famous counterexample. Nelson deliberately swooped in to break the enemy line, despite the grave risk of being raked by their broadsides, because he had a much greater incentive than the Franco-Spanish fleet to achieve a decisive result that day and was willing to take his chances. Nelson played the chicken game and didn’t swerve, for which he paid with his life but gets to stand on top of a huge column in central London to this day.

In 1913, when he was First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill faced the accusation that he had impugned the traditions of the Royal Navy. He replied: “And what are they? Rum, sodomy and the lash.” Maybe he should have said, ” … and the Nash.”

See also the gift economy of Beowulf and some thoughts about game theory.

Where we vote affects how we vote. So where should we vote?

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According to a summary article by Ben Pryor in The Conversation/Scientific American, people’s votes are affected by the voting location. Voting in a church “prime[s] significantly higher conservative attitudes—and negative attitudes toward gay men and lesbians.” On the other hand, “individuals voting in Arizona schools were more likely to support a ballot measure that increased the state’s sale tax to finance education.”

Pryor draws the conclusion that we should vote by mail–which, for most people, would mean voting at home. One objection is that home isn’t a neutral place. It will bring its own biases. I don’t know whether voting at home has been experimentally compared to voting at (say) a school, but let’s imagine that being home makes people more resistant to taxes. Why is that the most authentic, or most rational, or most autonomous perspective? To prefer the home seems to assume a rather contentious view of the relation between the public and private sphere. In political theorists’ terms, it’s a hyper-liberal view as opposed to a republican or communitarian one. Arguably, you should vote where you are primed to think about other people.

But isn’t it problematic that a church, for instance–with all the deliberate persuasive power of its iconography and architecture–should be the required context for voting in a secular republic? Well, maybe. But I don’t accept the view that citizens can be or should be disembodied and culture-free. The Progressive movement that achieved the secret ballot envisioned the ideal voter as a rational calculator of best interests (either his own interests or the nation’s). Progressive voting reforms were probably helpful, on the whole, but the guiding ideal seems both naive and a little unattractive. What, after all, is in our interests once we strip away values and group-memberships?

The opposite view–just for the sake of argument–is that we construct communities that are redolent of values. That’s why they are full of religious buildings, public structures with inscriptions and allusive architectural styles, businesses that promise various versions of the good life, and even natural spaces that we interpret as having moral significance. Communities govern themselves by making decisions, and a vote is one important moment for decision-making. Each person’s vote is profoundly influenced by the community context. Yet individuals push back. While the average voter may be influenced in a conservative direction by voting in a church, some are probably alienated by the context and pushed in the opposite way.

On every day, not just on Election Day, the community changes as people build, alter, and decorate its physical spaces and communicate in more ephemeral ways. For instance, the church in which a polling place may be located was built by people who wanted to change  local values and commitments. They were not satisfied with whatever religious structures and institutions already existed, but chose to make a new one. That was part of an endless process of community-formation. The material with which we reason and choose is given to us by the community so far, but we can change it one piece at a time. The real me doesn’t emerge when I am inside the home that my family has privately decorated. I am really “me” everywhere I go, and that means that I am always being shaped by my context and often pushing back.

See also: on voting by mail and voting and punishment: Foucault, biopower, and modern elections.

the question each citizen must ask

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(New York City) “The Question Each Citizen Must Ask” is my new piece in Educational Leadership, the magazine for k-12 school administrators (vol. 73, no. 6, March 2016, pp. 30-34. It begins:

When universal public education was invented in the United States, visionary proponents like Horace Mann believed they were building the first large-scale democracy in the history of the world. They realized that citizens would have to be educated to play their parts in a system that depended on millions of wise and active participants. They made a courageous bet that children could be taught to make democracy work.

I argue that civic education must equip students to ask the citizen’s core question, and I explain what that is and what pedagogies are most promising. (The article is also available via academia.edu).

the long march through institutions–for civic renewal

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(Baltimore, MD) I am here for a panel on “Systems Change and Culture of Health” at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health conference. My great fellow panelists were Sonal Shah (Georgetown), Derwin Dubose (New Majority Community Labs), and Karen Matusoka (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). The audience seemed to be composed mostly of health practitioners and policymakers who were already strongly committed to three goals:

