Interview on Science & Religion in The Tehran Times

Posted on August 2, 2016 by etweber@gmail.com

This piece was originally published on August 1, 2016, pages 1 and 9.

It’s an honor and a pleasure to be interviewed for The Tehran Times. I am especially grateful that the put the very philosophical interview I gave on the front page of the newspaper. The Tehran Times is Iran’s major English language newspaper. I have had the opportunity to talk quite a few times about philosophy and democracy. Here’s photo of the interview, which links to the full Adobe PDF file for the day’s newspaper (August 1st, 2016). My piece is on pages 1 and 9:

I got a lot of positive feedback about this piece, as well as some interesting comments and questions on Facebook. In case you want to see those, here’s the post – sorry for the repeat image. I’ve not embedded a Facebook post on this site before, so here’s a test:

I’m honored to see my piece on the front page of the Tehran Times again. How cool is that? (See pgs 1 & 9): http://media.mehrnews.com/d/2016/07/31/0/2156798.pdf
Posted by Eric Thomas Weber, author on Sunday, July 31, 2016

If you’ve not yet connected with me on Facebook, “like” my author page, and if you’re a tweeter, following me @EricTWeber.

Dialogue on Sexual Assault

Posted on May 24, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The article, Dialogue on Sexual Assault, by Natasha Dobrott was published April 2016 on Public Conversations Project‘s blog. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Dobrott discusses how college campus are talking about sexual assault. Many universities and colleges have come under scrutiny for both their Title IX violations and prevalence of sexual assault. The article uplifts some of the different ways that the conversations are taking place around addressing sexual assault on college campuses and the opportunity for more conversation around “healthy relationships, masculinity, and social norms”.

Below is an excerpt from the article and you can find the original in full on Public Conversations Project blog here.

From Public Conversations Project…

Engaging in Dialogue
The good news is that, at least in part due to the conversations that added scrutiny has inspired, students and administrators are talking about this issue on campus through formal and informal means more than ever. According to one Title IX administrator from the Boston area, sexual assault prevention is most successful when it is a “collaborative and iterative process” that involve the partnership of different stakeholders on campus. This includes raising awareness, teaching students how to keep themselves and their friends safe, and having adequate response teams in administration, law enforcement, and health services in the event that sexual assault does occur. One university embodied this idea of a collaborative and iterative process when it involved representatives from students, faculty, and administrative groups in revising its Title IX policies. This kind of opportunity allowed students to feel as though “they had agency and ownership in the process” and that their ideas were heard and taken into account. The schools that are most successful in sexual assault prevention have created multiple avenues such as this through which students, faculty, administrators, and law enforcement can discuss the issue, build trust, and maintain accountability.

Where is conversation about sexual assault happening?
Conversations about sexual assault take many forms on college campuses. Bystander Intervention is the most widespread avenue for conversation on this is issue. Teaching students to intervene in questionable situations they see that could result in sexual assault, programs like these focus largely on providing students with skills to recognize potentially risky situations and to safely intervene or diffuse the situation. Students can also participate in self-defense classes or student awareness and activism groups that focus on bringing attention to the problem with the intent of starting a conversation. Although programs like bystander intervention don’t address the problem from all angles, such discussing underlying gender norms, it does serve as a good way to encourage proactive conversation amongst students.

Where do we need more conversation?
A conversation lacking at many schools is the opportunity for discussions about healthy relationships, masculinity, and social norms. Sexual assault prevention is an “intrapersonal as well as an interpersonal problem,” said a women’s center program coordinator, meaning that students need to be able to explore their own internal influences and motivations. Conversations that help students explore the pressure to conform to gender norms or learn what healthy relationships actually look like are important in helping students to understand one another and “build a strong culture for each other,” as one Title IX administrator in New Hampshire pointed out. I have seen these on my own campus through student discussion groups about masculinity, sporadic events about gender norms, and even just this past week, a panel on healthy relationships. Creating more opportunities for students to learn and discuss these underlying problems helps students to connect with others, building that culture for others. Genuine curiosity and caring about other people’s experiences and how other people experience things can enhance the feeling of community and address sexual assault as not just an interpersonal problem, but also as an intrapersonal one.

About Public Conversations Project
Public Conversations Project fosters constructive conversation where there is conflict driven by differences in identity, beliefs, and values. We work locally, nationally, and globally to provide dialogue facilitation, training, consultation, and coaching. We help groups reduce stereotyping and polarization while deepening trust and collaboration and strengthening communities.

