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JPD Special Issue Looks at “The State of Our Field”

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JPD logoThis month, the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC) and the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) released a special issue of their collaboratively produced Journal of Public Deliberation, and it is a must-read.  They collected writings from leading scholars and practitioners of our work – including numerous NCDD members and our director, Sandy Heierbacher – to create this special issue focused on “The State of Our Field”:

This is a special issue that assess the state of our field, celebrates our successes, and calls for future innovative work. The authors are scholars and practitioners who represent the diversity of our field and provide a wide range of perspectives on deliberation, dialogue, participation, and civic life. The ideas from this issue will be discussed at the upcoming Frontiers of Democracy conference, after which the editors will write an “afterword” reflecting on lessons learned.

We’re excerpting all of the abstracts of the articles in this issue here on the blog, because we think it will entice you to read these important articles. The special issue starts with an introductory overview, then is divided into three areas of focus: the scope of our field, challenges to our field, and promising future directions that some of us are taking.

Visit www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd to download each article for free.

JPD Volume 10, Issue 1 (2014) Special Issue: State of the Field

Introduction

The State of Our Field: Introduction to the Special Issue by Laura W. Black, Nancy L. Thomas, and Dr. Timothy J. Shaffer – “This article introduces the special “State of the Field” issue. The essay highlights some of the key tensions that our field is wrestling with at the moment, and advocates that we think carefully about the terms we use to describe our work. It previews the articles in this special issue and urges future work in the field to take up the ideas, questions, and challenges posed by these essays.”

The Scope of the Field

Why I Study Public Deliberation by John Gastil – “The author argues that scholars can best advance public dialogue and deliberation by conducting systematic research on practical innovations that have the potential to improve political discourse. The author explains and justifies this position through a personal narrative that recounts formative experiences with debate, group dialogue, political campaigns, academic research, and electoral reform.”

A 35-Year Experiment in Public Deliberation by David Mathews – “In the late 1970s, a small group of academics and former government officials began an initiative that led to the creation of a network of National Issues Forums (NIF) in 1981. NIF-style deliberation is based on the assumption that the greatest challenge in collective decision making is dealing with the tensions that result when many of the things most people hold dear are brought into conflict by the necessity to act on a problem. Public deliberation is a naturally occurring phenomenon that makes use of the human faculty for judgment. The most powerful insight from the NIF experiment has been the recognition that democracy depends on constant learning and that deliberation is a form of learning.”

Repairing the Breach: The Power of Dialogue to Heal Relationships and Communities by Robert R. Stains Jr. – “Dialogue can be a powerful force for healing communities and relationships broken by divisions of identity, values, religion and world-views. This article explores the reparative effects of dialogue and the elements that make them possible: re-authoring stories, communicating from the heart and witnessing others’ identities in constructive ways.”

What We’re Talking About When We Talk About the “Civic Field” (And why we should clarify what we mean) by Matt Leighninger – “The field of public engagement is experiencing a harmful identity crisis. While advocates of public participation may all agree that our work relates somehow to democracy, we have not established or articulated a common vision of what that really means. This lack of clarity has dire consequences, producing rifts between academics and practitioners, community organizers and deliberative democrats, civic technologists and dialogue practitioners, policy advocates and consensus-builders. Worst of all, the lack of clarity about democracy provides no help to people who are trying to create sustainable, participatory political systems in Egypt, Thailand, Ukraine, and many other countries. None of the participatory tactics and assets we have developed will reach their full potential if we don’t admit, to ourselves and the world, their true significance: these aren’t just props for conventional processes, but building blocks for new political systems.”

Democracy by Design by Nancy L. Thomas – “Renewing US democracy will require an active and deliberative public, people who can work together to address pressing social and political problems. To engage effectively Americans need an understanding of how American democracy works, its foundations and the complex and sometimes changing dimensions to those foundations. Advocates for increasing active and deliberative citizen engagement need to work with reformers in different areas of democracy’s ecological system, integrating public engagement with reform efforts in justice and equal opportunity, knowledge and information development, and government integrity.”

The Next Generation of Our Work by Sandy Heierbacher – “In this reflective piece, Sandy Heierbacher, Director of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD), outlines some of the trends she has been noticing from her unique vantage point in the rapidly growing and innovating field of deliberative democracy. Heierbacher reflects on ways this field, centered around practices designed to engage citizens in the decisions and issues that effect their lives, is changing its relationship with government, becoming more receptive to online tools for engagement, shifting its attention back to local efforts, focusing attention on building infrastructure, and increasingly relying on collaboration to achieve its goals.”

Challenges

Public Engagement Exercises with Racial and Cultural “Others”: Some Thoughts, Questions, and Considerations by Yea-Wen Chen – “Concerns about the inadequacy of using dialogue to address the material realities of race and racism motivate this essay. Hence, I reflect on the current state of conversations on race, diversity, and inclusion from the standpoint of cultural and racial “others.” To orient my reflections, I first unpack assumptions about what might constitute “productive” public deliberation on race. I argue that productive public engagement exercises on race (a) move participants into praxis, (b) require participants to consider cultural identity differences, and (c) demand an understanding of how social forces such as racism and whiteness hinder and/or enable public engagement processes. I then reconsider public engagement from a cultural lens and rethink intercultural communication as publicly deliberating highly charged topics such as race. Finally, I caution against relying on cookie-cutter formulas to address complex issues such as race and recommend utilizing the strategy of counter-storytelling in public engagement exercises on race.”