  1. Doing a better job of understanding the needs, priorities, and circumstances of truly diverse people by engaging them in influencing health interventions and policies. For instance, instead of telling a specific group of new immigrants how to improve their health, pay attention to what they already know and want.
  2. Supporting solutions that require collective action by residents. Dubose brought up a situation in which individuals couldn’t exercise in a local park because it was too dangerous, but a group started tai chi exercises there every day at noon. Only a coordinated strategy would work, and coordination requires organization, trust, leadership, and skill. This point is related to the previous one, because community members would be the first to know about the danger of the park and the popularity of tai chi. Not only is a coordinated strategy essential, but only the participants are likely to be able to invent it.
  3. Recognizing and enhancing the civic capacity of whole communities to achieve better  health. For instance, Robert Sampson’s major book Great American City shows that Chicago neighborhoods achieve better outcomes for their children if the adults are organized and active in civic life.

Several participants noted that these were shared principles in the room–but none of the ideas are really new. In fact, a roughly similar discussion could have occurred 50 years ago, during the 1960s movement to make health (and research) more “community-based.” That impulse still remains marginal, which can be discouraging.

I would note that some relevant practices and networks have grown and strengthened over the past half century. (See, e.g., Community-Campus Partnerships for Health and the networks it represents.) But I would also acknowledge the powerful hold of a technocratic model in which solutions are developed at the “bench” and implemented at the “bedside.” That model is deeply rooted in modern epistemology and reinforced by the prestige of technology. It serves both governmental and corporate bureaucracies. So it is not easy to shake, and may even be worse than it was in the 1960s.

Policy changes can help. If–as one example–the National Institutes of Health funds community-based research, we get community-based research. But even the best-intentioned policies don’t implement themselves. They require dedicated and persistent work, everywhere from the national or state agency to the street level.

Civic engagement by communities can help. Why do Chicago neighborhoods get better outcomes–regardless of race and class–if they are organized and active? I would propose that this is partly because they support and compel local institutions, such as schools, police districts, and hospitals, to engage with them better. Every Chicago neighborhood has the same police chief, school superintendent, and mayor, but some neighborhoods receive more responsive government at the local level. Note that residents are not organized in specific policy domains, such as health or public safety. They are organized in multi-purpose civic and religious associations and networks. Those are essential for driving change through institutions.

Finally, we need effective organizing within the professions, a strategy that my friends Harry Boyte and Albert Dzur have advocated–and practiced–effectively for years. Like any good organizing effort, this strategy begins with recognizing the assets and interests of the people in question. Physicians, health administrators, and academic researchers are people, too. Lecturing them that they should be less arrogant and more sensitive to diversity may fail for the same reasons that it usually fails to lecture people to eat more vegetables.

But health professionals have interests that can be tapped–for instance, interests in getting better results and escaping social isolation. Most of all, they can develop genuine skills for engaging the public better. That is hard, complex, challenging work. It requires evidence and analysis. When we tell professionals to be less professional–to diminish their sense of expertise and authority–I think it goes over like asking people to eat their broccoli. Even if they want to comply, all the incentives work against it. But when we reward them for exercising advanced professional skills in community engagement, we treat them as assets and give them ways to excel. Combined with policy changes and grassroots pressure from outside, this organizing effort within professions may begin to change systems at a large scale.

Bourdieu in the college admissions office

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In the college admissions office of a very highly respected liberal arts college, the admissions officer asks the prospective applicants what they think they might like to study. The first two teenagers say “business,” which is not in the curriculum of this college. Presumably, they and their families want them to get ahead, they see business as the path to success in America, and they assume that attending a highly selective and famous college is a step to business leadership.

Meanwhile, other families in the room also want our kids to get ahead. But we know that there is quite a different pathway that involves intentionally not studying anything as practical and applied as business. If you’re on this path, you know that the right thing to value is a liberal arts education. That will always mark you as someone desirable to employ at businesses and other organizations run by fellow graduates of elite liberal arts colleges.

Paging Dr. Bourdieu, who would explain that a ruling class reproduces itself by defining a certain habitus, or structure of values, that is difficult to acquire and that identifies its bearers as members of the ruling class. The purpose, then, of a highly selective liberal arts college is to transmit the habitus.

That is a hard diagnosis to avoid when sitting in an admissions office. I think there’s a lot of truth to it, although I’d note some complications.

First, there are many paths to wealth, power, and social standing. It’s been said that Washington is full of Harvard grads working for Ohio State grads, and if there’s still truth to that, it’s because America has many centers of power–financial, industrial, military, and political. Bourdieu’s theory may apply more neatly to the France of the grandes écoles than to our stratified–but polycentric–nation.