Follow on Twitter: @pconversations

Resource Link: www.publicconversations.org/blog/dialogue-sexual-assault

Should Public Civic Education Be Descriptive or Normative?

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Joshua Miller

Over at The Conversation, Peter Levine lays out what he takes to be the state of the art on US civic education in public schools in response to criticism from education scholar Jonathan Zimmerman. Levine recounts some basic facts: the vast majority of students study something called “civics,” and they usually have a good basic understanding of our founding documents. Yet students can rarely apply that basic understanding to contemporary politics and current events, and they largely fail to learn about the mainstream political beliefs of their fellow citizens, and thus only a very small percentage (10% in 2012) could be said to exit high school as “informed voters.”

Unfortunately, we have come to expect that our public schools will solve the political problems of adults, as when Jonathan Zimmerman accused our public schools of failing to teach “the country’s future citizens how to engage respectfully across their political differences.” But here’s the problem: how can adults embroiled in adversarial political speech agree on a curriculum to teach their children how to be less adversarial?

What we have tended to do is to reduce civic education to volunteerism and community service. Some schools, mostly in richer and whiter neighborhoods, also allow students an opportunity to develop more adversarial skills in civil and protected contexts by discussing social problems and current events. It’s almost always sensible to call for a more equitable distribution of instructional resources in such cases, and this is no exception. Poor and non-white students should have the same opportunities–and receive the same kinds of disciplinary treatement–as white and rich students.

But we haven’t really resolved the relevant questions: if presidential candidates are arguing about whether some of the students in the civics classroom should be deported immediately because they (or at least their parents) are rapists and murderers, how can the students in that classroom work through those claims civilly while preserving both the kind of partisan neutrality and inclusiveness we expect of public schooling? What should schools do about the fact that politicians are frequently both wrong and immoral in ways that violate educational norms? How can civics education be civil if civic engagement rarely is?

My sense, following Hannah Arendt, is that it is rarely possible for educational institutions to resolve problems in the larger polis, and that efforts to do so usually end up being illegitimate to the citizens who are asked to trust their children to the state for cultivation. Thus it is inherently undemocratic, even when fundamental human rights are at stake. I’m generally okay with the ways in which human rights are designed to trump democratic outcomes, but it’s worth noting that when a democratically organized citizenry puts its mind to it, they’ll generally find the levers of power required to overcome more accurate or fair bureaucratic and judicial outcomes.

And that’s perhaps where Arendt becomes less useful: she diagnoses the problem but retreats to a kind of educational purity that’s unacceptable. Over the last sixty years, we’ve been treating schools and other educational institutions as sites of democratic contestation. Our schools are shared spaces where we can have proxy battles about facts, norms, and strategies that ought to dominate in the larger polis. That’s perhaps unfortunate for the students who must live and learn in the partisan battleground, but it’s unavoidable.

On this view, students don’t learn politics (just) in civics class; they learn politics from their parents’ and teachers’ reactions to standardized testing, curriculum requirements, and budget and redistricting battles. They even become political agents of their own–long before they become eligible to vote–by crafting their own responses to those problems and organizing on their own issues.

I always learn something new from Levine on issues in civic education, and this latest contribution is no exception. But I do think we need to move beyond the curriculum-first model of civic education to a (gasp) more Deweyan account of the ways that schools are disciplinary institutions that hide their most important political lessons behind the rhetoric of professional normalization. The most important civic lessons are the forms of life that schools prepare us to live in a society where our political agency has become increasingly hamstrung and our fellow citizens increasingly polarized.

Our schools are pretty good at teaching future citizens to sit still, respect authority, and constantly try to achieve success within a narrow definition of what that means. They’re also very good at producing delinquency, as Levine himself mentions in citing the Kupchick/Catlaw paper on the relationship between disciplinary contact and political paralysis.

So let me end with a metaphor: our democracy is like a ship that we must mend and repair at sea, working on the planks and spars while using them to stay afloat. There is no hope of returning to dry dock to tinker and optimize, every institution is simultaneously bearing the strain of our policy-making and disputes even as its weaknesses and flaws are buckling under that pressure. Thus: discussions of schools as apolitical spaces from whence we safely prepare non-citizens for the rigors and dangers of politics are always going to be founded on an error.

Zimmerman is pretending that the appropriate response to detestable policies ought to be civil disagreement, and that the appropriate response to the appeal of Trump’s incivility must be to educate (read: discipline) such behavior out of the next generation. That seems destined to fail, but more importantly it raises deliberative refutation over organizing and protesting in a way that doesn’t seem true to our own civic ideals.