Deliberative Democracy, Public Work, and Civic Agency by Harry C. Boyte – “This essay locates deliberation and deliberative theory as an important strand in a larger interdisciplinary and political movement, civic agency. The civic agency movement, and its related politics, a politics of civic empowerment, include a set of developing practices and concepts which enhance the capacities of diverse groups of people to work across differences to solve problems, create things of common value, and negotiate a shared democratic way of life. Stirrings of civic agency can be seen in many settings, including efforts to recover the civic purposes and revitalize the civic cultures of institutions such as schools and colleges.”

The Unfulfilled Promise of Online Deliberation by Jannette Hartz-Karp & Brian Sullivan – “Since online deliberation has not delivered on the expectations of more considered, democratic participation, the authors propose less focus on technological ‘fixes’ and more on re-conceptualizing its primary purpose to gathering resonance in an authentic public square. The ideas that emerge can then be deliberated in representative face-to-face public deliberations, with the coherent voice that results contributing to more inclusive, legitimate, and implementable democratic decision-making.”

A Brief Reflection on the Brazilian Participatory Experience by Vera Schattan Pereira Coelho – “The article highlights Brazilian participatory experiences such as the participatory budget and the policy councils and conferences. Based on research done by the author on daily routines and policy impacts of these forums, it is argued that there is still a long way before fulfilling normative expectations. In light of these challenges, reflections about how to move forward in the future are presented.”

Beyond Deliberation: A Strategy for Civic Renewal by Peter Levine – “To expand opportunities for discussion and reflection about public issues, we should look beyond the organizations that intentionally convene deliberations and also enlist organizations that preserve common resources, volunteer service groups, civics classes, grassroots public media efforts, and partisan, ideological, and faith-based movements that have some interest in discussion. Many of these groups are not politically neutral; more are adversarial. But they have a common interest in confronting the forces and decisions that have sidelined active citizens in countries like the US. They are all threatened by the rising signs of oligarchy in the United States. Collectively, they have considerable resources with which to fight back. It is time for us to begin to stir and organize–not for deliberation, but for democracy.”

Finding A Seat for Social Justice at the Table of Dialogue and Deliberation by David Schoem – “What does it mean for the dialogue and deliberation or public engagement community to exclude social justice from its mission and activities? Many dialogue and deliberation organizations, though clearly not all, shy away from either an explicit or implicit acknowledgement of issues of social justice or inequality, and power and privilege. This article argues that the field needs to 1) work intentionally for social justice and serving the public good for a strong, diverse democracy, 2) confront the illusion of neutrality, and 3) address issues of privilege and power. It discusses five principles to achieve this goal.”

Deliberative Civic Engagement in Public Administration and Policy by Tina Nabatchi – “This article explores deliberative civic engagement in the context of public administration and policy. The field of public administration and policy is seeing a resurgence of interest in deliberative civic engagement among scholars, practitioners, politicians, civic reformers, and others. Deliberative processes have been used to address a range of issues: school redistricting and closings, land use, and the construction of highways, shopping malls, and other projects. Additional topics include race and diversity issues, crime and policing, and involvement of parents in their children’s education. Finally, participatory budgeting, which has been used with success in Porto Alegre, Brazil since 1989 and has been employed in over 1,500 cities around the world, has been one of the most promising forms of deliberative civic engagement. Finally, the article suggests what we must do to build a civic infrastructure to support deliberative civic engagement, including government, but also practitioners and scholars.”

Key Challenges Facing the Field of Deliberative Democracy by Carol J. Lukensmeyer – “Deliberative Democracy has proved its value as an alternative to governance dominated by special interests, but its use in governing remains inconsistent. Overcoming this challenge will require the field to focus its energy on 1) building a cadre of elected leaders and public officials who understand deliberative democracy’s value and how to do it, 2) engaging with the media so that it becomes an effective partner for the field and a more productive part of our democratic system, and 3) continuing to embrace opportunities – like Creating Community Solutions – to work in unique partnerships, build national infrastructure to support high-quality deliberation, and innovate across methodologies and models.”

Promising Future Directions

The Design of Online Deliberation: Implications for Practice, Theory and Democratic Citizenship by Idit Manosevitch – “The essay focuses on the role of design in online deliberation, and outlines three directions for future research. First, research must embed the study of the technical and organizational architecture of online discussion spaces, as an ongoing area of inquiry. Scholars need to take stock of varying available design choices and their potential effects on the deliberative quality of online public discourse. Second, looking more broadly, research must examine the design of deliberative processes as they manifest themselves via digital technologies. The author discusses the importance of surveying the broad array of processes that are currently employed, and the varying theoretical assumptions that they convey. Third, the essay concludes with an outline of possible implications that online deliberation endeavors may have on democratic citizenship, and calls for further research on the broader implications of this work for promoting healthy democratic societies.”

Deliberation In and Through Higher Education by Dr. Timothy J. Shaffer – “This article explores how deliberative democracy has the ability to change how colleges and universities function. Deliberation offers a powerful way for students, faculty, staff, and community partners to learn and practice modes of reasoning and deciding together in a variety of settings such as classrooms, other campus settings, and in communities. The article includes scholarly resources as well as examples of deliberation in various contexts. The article suggests that deliberation can replace, or at least complement, many of the more familiar models pervasive in our institutions.”