Second, what you learn from a liberal arts education has incalculable value. It’s not like mastering court etiquette so that you can mingle with aristocrats. You’re learning quantum mechanics, Japanese history, psychometrics–and Bourdieu. These attainments contribute to a good life. They also encourage a range of careers. Many liberal arts graduates just use the habitus to rise in the social hierarchy, but others are inspired to work in kindergarten classrooms, refugee camps, and monasteries. It’s interesting to speculate why the ruling class has chosen rites of passage for its young that are not efficiently designed to produce new rulers. There’s a lot of leakage, as some graduates voluntarily choose not to compete for the top of the social hierarchy.

Third, by rewarding proficiency in the liberal arts, we create incentives to practice these arts at all stages of life. Meritocracy is a highly problematic concept–that is the main theme of this post. But it isn’t an empty idea. Students in a seminar room in a highly selective liberal arts institution really do practice the liberal arts at a remarkably high level. That is not because of their native excellence, but because they–and the adults who care about them–have spent the 18 years before college honing their skills. These kids have worked very hard, and so have their parents and teachers. Many of their peers haven’t made it to the elite colleges because they haven’t performed as well. One outcome is to mark a ruling class by giving them a set of difficult attainments, a habitus. Another outcome is to produce truly excellent scientists, poets, and teachers.

Finally, the people who run these institutions are not intentionally invested in reproducing a ruling class. At least at the level of conscious, deliberate intention, they are motivated by love of the liberal arts and by a sense that the college adds value and provides opportunities for upward mobility. They don’t want to admit and educate only the children of alumni and others like them. They are actually pleased to see students attain the habitus when their parents were far from having it. Diversity, inclusion, equity, and upward mobility are among the highest notional values of these institutions. Such values inspire the educators and administrators and legitimize the whole business. The result is a somewhat diverse actual student body in an institution that still pretty well fulfills the function that Pierre Bourdieu diagnosed.

teaching online civic engagement

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For several years, Joe Kahne and his colleagues have been conducting intensive research on young people’s use of digital media for politics and what that means for education. Their research has taken the form of large-scale youth surveys, interviews, and experiments. The following is a broad and detailed new article that pulls together much of their research and provides concrete examples of classroom practice:

Joseph Kahne, Erica Hodgin & Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, “Redesigning Civic Education for the Digital Age: Participatory Politics and the Pursuit of Democratic Engagement,” Theory & Research in Social Education, Volume 44, Issue 1, 2016, pp. 1-35 (open access)

The authors address two concerns that I have raised in previous work. First, “Many efforts to produce and circulate content will confront what Levine has termed ‘the audience problem’ (2008, p. 129). Simply put, many blogs or other digital content may get relatively few views and little or no response.” I would add that this is almost a logical inevitability because there aren’t enough eyeballs to allow millions of content-producers all to reach large audiences. As I can testify from years of experience, the median blog or video reaches just a few. The authors reply:

Of course, many off-line political activities also fail to engage many members of the public. We would classify a blog that addresses a political issue but has few readers an act of participatory politics just as we would classify a protest that people ignore as a political activity. That said, clearly, the power of public voice is diminished if one fails to reach a public. This reality highlights the need for educators to help set realistic expectations and to support and scaffold activities so that youth can more effectively produce and circulate political content.

Second, “a number of scholars (Levine, in press; Sifry, 2014) have detailed ways that individuals’ and non-institutionalized groups’ efforts to achieve greater voice by leveraging the power of the digital media often fail to prompt institutional change. Expressing caution, Milner (2010) wrote, ‘[youth who] turn their backs on [institutional] politics in favor of individual expression will continue to find their priorities at the top of society’s wish list–and at the bottom of the ‘to do’ list”(p. 5).” Here I would add that loose online movements are frequently defeated by disciplined organizations, such as corporations, armies, and security agencies. But the authors reply:

one might note that a wide range of significant change efforts ranging from #BlackLivesMatter, to the DREAMer movement, to the protests against SOPA, to the push for marriage equality have employed digital media in ways that changed public attitudes and that these changes have enabled new legislation. Still, the concern remains. Watkins (2014) noted, for example, that when it comes to digital media, youth are often “power users” (frequent users), but they are not necessarily “powerful users” (influential users). In order for youth to realize the full potential of participatory politics, they will frequently need to both understand and connect their efforts to institutional politics. Helping youth identify ways to build bridges from voice to influence is vitally important.