What if the appropriate response to uncivil politicians is uncivil resistance?

The Eulogy Virtues Valued in Life

Posted on May 4, 2016 by etweber@gmail.com

David Brooks has been challenging young people lately to think about more than what he calls the “résumé virtues.” His latest book is called The Road to Character, and he has been touring the country to talk about what’s more important than the many small steps we take in advancing our careers. Which matters more: what people think or say about your résumé, or what people will say at your funeral?

Brooks argues that so many of us today focus on the wrong things — on getting the next notch in our belts — when what we should be developing are the eulogy virtues. In the end, people usually don’t care about this or that promotion you earned. The bigger house you bought rarely comes up at a funeral. What matters most to people are the qualities of your character, not the quantities in your bank account.

Brooks’s message especially to young professionals and those aspiring to be them resonates with me. First of all, Aristotle noted that happiness is something that can only really be measured in terms of a person’s whole life. When we say we are happy, in everyday language, we are primarily talking about how we feel right now. What makes for a happy life, however, is not a certain number of happy-feeling-moments. We can endure great challenges for the right reasons and be happy about what we have contributed. The feeling is less the issue, however. What matters, as Brooks notes, is our character.

With a focus on professionalism today, one can certainly make a great deal more money going into any number of careers than one earns as a teacher. So some other force pushes people into that line of work. As I said in my last post, I’ve been very fortunate to feel appreciated at the University of Mississippi. Recently, a number of students added to that very kindly.

The funny thing about moving, as Annie and I soon will, is that you get a glimpse of people’s appreciation of the eulogy virtues, but without the dying part.

The Student Alumni Council at the University of Mississippi is a clever organization, in which current students are involved in the work of the alumni association — hook’em early, they say. It’s a great idea, actually, for networking purposes as well as for opportunities for student leadership. Yes, those are related to résumé virtues. The group is more meaningful than that, however. They organize an event each spring (though I don’t know how long this has been going on) where they recognize mentors, hosting a “Random Acts of Kindness” event. When I received my invitation, I joked to myself that I generally intend my acts of kindness to be thoughtful and purposeful, rather than random.

The event was lovely. One student at a time got up to say a few words about a mentor he or she wanted to recognize on campus with a Random Act of Kindness award. Next, two students got up to say that they had both nominated a certain professor. It was heartwarming. We do this work because we believe in it. It’s icing on the cake when people actually show you appreciation for it. When the time came, I was taken aback by three students who each got up to say some deeply thoughtful and kind things about our work together. I got a taste of the value of the eulogy virtues, without having to die, when Mary Kate Berger, Natalie King, and Rod Bridges each spoke eloquently and kindly in their explanations for their nominations for me.

I feel profoundly fortunate to have worked with great people in Mississippi. I also am more confident that Brooks and Aristotle are right. Character is the most important thing we can cultivate. The funny thing that so many people miss, however, is that attending to one’s own happiness really comes down to attending to the same for others. I can’t think of a more rewarding opportunity than to help others to shape their character.

Thank you again, Rod, Mary Kate, and Natalie (left to right in the photo)!

A Big Moment for the Weber Family

Posted on April 7, 2016 by etweber@gmail.com

This April, my wife, Dr. Annie Davis Weber, and I made a difficult, big decision. We will be moving in the summer to start work at the University of Kentucky, in Lexington. I will continue to write and teach there as an associate professor, and Annie will transition into the role of Assistant Provost for Strategic Planning.

I have been very fortunate to work at a great university, which has made me feel appreciated and valued. People often say that academia can be petty, with terrible in-fighting and little collegiality. I’m happy to say that my experience in Oxford was the reverse. I have worked since 2007 in the interdisciplinary department of Public Policy Leadership that has had a remarkable unity of focus and intent. Our department has been as collegial and mutually supportive as one could hope to experience. The program attracted scores of driven students who inspire hope in me even when elder Mississippians in public office disappoint. I look forward to these young people’s emergence as the next generation of leaders. It has been deeply meaningful to have played a small role in their growth and success.

In Oxford, Annie got her start in the Development Office, while she finished her doctoral studies in Vanderbilt University’s executive program in Higher Education. She earned her degree while working part time at the University of Mississippi and travelling several weekends each month to Nashville for a number of years. Along the way, she and I learned the ropes of how best to care for our daughter Helen and her special medical conditions. Annie got her doctorate in much more difficult circumstances than I did. She also has risen a number of exciting steps through the ranks at the university, and recently was awarded one of two national Fellowships from the Society for College and University Planners. She is remarkable.