The Critical Role of Local Centers and Institutes in Advancing Deliberative Democracy by Dr. Martín Carcasson – “Utilizing the development and early history of the Colorado State University Center for Public Deliberation as an example, this paper makes the case for expanding the number of and the level of support for such campus-based centers as critical resources for expanding deliberative democracy. Due to their ability to not only provide deliberative capacity to the community, but also to attract students to our field and equip with them with essential skills, to strengthen the connection of colleges and universities to their local communities, and to contribute to the further development of deliberative theory and practice, these local “hubs of democracy” represent a natural “win-win-win-win” that warrants significant focus as we work to develop the deliberative culture of our communities.”

A Path to the Next Form of (Deliberative) Democracy by Patrick L. Scully – “Supporters of deliberative democracy must work through complex tradeoffs if we hope to realize the full potential of empowered civic engagement in which citizens employ multiple forms of action and change. In order to sustain citizens’ interest, time, and resources in creating a robust civic infrastructure, we need to engage them in more highly empowered forms of civic engagement than is now typical of many deliberative initiatives. Our field’s strong emphasis on temporary public consultations diverts a disproportionate amount of time, intellectual capital, and other resources from efforts to improve the ability of citizens and local communities to have stronger, more active, and direct roles in shaping their collective futures. One set of choices facing us centers on tensions between reformism and more fundamental, even revolutionary changes to democratic politics. Other key tensions are rooted in aspirations for deliberative democracy to serve as both an impartial resource and as a catalyst for action.”

The State of Our Field in Light of the State of Our Democracy: My Democracy Anxiety Closet by Martha McCoy – “There is a large and troubling gap between the promise of deliberative innovations and the most prevalent practices of our largely dysfunctional democracy. A web of factors is widening this gap and increasing the urgency of addressing it. With democracy in crisis, the deliberative civic field is engaging in more collaborative efforts and in more pointed conversations about how to have a systemic impact. To have any chance of improving the state of democracy, our field needs to: 1) envision and work toward structural change; 2) find more compelling ways to describe empowered public participation and more welcoming entry points for experiencing it; and 3) address the challenge of equity head-on. As a field, we have begun to address the first two, though we have much more to do. Our field has been more reticent to address the challenge of equity.”

The Compost of Disagreement: Creating Safe Spaces for Engagement and Action by Michelle Holt-Shannon & Bruce L. Mallory – “The experiences gained in almost two decades of supporting community-based deliberative processes highlight the importance of balancing participants’ desire for civility and safety with the passionate expression of deeply held values and beliefs. Effective deliberations may surface highly contested positions in which intimidation or bullying can occur. At times, even the deliberative process itself may become the object of ideological objections. This has the potential to a create a climate of fear on the part of participants and public officials seeking solutions to complex issues related to public investments, long-term planning, or improved governance. We apply the metaphor of “community compost” to emphasize the value of eliciting diverse points of view on hot topics that have divided residents as well as public officials. By turning the fertile soil of passion, values, and disagreement, we have been able to find common ground useful to decision-makers. Balancing the need for safety and the benefits of strong disagreement, shared understanding and agreement may be achieved.”

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If you’ve seen a few articles that you’d like to read more of, we encourage you to visit www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd to download the full text. Happy reading!

Let’s Discuss: How Politics Makes Us Stupid

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There is a fascinating article up at Vox.com that I encourage all NCDD members and subscribers to our Transpartisan Listserv to give some thought to. My friend Jean Johnson at Public Agenda, one of NCDD’s organizational members, alerted me to it last week, and it ties directly into conversations that are going on in both the NCDD Discussion list and the Transpartisan list.

PoliticsStupidPost1The article by Ezra Klein, How Politics Makes Us Stupid, talks about research that shows that a more informed public has little effect on politics, polarization, and political opinions.  Instead, “Cutting-edge research shows that the more information partisans get, the deeper their disagreements become.”

Researcher Dan Kahan’s findings were that people accepted some information without any problem — but in cases where their social standing and relationships were effected by their take on an issue, people dismissed information as faulty that didn’t line up with their group’s / tribe’s / community’s stances. This was true for partisans on both sides of the aisle.

Here’s an excerpt:

Kahan is quick to note that, most of the time, people are perfectly capable of being convinced by the best evidence. There’s a lot of disagreement about climate change and gun control, for instance, but almost none over whether antibiotics work, or whether the H1N1 flu is a problem, or whether heavy drinking impairs people’s ability to drive. Rather, our reasoning becomes rationalizing when we’re dealing with questions where the answers could threaten our tribe — or at least our social standing in our tribe. And in those cases, Kahan says, we’re being perfectly sensible when we fool ourselves.

And another:

Kahan calls this theory Identity-Protective Cognition: “As a way of avoiding dissonance and estrangement from valued groups, individuals subconsciously resist factual information that threatens their defining values.” Elsewhere, he puts it even more pithily: “What we believe about the facts,” he writes, “tells us who we are.” And the most important psychological imperative most of us have in a given day is protecting our idea of who we are, and our relationships with the people we trust and love.

This has so many implications for dialogue and deliberation work — about the role of experts and the effectiveness of expert knowledge, for instance.  It makes me wonder if we emphasize enough the SOCIAL aspects of dialogue and deliberation.  Are we doing enough to help people feel affinity for each other before launching into high-level deliberative discussions, for instance?  Are we doing enough to change the culture of our communities, or are we just engaging those who are already receptive to considering different viewpoints?

PoliticsStupidPost2The article goes on to talk about how Washington has become a machine for making identity-protective cognition easier. There is lots of thought-provoking stuff in this article for transpartisans to consider!