These are just two of many issues discussed in this extensive and deeply researched survey article.

civic education in the year of Trump: neutrality vs. civil courage

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In the minds of many dedicated civic educators, two deep instincts are clashing as Donald Trump dominates the news media and the Republican presidential race.

One instinct is to try to be as neutral as possible about issues and candidates. It’s dangerous for an arm of the state, a public school, to take sides on political issues. Citizens are forced to pay for public education. Kids are especially impressionable and form a captive audience in the public school classroom. Teachers have great power since they can influence students’ educational progress and economic success. Arguably, the most ethical way for a public school teacher to treat students and their families is as bearers of authentic political views that should be respected in the classroom. Furthermore, students can learn a great deal by wrestling with genuine ideological diversity. Arguing from diverse perspectives is a challenging educational practice that teaches reasoning, interpretation, and perspective-taking. Finally, we suffer from a particular problem today: ideological polarization and a failure to interact productively across partisan lines. The social studies classroom–as Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy show–almost always harbors ideological diversity and can be a precious place to cultivate productive discussions.

The other instinct is to preserve the constitutional republic by teaching students to honor and protect its core principles when they are threatened from within or without. The ultimate test of civic education is the graduate’s readiness to resist assaults on human rights and the rule of law–if necessary, with her life. We must learn to be upstanders, not bystanders. In the Federal Republic of Germany, this outcome is called “civil courage.” A measure of successful civic education might arise if a new authoritarian ordered a particular minority group to wear the equivalent of the Nazis’ yellow star. In that case, every citizen who had learned Zivilcourage would put the star on. In the US, civil courage is a central goal of certain civic education programs, such as Facing History and Ourselves (whose roots were in Holocaust education), but it’s also consistent with provisions in many state standards documents.

This year, one of our major parties is likely to nominate a man who has been called, by leading figures in his own party, a threat to fundamental constitutional principles and human rights. Under such circumstances, the two agendas I’ve presented above come into conflict.

For instance, normally I’d recommend k-12 teachers to assign their students to debate the issues in the presidential campaign. I think they should often assign students to sides so that they don’t just argue from their own beliefs. But would you assign a student of Mexican heritage or a Muslim student to take the side of Donald Trump? If not, why would you assign any student to that role?

In 2012, according to a CIRCLE poll, 72% of high school government teachers required their students to watch a presidential debate. I endorse that idea. But when the debate was like last night’s fiasco, how should the assignment be presented and how should the experience be debriefed? More than one of the candidates behaved in ways that would be completely unacceptable in an 8th grade classroom. Should the teacher note that?

Andy Sabl wrote some years ago:

Professors worship at the altar of “maybe.” We prize the intellectual courage to say, “I’m not sure what’s right.” In the process, we slight what the Germans have learned — the hard way — to call civil courage: saying that you do know what’s right even when those around you are getting it backward. Training students in supple thought, do we undermine decent character?

I agree, especially during the year of Trump. But it’s not easy to decide precisely what counts as an assault on essential values rather than an expression of free speech in a rough-and-tumble competitive democracy. In Germany, the label “civil courage” gets used for people who stand up for immigrants–and also for people who criticize immigrants in the face of what they decry as political correctness.

Some criteria for deciding when to be neutral and when to stand up for principles won’t quite work. For instance, I wouldn’t distinguish an acceptable “mainstream” from radical alternatives that should be beyond consideration. Donald Trump’s opinions have broad and deep roots in American culture. As a factual matter, they are mainstream. Besides, our political debate is too narrow; radical voices can be salutary. Bernie Sanders is not actually very radical, but he’s arguably further from the empirical mainstream than Donald Trump is, and I think that (at worst) Sanders is improving the national debate. I would object if teachers presented Sanders as some kind of threat because he challenges the status quo.

Also, it’s not Trump alone who uses propaganda–however you define that–or who ignores constitutional limits, or who holds some lives cheap. I am a defender of the current administration, but this president routinely orders drone strikes that kill innocent civilians in foreign countries. So if teachers should drop their neutrality and demonstrate civil courage against Trump, why not also against the current, center-left administration?