We have made many wonderful friends in Oxford and have had the immensely rewarding opportunity to work with countless strong, courageous, and talented students. Our decision was not an easy one to make. I know that I will always feel a fondness for the time and opportunities we have had in Oxford.

Scholars and Scholarship with Ties to Communities (Connections 2015)

Posted on March 9, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The four-page article, Scholars and Scholarship with Ties to Communities by Ellen Knutson and Ileana Marin was published Fall 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter, “Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”.

In 1998, Kettering Foundation and Joffre T. Whisenton and Associates, collaborated to create Whisenton Public Scholars program, for scholars to experiment with and provide research on facets of citizen-centered democracy. The two-year research exchange program encourages scholars, usually faculty and administration, who work with often under-served communities. Knutson and Marin give examples of the research projects that the fellows have worked on in the past and talk about the Whisenton Public Scholars Alumni Research Conference in 2015, which shares some of the outcomes of the whole program over the years. Read an excerpt of the article below and find Connections 2015 available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

The Whisenton Public Scholars program is a joint project between the Kettering Foundation and Joffre T. Whisenton and Associates. Participants have primarily included faculty and administrators from schools with a mission to serve minority communities (such as historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and tribal colleges). Many of these institutions have maintained close ties to their communities and focus on developing student engagement. The two-year program encourages scholars to experiment with elements of citizen-centered democracy, such as naming and framing issues and making choices together in the context of teaching, research, and service. Additionally, the research exchange provides space for conducting novel research addressing the fundamental problems of democracy. Since 1998, when the program was created, more than 70 faculty and administrators have participated; the newest cohort met for the first time in July 2015.

The program was designed to investigate ways that faculty from various disciplines at schools closely tied to their communities could institute public scholarship practices. During the first year of the research exchange, participants come together to discuss topics related to public life and democratic self-governance, the role of higher education in democracy, and approaches to research in their communities. They also focus on learning toname and frame issues for public deliberation, the ideas behind public scholarship, and the relationship between institutions of higher education and communities. In order to have a deeper understanding of the concepts introduced in the exchange, participants experiment with putting the ideas into practice through completing field work between face-to-face meetings. The second year of the program is directed by the research projects of the participants. Beginning with the 2010- 2012 cohort, the scholars also joined other research exchanges conducted at the foundation that matched their research interest during this second year.

Four Research Areas
Over the course of the program, the scholars have produced research around the following broad areas:
– Developing curricular or cocurricular activities around public practices and citizenship;
– Framing an issue for public deliberation that is important to their campus, community, or professional groups;
– (Re)discovering the democratic foundations of higher education professions; and
– Articulating public scholarship as it relates to disciplinary concerns.

Many scholars have worked to include deliberative practices in their courses. They represent a variety of disciplines, from teacher education to international business education. For some, this meant including a forum as a pedagogical tool for students to learn about a relevant topic related to the course, while others revamped their complete curriculum to include deliberative elements throughout the course. In Deliberation and the Work of Higher Education, Cristina Alfaro (2000- 2001 cohort) describes how she infused her teacher education courses with deliberation in her chapter, “Reinventing Teacher Education: The Role of Deliberative Pedagogy in the K-6 Classroom.”

Scholars have also worked with students and community members to name and frame issues for deliberation. Three examples of such framing efforts on campuses and in communities are from Nora Antoine (Sinte Gleska University), Xuan Santos (California State University San Marcos), and a trio of scholars from three campuses, Anna Green (Florida A&M University), Brian Anderson (Tougaloo College), and Kevin Rolle (South Carolina State University). Antoine (1998-2000 cohort) framed the issue of community development on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Santos (2013-2015 cohort) is working with youth in his community to support them as they identify and frame issues that affect them. Green, Anderson, and Rolle (2005-2007 cohort) focused their issue guide on fraternities and sororities on HBCU campuses.

About Kettering Foundation and Connections
The 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/Knutsen-Marin_2015.pdf

Town versus Gown? Not Here (Connections 2015)

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The two-page article, Town versus Gown? Not Here by Sara A. Mehltretter Drury was published Fall 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter, “Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”. The article shares the development of the Wabash Democracy and Public Discourse (WDPD) at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. The program evolved from being faculty led to the co-created process between students, teachers and the community; and has been influential in the exploration of finding innovative ways to address community issues. Read an excerpt of the article below and find Connections 2015 available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

In January 2013, Wabash College started participating in research exchanges at Kettering with a cohort of centers for public life. Wabash College is a small, liberal arts institution with less than 1,000 students located in Crawfordsville, Indiana, a rural county of approximately 38,000 people. Our development over the last three years has been encouraging and energizing—both in the community and on campus. Wabash College is now the site for an interdisciplinary initiative, Wabash Democracy and Public Discourse (WDPD), and our work advances the kinds of communication that cultivate democracy—deliberation, dialogue, advocacy, and debate. The initiative has grown from a faculty-led process to a collaborative partnership with faculty, students, and community members.