My big disappointment with this article is the conclusions at the end.  Kahan has come up with “communications” solutions, like having the FDA think through what people’s rational position-based arguments will be against a new policy, and communicate their decisions in a way that provides a rational response to those arguments.  The author, Ezra Klein, is dissatisfied with that solution and refers to it as “spin” at one point, and he concludes that “If American politics is going to improve, it will be better structures, not better arguments, that win the day.”

To me, the whole article pointed to the need for people to develop connections and relationships — strong ones — to those outside of their tribe.  Of course I see dialogue and deliberation as being key to that shift. Engaging in meaningful conversations about tricky issues like gun safety, climate change, and abortion with people you don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye with is not just about thinking more deeply or more rationally about these issues than we tend to. It’s also about seeing those who are “outside of your tribe” (those from the other side of the aisle, or those from a different class, race or generation than you) in a different light.

Portland2010-cafetableThis is one of the reasons NCDD has always encouraged “dialogue” to happen before “deliberation” takes place. Thought these terms (and the practices they represent) often blur, dialogue centers around storytelling, relationship-building and a focus on building understanding before any kind of decision or action is on the table. Deliberation tends to focus more on understanding issues, options and trade-offs to set the stage for better decisions and judgments. (Dig in a little deeper on our What Are Dialogue & Deliberation? page.)

We are in dire need of both dialogue and deliberation today, but combined, I believe these practices can work to counteract this “Identity-Protective Cognition” — or at least help people begin to broaden their ideas about who is in their tribe.

What do you think? Do you agree that “D&D” can counteract our tendency to only be effected by the evidence that leaves us unchanged and feeling safe with our social group? And if so, what are our shining examples of where this is happening? Where are you making inroads on this? And perhaps most importantly, what can be done to encourage your good work to become more widespread?

Let’s Discuss: How Politics Makes Us Stupid

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There is a fascinating article up at Vox.com that I encourage all NCDD members and subscribers to our Transpartisan Listserv to give some thought to. My friend Jean Johnson at Public Agenda, one of NCDD’s organizational members, alerted me to it last week, and it ties directly into conversations that are going on in both the NCDD Discussion list and the Transpartisan list.

PoliticsStupidPost1The article by Ezra Klein, How Politics Makes Us Stupid, talks about research that shows that a more informed public has little effect on politics, polarization, and political opinions.  Instead, “Cutting-edge research shows that the more information partisans get, the deeper their disagreements become.”

Researcher Dan Kahan’s findings were that people accepted some information without any problem — but in cases where their social standing and relationships were effected by their take on an issue, people dismissed information as faulty that didn’t line up with their group’s / tribe’s / community’s stances. This was true for partisans on both sides of the aisle.

Here’s an excerpt:

Kahan is quick to note that, most of the time, people are perfectly capable of being convinced by the best evidence. There’s a lot of disagreement about climate change and gun control, for instance, but almost none over whether antibiotics work, or whether the H1N1 flu is a problem, or whether heavy drinking impairs people’s ability to drive. Rather, our reasoning becomes rationalizing when we’re dealing with questions where the answers could threaten our tribe — or at least our social standing in our tribe. And in those cases, Kahan says, we’re being perfectly sensible when we fool ourselves.

And another:

Kahan calls this theory Identity-Protective Cognition: “As a way of avoiding dissonance and estrangement from valued groups, individuals subconsciously resist factual information that threatens their defining values.” Elsewhere, he puts it even more pithily: “What we believe about the facts,” he writes, “tells us who we are.” And the most important psychological imperative most of us have in a given day is protecting our idea of who we are, and our relationships with the people we trust and love.

This has so many implications for dialogue and deliberation work — about the role of experts and the effectiveness of expert knowledge, for instance.  It makes me wonder if we emphasize enough the SOCIAL aspects of dialogue and deliberation.  Are we doing enough to help people feel affinity for each other before launching into high-level deliberative discussions, for instance?  Are we doing enough to change the culture of our communities, or are we just engaging those who are already receptive to considering different viewpoints?

PoliticsStupidPost2The article goes on to talk about how Washington has become a machine for making identity-protective cognition easier. There is lots of thought-provoking stuff in this article for transpartisans to consider!

My big disappointment with this article is the conclusions at the end.  Kahan has come up with “communications” solutions, like having the FDA think through what people’s rational position-based arguments will be against a new policy, and communicate their decisions in a way that provides a rational response to those arguments.  The author, Ezra Klein, is dissatisfied with that solution and refers to it as “spin” at one point, and he concludes that “If American politics is going to improve, it will be better structures, not better arguments, that win the day.”

To me, the whole article pointed to the need for people to develop connections and relationships — strong ones — to those outside of their tribe.  Of course I see dialogue and deliberation as being key to that shift. Engaging in meaningful conversations about tricky issues like gun safety, climate change, and abortion with people you don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye with is not just about thinking more deeply or more rationally about these issues than we tend to. It’s also about seeing those who are “outside of your tribe” (those from the other side of the aisle, or those from a different class, race or generation than you) in a different light.

Portland2010-cafetableThis is one of the reasons NCDD has always encouraged “dialogue” to happen before “deliberation” takes place. Thought these terms (and the practices they represent) often blur, dialogue centers around storytelling, relationship-building and a focus on building understanding before any kind of decision or action is on the table. Deliberation tends to focus more on understanding issues, options and trade-offs to set the stage for better decisions and judgments. (Dig in a little deeper on our What Are Dialogue & Deliberation? page.)

We are in dire need of both dialogue and deliberation today, but combined, I believe these practices can work to counteract this “Identity-Protective Cognition” — or at least help people begin to broaden their ideas about who is in their tribe.