In sum, I think this issue is genuinely hard. Valid principles conflict. It would be a mistake for public schools to abandon the quest for neutrality and enter the political fray against the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. But they would also err if they taught students that it’s their responsibility to protect the republic and then presented a clear and present threat to the constitution as just another campaign. There are few sharp lines in politics, and good judgment usually requires deciding where on a continuum to make a stand. Teachers and schools should and will reach subtly different conclusions about the 2016 election, depending on their local communities’ norms and their students’ demographics and opinions, their personal commitments, and the way the campaign actually plays out. (Will the threat to constitutional rights become even more explicit, or much less so?) But I think everyone who has a role in educating the next generation of American citizens must at least think seriously about these tensions.

why political science dismissed Trump and political theory predicted him

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Political scientists and data-crunchers were almost unanimous in their authoritative predictions all summer and fall that Donald Trump was going nowhere. (Daniel Drezner has a nice summary.) Meanwhile, several political theorists and political philosophers were alarmed by Trump from the start (e.g, Jason Stanley, and others whom I follow on social media). It seems they were right, so score a point for political theory. But this case actually reveals interesting strengths and weaknesses of two ways of thinking about politics.

Empirical social science is based on data, which is by definition from the past (although sometimes including the very recent past, like this morning’s polls). To the extent that it is predictive, it derives patterns or trends from what has already happened. That is a very broad definition that can encompass research at any geographical or historical scale. It can describe research that is meant to be descriptive or predictive of the existing regime and power structure or research that looks for openings for radical change. So it’s unfair to stereotype political science. However, there is a dominant style of research on American politics that has the following features:

  • It focuses on the US case, presumably because empirical generalizations are difficult across national lines. Trump strikes me as highly similar to current European right-wing leaders. Mainstream political science could explore this resemblance, but it would be very hard to incorporate data from Europe into a predictive model of US elections.
  • It restricts itself to recent political history, because models of election outcomes that include data from distant times are irrelevant. But, as often acknowledged, a study of presidential elections since 1960 or since 1972 is based on a problematically small number of cases. Just as elections have changed fundamentally at turning points in American history, so they can change again.
  • It discounts the significance of rhetoric and narrative, because empirical studies of the impact of discourse usually find small results. For instance, one can usually predict the results of a presidential election based on economic conditions a few months earlier. Likewise, the presidential bully pulpit is found almost never to affect public opinion. Such research suggests that rhetoric and ideological positioning are unimportant. Yet a broader look at the differences among regimes (and among eras in our own history) make ideas and ideologues look central again.
  • It discounts the impact of Margaret Mead’s “small groups of thoughtful and committed citizens,” because empirical research typically finds larger effects from demographic changes, market conditions, and other impersonal forces. Yet Nate Silver calculates that Trump won just 2.0% of the eligible adult population in Iowa, 9.7% in New Hampshire, 6.5% in South Carolina, and 1.8% in Nevada. That’s why he’s winning the nomination. Silver adds, “A few passionate supporters can go a LONG way.”
  • It takes the basic structure of the regime as a given. We have, for instance, a two-party system with privately funded elections and a certain ideological spectrum. But obviously, the regime could–and probably should–change.

Although you can study the current regime empirically with a critical intent, I think focusing tightly on the way things actually are creates a bias in favor of the status quo. It makes the discipline conservative. Theodore Lowi concludes his great book The End of Liberalism (1969, revised in 1979) by saying:

Realistic political science is a rationalization of the present. The political scientist is not necessarily a defender of the status quo, but the result is too often the same, because those who are trying to describe reality tend to reaffirm it. Focus on the group, for example, is a commitment to one of the more rigidified aspects of the social process. Stress upon the incremental is apologetic as well. The separation of facts from values is apologetic.

There is no denying that modern pluralistic political science brought science to politics. And that is a good thing. But it did not have to come at the cost of making political science an apologetic discipline. But that is exactly what happened. … In embracing facts alone about the process, modern political science embraced the ever-present. In so doing, political science took rigor over relevance.

Now, to be clear, political scientists are not apologists for the 2016 election, which most would depict as a nightmare. But, Lowi would argue, they were apologists for the fundamentally unstable and indefensible system that produced it.

Compared to empirical political scientists, theorists have been more attuned to the possibility of disruptive events, because:

  • They are interested in the regime, not just concrete behavior and events. They recognize contradictions within the regime that may presage radical change.
  • They have other regimes in mind–from ancient Greece to fascist Italy and beyond.
  • They are highly attuned to ideas and ideology, and therefore quick to see that Trump might have an unprecedented popular appeal.
  • They mostly don’t much like the status quo. Instead of being apologists for it, they are quick to expect and even celebrate its demise.