We have worked with community partners to hold a number of public deliberation events. For our first project, we tackled a challenging but important issue: substance abuse. Recognizing the importance of community knowledge, we set up interviews to learn more about the concerns of local people, and at the same time, looked for state and national data to contextualize some of these local experiences. We also interviewed community leaders—a local counselor, the coordinator of the Prescription Drug Task Force, a probation officer, and an executive director of a nonprofit organization that works with youth in the community.

More than 100 community members participated in the forums on substance abuse in November 2013. As they worked through three possible approaches to addressing substance abuse, we found that nearly every small-group table had at least one person who was personally affected by the problem. The conversation moved beyond typical positions and pushed our community toward finding innovative solutions. In a few follow-up meetings, participants reviewed and prioritized potential actions, but acknowledged the challenge of comprehensive changes. Still, we were encouraged to learn that several months later, a local organization working on substance abuse issues used the priorities identified in the forums as a starting point for developing a strategic plan.

An important part of this work has been involving undergraduate students from Wabash College. The transition from a faculty-led initiative began in spring 2014, when Wabash College began developing a strategic, interdisciplinary initiative that focused on equipping undergraduate students to stimulate productive conversations in communities to address problems—what would become WDPD. In WDPD, students work with partners on and off campus to facilitate deliberation, dialogue, and advocacy work. One of the most exciting benefits for our campus has been an increase in student-driven conversations on challenging issues. Students in WDPD work with faculty and staff across the college to develop discussion guides for courses and then facilitate forums on issues such as energy, climate change, and mental health.

WDPD also continues to work with our local community. Experienced students take leading roles in researching, planning, facilitating, and reporting on public deliberation events. In the spring of 2014, we turned to our local partners to find out what issues they felt needed public discussion. Crawfordsville mayor Todd Barton and the local economic development organization both suggested that community participation was needed to prioritize quality-of-life improvements in the county. We applied for and received a grant from Indiana Humanities to research and facilitate a public conversation on “The Next Montgomery County: A Community Conversation on Quality of Place.”

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Drury_2015.pdf

Moderating Deliberative Forums – An Introduction [NIFI]

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

This 26-slide powerpoint, Moderating Deliberative Forums – An Introduction, was released from National Issues ForumInstitute (NIFI) in February 2016. The powerpoint explains the basics of deliberation, the roles of a moderator, and other gems of advice for running a National Issues Forums. Below you can a little more from NIFI of what the power point contains and a link to the powerpoint, or find it directly on NIFI’s main site here.

From National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI)…

A new informative PowerPoint presentation is available to view or download, and to modify for your own use. The presentation covers a range of topics related to convening and moderating National Issues Forums (NIF), including: What are the main goals of an NIF forum? What kinds of questions do moderators use to encourage deliberation? This PowerPoint presentation introduces the basics and can be adapted by local forum organizers to match their own needs and goals.

Download the powerpoint for free here.

About National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI)
Based in Dayton, Ohio, the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI), is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that serves to promote public deliberation and coordinate the activities of the National Issues Forums network. Its activities include publishing the issue guides and other materials used by local forum groups, encouraging collaboration among forum sponsors, and sharing information about current activities in the network.

Follow on Twitter: @NIForums.

Resource Link: www.nifi.org/en/groups/powerpoint-presentation-moderating-deliberative-forums-introduction

Tehran Times Front Page on ‘Uniting MS’

Posted on March 1, 2016 by etweber@gmail.com

Check out the front page of February 28th’s Tehran Times. I gave an interview on Uniting Mississippi and was honored with some pretty cool real estate in the paper. Here’s an image of the cover and below that I’ve got links for a clipped PDF of the interview and to the regular text version on their site:

Click on the image above to read a PDF of the piece, or click here. You can also read it online here.

You can learn more about the book here and find it for sale online here.

Follow me on Twitter @EricTWeber and “like” my Facebook author page @EricThomasWeberAuthor.