What do you think? Do you agree that “D&D” can counteract our tendency to only be effected by the evidence that leaves us unchanged and feeling safe with our social group? And if so, what are our shining examples of where this is happening? Where are you making inroads on this? And perhaps most importantly, what can be done to encourage your good work to become more widespread?

A Glimmer of Hope in Pew’s Polarization Report

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The Pew Research Center recently released a report on polarization in the US that has important insights for our field. The report is huge, but luckily, NCDD Board of Directors member John Backman created a wonderful overview of the report’s findings, with an eye toward what it means for our work. We highly encourage you to read John’s thoughts below and add your reflections on the Pew study in the comments section. 

How Far Apart Are We, Really? A Closer Look at Pew’s Polarization Report

by John Backman

The findings look dark, no doubt about it. Play with the numbers, though, and you can begin to see glimmers of hope—and opportunities for D&D practitioners.

The report from the Pew Research Center bears the ominous title “Political Polarization in the American Public,” and the first sentence in the web version is no better: “Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines – and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive – than at any point in the last two decades.” The nationwide survey of 10,000 adults found that:

  • The two ends of the spectrum are growing. 21% of respondents now identify as “consistently liberal” or “consistently conservative”—double the percentage in 1994.
  • Overlap between parties is in steep decline. Twenty years ago, 64% of Republicans were more conservative than the median Democrat, and 70% of Democrats were more liberal than the median Republican. Today those figures are 92% and 94%, respectively.
  • Hostility is more intense. The percentage of respondents with a highly negative view of the other side has more than doubled since 1994. Worse, most of these “high negatives” believe the opposing party’s policies to be “so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being.”
  • The silos are hardening. Half of consistent conservatives and 35% of consistent liberals value living in a place where most people share their views. Nearly one-third of consistent conservatives and one-quarter of consistent liberals would be unhappy if one of their family married into the other side.

In other words, the American public is moving in a direction diametrically opposed to the bridge-building instincts of most D&D practitioners. On the whole, it’s hard to be happy about the situation.

Until you dig deeper. Some of the under reported findings and unexpressed facts hold more hope for both our public square and our ability as practitioners to make a difference:

If 21% of Americans are now firmly ensconced in their worldviews, then 79% are not.

That leaves roughly 250 million people who, in theory, might be open to an exchange of views with others of different opinion. One key strategy for ensconcing dialogue in our public square, as I see it, is to build a critical mass of people who are (or become) oriented toward dialogue. It’s easier to find participants for that critical mass in a pool of 250 million than it would be if the middle were actually vanishing instead of declining.

The middle of the political spectrum is quiet. Dialogue and deliberation could change that.

The Pew report notes that the people at the ends of the spectrum have a disproportionate voice in the political process because they are more vocal. “Many of those in the center,” the authors write, “remain on the edges of the political playing field, relatively distant and disengaged.” Yet they don’t have to stay on the edges, and anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that D&D can draw them in. For how many people has a dialogue been their first experience with any sort of civic engagement? And how many of them have been delighted with the process?

Data to validate or refute these impressions would be helpful here, of course. But if the impressions are accurate, they point to the power of dialogue, not only to engage people in the civic/political arena, but to start them out with a civil, productive approach.

There is still common ground to use as a starting point for dialogue, and much of it involves one of our most powerful motivators: the drive to make a good life for ourselves and our loved ones.

According to the Pew report, even the most strident conservatives and liberals want to live near extended family, high-quality public schools, and opportunities to get outdoors. By and large, concern for those closest to us trumps political affiliation: for about three-quarters of respondents, a family member’s marrying across political divides doesn’t matter.

Yes, the trends are troubling. Yet there is more than enough “raw material” for D&D practitioners to advance the cause of dialogue and deliberation.

What do you see in the numbers? Please share your thoughts below in our comments section.

New Reports on Civic Dialogue & Business Leaders

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Our friends at the Network for Business Sustainability recently released two reports that we think NCDD members should note. The reports focus on the potential for business leaders to be more involved in civic dialogues, and we encourage you to read more about them in the NBS statement below.

Businesses have traditionally played little role in civic dialogue, but their involvement can help advance issues. The Network for Business Sustainability (NBS) has recently published two reports, written by Dr. Thomas Webler, that identify the potential for business involvement in civic dialogue.

The reports are aimed at a business audience, and can serve to introduce businesses to civic dialogue concepts. We hope that they will also be useful for anyone seeking to understand business perspectives or the value of engaging businesses in dialogues.

The reports are:

Both are freely available. We very much appreciate thoughts and feedback, and will evolve the reports accordingly. Comment on the report webpage or by sending a note to Maya Fischhoff at mfischhoff@nbs.net.

About the reports and NBS

NBS is a non-profit based at Western University (Canada) which connects research and practice around sustainable business. Each year, NBS’s Leadership Council of leading Canadian businesses identifies priority issues. For 2013, they asked: How can businesses help citizens become informed, inspired and engaged in a national dialogue about sustainability?

This project represents an innovative collaboration between research and practice. Researcher Dr. Thomas Webler summarized the best academic and practical research available on civic engagement. A working session of leaders from the business, non-profit and academic communities provided extensive feedback, which Dr. Webler incorporated into the final documents.

Chronicle of Philanthropy Highlights PACE Project

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We just heard from our friends with Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE) that their work with was featured recently in the prominent Chronicle of Philanthropy. The article was coauthored by two NCDD members and has some great insights, so we wanted to share their announcement and encourage you to read the article. You can read their announcement below.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy has recently published “Foundations Must Rethink Their Ideas of Strategic Giving and Accountability”, an article that was co-authored by PACE Executive Director Chris Gates and Kettering Foundation Program Officer Brad Rourke.