These predilections can mislead, though. It is very important to take into consideration the findings of empirical social science. Otherwise, what you want (or fear) can too strongly color your interpretation of events.

Indeed, I can imagine that the 2016 election will vindicate mainstream models of American politics. It seems highly likely that Hillary Clinton will beat Donald Trump, albeit with limited effects on down-ballot races because the country is so polarized along partisan lines. Clinton holds similar policy views to almost all the Democrats in Congress, so the election may reinforce their central place in US politics. Leftish critiques of the Sanders variety will then struggle for attention and traction. However, once the first Hillary Clinton administration nears its end, Democrats will have held the White House for 12 straight years, and voter fatigue may set in, perhaps compounded by a recession. Republicans will realize they can win with a more mainstream, Romney-type candidate. They will nominate such a person, and the parties will rotate as usual, restoring the system that we know.

That remains a plausible scenario. But so does a political realignment, or a constitutional crisis, or a meltdown. It’s to political theory that you must turn to assess not only the possibility of such events but their desirability.

In his most recent book, Public-Spirited Citizenship: Leadership and Good Government in the United States, Ralph Ketcham tells how leading American political scientists of the early 1900s decried education that took the form of “sermonizing and patriotic expostulation” (p. 105). The only alternative they recognized was a rigorous, detached, disenchanted study of politics as it was. In keeping with that goal, they advocated specialization and expertise. Political science meant training for professors and technocrats in basically the current system. Ketcham argues for a broad liberal education that is “profound,” “integrated,” and “radical.” But positivist social scientists tend to gravitate to education as specialized empirical training for the status quo. If you hope to navigate a time such as ours, you need do data and empirical models. But you also need a bit of profundity and radicalism.

the youth turnout story so far

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From CIRCLE’s release this morning: “An estimated 1.8 million young people participated in Super Tuesday’s primaries and caucuses, almost a million youth in the Democratic contests and around 900,000 in the Republican contests. With a number of strong showings across many states, young people continued this year’s trend of high participation that rivals the numbers from 2008, when youth turnout in some cases tripled that of previous years. Young Republican participation, especially, has increased compared to 2008, sometimes by dramatic amounts. And in both parties young people are still not rallying around the frontrunners.”

CIRCLE also has a nifty new interactive tool that allows you to compare recent presidential campaigns’ youth support. One takeaway for me: Sanders is mobilizing almost as many young voters as Obama did in ’08. (Sanders’ percentage is larger, but the actual number is a bit smaller.) The young Obama voters in ’08 were on a bus that drove all the way to the White House. The Sanders voters will not have such a smooth ride. What difference will that make to their development as citizens and activists?

register for Frontiers of Democracy 2016

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The annual Frontiers of Democracy conference will take place on June 23-25, 2016 at Tufts University’s downtown Boston campus. Please use this form to register and hold a place.

We will hear brief, inspiring “short take” talks from speakers who will include:

  • Danielle Allen, Harvard University, author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (2014)
  • Laura Grattan, Wellesley College, author of Populism’s Power: Radical Grassroots Democracy in America (2016)
  • Joseph Hoereth, Director of the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement at the University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Hélène Landemore, Yale University, author of Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many (2012)
  • Frances Moore Lappé, Small Planet Institute and author of 18 books including Democracy’s Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life,
  • Talmon J. Smith, Tufts ’16, a Huffington Post columnist on political reform
  • Victor Yang, an organizer for the SEIU
  • A panel on civic tech with Nigel Jacob (City of Boston), Jesse Littlewood (Common Cause), and Chris Wells (University of Wisconsin)

Most of the time will be spent on 90-minute, interactive sessions called “learning exchanges.” We still welcome proposals for learning exchanges. Please use this form to submit ideas.

Examples of currently approved learning exchanges include: “Unlocking the Potential of Student Voices,” with Frank LoMonte, director of the Student Press Law Center; “From Voice to Influence (Technology as Civic Practice)” with Chaebong Nam and Danielle Allen; “Growing Your Grassroots Efforts” with iCitizen.com’s Jacel Egan and Alex Shreiner; “Social Media Legitimacy: From Policy to Neighborhood Action” with James Toscano of Dots Matter and Joseph Porcelli of Nextdoor.com; and “On Building a Living Democracy Movement” with Frances Moore Lappé.