At Franklin Pierce, Learning to Make a Difference (Connections 2015)

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The two-page article, At Franklin Pierce, Learning to Make a Difference, by Joni Doherty was published Fall 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter, “Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”. Doherty shares about the New England Center for Civic Life at Franklin Pierce University, and its focus on teaching and deliberation. Find the full article below, and Connections 2015 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

The New England Center for Civic Life at Franklin Pierce University is dedicated to the teaching, practice, and study of deliberative democracy. As director of the center, I helped align the center’s mission with that of the university. The center was founded in 1998 on the premise that engaged and deliberative communities are vital for a healthy democracy and for individuals to realize their goal of experiencing rich and fulfilling lives. Through initiatives that use deliberative democratic practices, the center creates opportunities for people to become active producers of knowledge and engaged community members. At first, our efforts were divided between community-based and campus-based work; today, about threequarters of the center’s activities are on campus. We learned that the best way to realize the center’s mission was to meet people where they are, and where we are too—on a rural, small, liberal arts college campus.

One challenge we faced was connecting the self-interested, personal goals of undergraduates, who understandably are preoccupied with doing well academically and preparing for their future professions, with the larger public good. We also faced the challenge of the workload of faculty, who teach four courses each semester. There is often little time for civic, cocurricular, or extracurricular activities.

We learned that if we were to engage these groups, we needed to become involved in their primary areas of concern. With that in mind, we began the work of integrating deliberative practices (including identifying issues on one’s own terms, and on what is held valuable; considering possible actions; and making sound judgments through weighing benefits against trade-offs) into courses and the curriculum, not as “extras” or “supplements,” but rather as activities essential for teaching and learning in a democratic society. These practices foster critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and good communication skills and are done within an environment that encourages collective learning.

Engagement through Community
These practices can foster deeper engagement through connecting course content with community life. Examples include having students participate in a deliberative forum on a community problem that is relevant to course content; creating an issue guide with various options for addressing a problem; ensuring diverse perspectives are represented in course assignments (readings, films, and so on); and presenting ethical dilemmas in ways that invite the consideration of multiple options. Because deliberative pedagogy recognizes the impact of self-interest on engagement, affirms the value of personal experiences, and takes up “real-life” problems, it integrates formal education with the “subject matter of life-experience,” which John Dewey has identified as an essential part of learning.

Our first major initiative was the Diversity and Community Project, which began in 1998. Faculty and students created guides on issues related to gender, sexual orientation, and race. We also used the National Issues Forums racial and ethnic tensions guide to situate our campus issue within a broader national context. We held annual moderator and issue-framing workshops, led class-based and campuswide forums, and began a Civic Scholars program. The project was integrated into the first-year seminar. A grant allowed us to share what we had learned with other colleges in northern New England. Over time, these activities became integral to all of the center’s programming.

Another example of curricular integration, and one that connects courses across the disciplines, is the Art and Dialogue Project, which focused on a different issue for each of its five years. Our first project, in 2010, explored a water-related environmental issue. In following years, we took on other challenges, including respect (or lack thereof ) in public life. This project includes creating a public participatory art installation, which, along with concerncollecting sessions, is part of how we name and frame the issue, and convening forums. It culminates in a multimedia celebration that has included video, music, light and sound installations, and storytelling. This is not a programmatic sequence of individual performances, but one in which the public (in this case, students) are cocreators of a deliberative public exchange. It is a way for students to transform the everyday routines of college life into one in which they are the primary actors and agents for change.

As one of the university’s primary community liaisons, the center also partners with towns and local residents on projects. Because they do not follow academic schedules, faculty and student involvement tends to be episodic, and having a full-time, year-round director ensures the necessary continuity. In “Rindge 2020: Mapping Our Future,” town officials from Rindge, university faculty, and local residents framed the issue, wrote a guide, held forums, and implemented several actions. Another example, “Citizens Seeking Common Ground,” involved residents in a school district that spanned two towns. The group held a series of dialogues to work out a way of addressing a six-year impasse on the need for new or improved school facilities.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Doherty_2015.pdf

Civic Studies

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Category Archives: education

Interview on Science & Religion in The Tehran Times

Should Public Civic Education Be Descriptive or Normative?

The Eulogy Virtues Valued in Life

A Big Moment for the Weber Family

Scholars and Scholarship with Ties to Communities (Connections 2015)

Town versus Gown? Not Here (Connections 2015)

Moderating Deliberative Forums – An Introduction [NIFI]

Tehran Times Front Page on ‘Uniting MS’

At Franklin Pierce, Learning to Make a Difference (Connections 2015)