The article is based on the upcoming PACE white paper, “Philanthropy and the Limits of Accountability: A Relationship of Respect and Clarity” authored by Rourke. PACE and Kettering have been working together for the past two years to better understand how the trends of ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’ might impact the field of philanthropy, and how philanthropy might respond.

The paper was informed by a series of interviews and convenings, a distinguished group of foundation executives, non-profit leaders and thought leaders in the philanthropic and social sectors. Many of their insights and questions are reflected in the paper, which we be released soon as a free pdf download on the PACE website, www.pacefunders.org.

To read the Chronicle article, visit http://philanthropy.com/article/Foundations-Must-Rethink-What/146603.

KF Interviews Imagining America Codirector

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We recently read a fascinating interview with Imagining America codirector Timothy Eatman that our organizational partners at the Kettering Foundation published that we want NCDD members to see. IA’s work in bridging academia and public engagement is critical to advancing our field, so we encourage you to read Timothy’s thoughts on how we get there below. You can find the original interview here.

kfIn a recent column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof laments that scholars are too often unimportant and “irrelevant,” producing “gobbledygook . . . hidden in obscure journals.” Kristof goes on to say that “over all, there are, I think, fewer public intellectuals on American university campuses today than a generation ago.” Whether real or perceived, the sentiment that scholars are disengaged is shared by many.

However, on a number of fronts, higher education is enjoying a renewed commitment by scholars to community-centered research and teaching. The Kettering Foundation and many others have referred to this as “public scholarship.” The term “public scholarship” may strike you as a little funny: we don’t typically think of scholarship as public or even publicly accessible. So what’s this all about?

Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (IA), a national consortium of publicly engaged scholars headquartered at Syracuse University, has for many years drawn attention to these challenges. The program was launched in 1999 at the White House. The founding partners were the University of Michigan, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the White House Millennium Council, led by Hillary Clinton. Today, IA has more than 100 member institutions.

Imagining America LogoTimothy Eatman serves as codirector of IA and holds a faculty appointment at Syracuse University’s School of Education in the department of Higher Education. He also serves as an affiliate faculty member in the Communications and Rhetorical Studies Department. Jack Becker recently sat down with him for a couple of discussions before and after the 2013 Imagining America National Conference, which brought together several hundred participants from across the country and around the world to ask the powerful question, “How do we catalyze artists, designers, and humanists, and tap the power that their fields represent, to open us up to innovative, 21st century ways of demonstrating the relevance of the academy and of impacting our pipeline of young adults?”

Jack Becker: What kind of space does the Imagining America annual conference open up for thinking about democratic engagement?

Tim Eatman: It’s the space being used for over a dozen years to affirm this work. It helps connect graduate students and scholars to a conversation around civic engagement that they might not be able to have at their university or at their disciplinary conference.

We need a space to just be able to air some of these issues, particularly in the academy. Particularly in Research-One institutions. This is a traditional space. We think we are stimulating and catalyzing a community that sees room for scholarly research to thrive, but also feels that in the 21st century we can have a larger continuum of knowledge creation. This supports the idea of academic freedom and agency.

Part of the challenge is encouraging faculty to think of their pedagogy differently, in ways that harness the knowledge and thinking of students as colearners and colleagues; this orientation changes the dynamic of the classroom. We’re pushing for that as well. What does it look like when we position students as colearners? A lot gets left on the floor in terms of possibilities when we don’t engage students more deeply.

Promoting “publicly engaged scholarship” is one of Imagining America’s core activities. What is publicly engaged scholarship, and is it in tension with conventional forms of scholarship?

Publicly engaged scholarship has an emphasis on the reciprocal dynamic of knowledge making. An orientation of the campus that values the knowledge-making capabilities of the community; a posture that values community-located knowledge in ways that we don’t tend to do much of in the Ivory Tower. It also includes larger efforts to transform the culture of higher education.

So, the key question is, what is the impact our scholarship has on our community? It’s good to have ways to champion each other (faculty and scholarship), but what is the impact?

There has to be space for scholars who want to be engaged in clinical esoteric research and advance knowledge, and there has to be space for those that want to work with teachers, not as, to channel Harry Boyte here, not as experts on top but as experts on tap. When I go into a teacher’s classroom, I can’t tell them anything much about that environment; they know that environment. So it’s a different posture when you go into an environment and say, “you know what, I have some things to learn, I have some things to teach, yes, but how can we think together about what the consequence of our work is and can be?”

The challenge from a policy standpoint is, faculty are going to do some of that anyway, but not in a way they could if that work were valued in the rewards system. On that note, the Tenure Team Initiative has been an important program of IA that focuses on improving the rewards system in academe for faculty who practice engaged scholarship in the cultural disciplines and seeks to develop a broad understanding of the university’s public mission and its impact on changing scholarly and creative practices.

Issues of faculty rewards are among the most traditionally treated issues in the academy. Trying to create space to value something other than traditional forms of knowledge making is difficult work—look I don’t have any argument with that—I too was a master’s and doctoral student stationed with an assigned carrel in the stacks immersed in reading and rigorous theoretical and analytic work. But our relevance in the 21st century requires that we have to have more sophisticated options than collecting and discussing things; we have to engage that work, we have to be able to demonstrate the verity and impact of that work for purposes of societal amelioration.

So, we need our bench chemist, but there’s also space within the continuum of knowledge creation and practice for the engaged chemist that takes students into the community to examine homes with lead paint and analyze samples to explore the scientific principles that that analysis affords, but also takes the next step to connect with policymakers and community leaders to bring the kind of energy to bear that will make that situation better.

So much of the democratic engagement on our college campuses seems to pivot out of the liberal arts. Imagining America has broadened this focus to look at the humanities, arts, and design, among other areas. Particularly, how do the arts enter into the realm of democratic engagement?

One of our key questions is, how does art awaken that sense of civic agency? If we are a consortium that pivots on the arts, then we need some kind of expression of that. The D.R.E.A.M. Freedom Revival, led by IA associate director, Kevin Bott, is one avenue for this expression. Periodically, the Freedom Revival comes together to hold engaged musical performances where audience members are asked to join in; they might come on stage to testify to their dreams for their community as well as their struggles. We focus on all kinds of issues: education, healthcare, democracy, among others. In these performances we believe we are contributing to a broader democratic revival that encourages community members to commit to this revival.

Thinking about the idea of a revival of civic agency is powerful. We are trying to harness the notion that the oldest democracy in the world was here in Syracuse, the Onondaga Nation. In these performances, we use a community-engaged model to stimulate participants in an awakening of that history and connecting it to contemporary issues. This is one way IA is operating to connect to our understanding of the power of artistic expression, in addition to our work around tenure and other initiatives.

I think of IA’s work in the arts as creating spaces where hearts and spirits meet minds for deep, sustained, impactful, knowledge creation and healing. And we use words like spirit, heart, and healing because those things are achieved with the arts in a way that other disciplines don’t; art stimulates things that other disciplines don’t and creates spaces that aren’t otherwise there.

Syracuse University has worked very hard to strengthen ties with the broader community. For former chancellor Nancy Cantor, this investment in the community went well beyond the push to extend teaching and learning into the community, but to invest in physical infrastructure—buildings and pathways that connected the university and community, what she referred to as “third spaces of interaction.” How should this fit into our thinking about the spaces our campuses occupy?

This whole Connective Corridor and The Warehouse is developing a district that supports thinking about space—how we occupy space and how that space opens us up to the community. It’s one thing to understand the value of this, it’s another thing to get the resources. One of former Syracuse chancellor Nancy Cantor’s approaches has been to invest in space. Things that are attached to the ground mean something to the community. The Warehouse, in downtown Syracuse, was an eyesore in this community. As I understand it, there was a financial bond that Syracuse owed New York State from a residence hall they had built. So instead of paying the state through the bond, Syracuse University built a space to improve the community. This is leveraging resources and shifting mindsets and discourses. People begin to talk and think about what it means to be a Syracuse citizen and have their space and city expressed through the eyes of artists and citizens.

The Connective Corridor and Near Westside Initiative, [initiatives started by Syracuse University as a means of bolstering the community-university relationship and investing in space] means nothing without important partnerships in the area. They get grants to invest in community, and Syracuse doesn’t have total control of the money. Nancy Cantor understood a deeper commitment was needed. When you empower the community, it makes a difference. It’s a different way of thinking about institutions of higher education and creating third spaces, between the university and the community. Building relationship with strength and a sense of cohesion is difficult.

The point here is that there is something very important about the nexus between higher education institutions and the community that can be leveraged for good or for ill. I want to be part of a nexus of individuals that embolden the disciplines in a way that will expand knowledge creation and helps develop solutions to pressing public problems.

You can find the original version of this interview at http://kettering.org/kfnews/making-scholarship-tangible.

C2D2 Climate Change Deliberation Webinar on Thursday

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NCDD’s sister organization, the Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation (C2D2), is hosting a great webinar this Thursday, June 5th, starting at 12pm Eastern/9am Pacific that we wanted to make sure you heard about. The webinar will focus on learning from a climate deliberation initiative in Alberta and will be facilitated by three NCDD members. You can read more about or find out more by clicking here, and make sure to register today by clicking here.

C2D2 Webinar: Climate Change, Dialogue, and Deliberation

C2D2-logoThis webinar will provide an opportunity to learn about the work of Alberta Climate Dialogue (ABCD). This five year initiative (2010-2015) brings together a group of researchers and practitioners who are exploring how citizen deliberation can contribute to shifting engagement and policy on climate change locally and internationally.

This webinar will be an opportunity to discuss in detail what is being learned about deliberative dialogue practice from the following three deliberations:

In the spirit of the ABCD collaboration, the webinar will be facilitated by three of its members:

  • Dr. David Kahane, principal investigator and project lead, University of Alberta
  • Dr. Gwendolyn Blue, researcher, University of Calgary
  • Jacquie Dale, practitioner, One World Inc. and C2D2 Board member

ABCD’s work is funded by a Community-University Research Alliance grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as well as contributions from universities, governments, and NGOs that are partners. Deliberative events are co-funded with government, civil society partners, and further grants.

You can find the original version of this post at http://c2d2.ca/c2d2-webinar-climate-change-dialogue-and.

NYU Launches Research Network on Opening Governance

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In case you missed it, we wanted to share about an interesting new initiative on open government from NYU’s Governance Lab. The initiative will conduct research on governments that pursue innovative ways of doing their work and should be a project to keep an eye on for researchers or those interested in open governance. You can read the March announcement below or find the original here.

govlabThe Governance Lab (The GovLab) at New York University today announced the formation of a Research Network on Opening Governance, which will seek to develop blueprints for more effective and legitimate democratic institutions to help improve people’s lives.

Convened and organized by the GovLab, the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance is made possible by a three-year grant of $5 million from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as well as a gift from Google.org, which will allow the Network to tap the latest technological advances to further its work.

Combining empirical research with real-world experiments, the Research Network will study what happens when governments and institutions open themselves to diverse participation, pursue collaborative problem-solving, and seek input and expertise from a range of people. Network members include twelve experts (see below) in computer science, political science, policy informatics, social psychology and philosophy, law, and communications. This core group is supported by an advisory network of academics, technologists, and current and former government officials. Together, they will assess existing innovations in governing and experiment with new practices and how institutions make decisions at the local, national, and international levels.

Support for the Network from Google.org will be used to build technology platforms to solve problems more openly and to run agile, real-world, empirical experiments with institutional partners such as governments and NGOs to discover what can enhance collaboration and decision-making in the public interest.

The Network’s research will be complemented by theoretical writing and compelling storytelling designed to articulate and demonstrate clearly and concretely how governing agencies might work better than they do today. “We want to arm policymakers and practitioners with evidence of what works and what does not,” says Professor Beth Simone Noveck, Network Chair and author of Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger and Citi More Powerful, “which is vital to drive innovation, re-establish legitimacy and more effectively target scarce resources to solve today’s problems.”

“From prize-backed challenges to spur creative thinking to the use of expert networks to get the smartest people focused on a problem no matter where they work, this shift from top-down, closed, and professional government to decentralized, open, and smarter governance may be the major social innovation of the 21st century,” says Noveck. “The MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance is the ideal crucible for helping  transition from closed and centralized to open and collaborative institutions of governance in a way that is scientifically sound and yields new insights to inform future efforts, always with an eye toward real-world impacts.”

MacArthur Foundation President Robert Gallucci added, “Recognizing that we cannot solve today’s challenges with yesterday’s tools, this interdisciplinary group will bring fresh thinking to questions about how our governing institutions operate, and how they can develop better ways to help address seemingly intractable social problems for the common good.”

About the Governance Lab (GovLab) at New York University

Founded in 2012, the Governance Lab (The GovLab) strives to improve people’s lives by changing how we govern. The GovLab endeavors to strengthen the ability of people and institutions to work together to solve problems, make decisions, resolve conflict and govern themselves more effectively and legitimately. The GovLab designs technology, policy and strategies for fostering these more open approaches to governance and active conceptions of citizenship and studies what works. More information is available at www.thegovlab.org.

About the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. More information is available at www.macfound.org.

For more information or how to become involved, contact:

Stefaan Verhulst, Chief Research and Development Officer at the Governance Lab, sv39@nyu.edu or visit http://www.opening-governance.org.

Members

The MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance comprises:

Chair: Beth Simone Noveck

Network Coordinator: Andrew Young

Chief of Research: Stefaan Verhulst

Faculty Members:

  • Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)/University of Southampton, UK)
  • Deborah Estrin (Cornell Tech/Weill Cornell Medical College)
  • Erik Johnston (Arizona State University)
  • Henry Farrell (George Washington University)
  • Sheena S. Iyengar (Columbia Business School/Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business)
  • Karim Lakhani (Harvard Business School)
  • Anita McGahan (University of Toronto)
  • Cosma Shalizi (Carnegie Mellon/Santa Fe Institute)

Institutional Members:

  • Christian Bason and Jesper Christiansen (MindLab, Denmark)
  • Geoff Mulgan (National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts – NESTA, United Kingdom)
  • Lee Rainie (Pew Research Center)

The Network is eager to hear from and engage with the public as it undertakes its work. Please contact Stefaan Verhulst to share your ideas or identify opportunities to collaborate.

The original version of this announcement can be found at http://thegovlab.org/new-research-network-to-study-and-design-innovative-ways-of-solving-public-problems.

Scholarship of Engagement Award Deadline Approaching

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For our higher education-based members, we wanted to make sure you heard about the 2014 Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement for Early Career Faculty. The award deadline is next Friday, May 16 at 5:00 PM Eastern Time, so don’t delay in sending in your nominations. You can read more about the Lynton Award below or find more info here.

Sponsored by the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE) and the Center for Engaged Democracy (CED) at Merrimack College, the 2014 Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement for Early Career Faculty recognizes a faculty member who connects his or her teaching, research, and service to community engagement.

The Lynton Award emphasizes engaged scholarly work across the faculty roles. The scholarship of engagement (also known as outreach scholarship, public scholarship, scholarship for the common good, community-based scholarship, and community engaged scholarship) represents an integrated view of the faculty role in which teaching, research, and service overlap and are mutually reinforcing, is characterized by scholarly work tied to a faculty member’s expertise, is of benefit to the external community, is visible and shared with community stakeholders, and reflects the mission of the institution. In addition, NERCHE conceptualizes scholarly engagement in terms of social justice embedded in democratic ideals.

Award eligibility: Full-time faculty who are pre-tenure at tenure-granting U.S. public and private not-for-profit colleges & universities, or early career (within first six years).

The scholarship of engagement represents an integrated view of the faculty role in which teaching, research, and service overlap and are mutually reinforcing, and:

  • is tied to a faculty member’s expertise,
  • of benefit to the external community,
  • visible and shared with community stakeholders,
  • effects the mission of the institution.

The award recipient will have several opportunities to disseminate his or her community-based work, including:

  • presenting at the 20th Annual Conference of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU), “Universities as Anchor Institutions: Driving Change” on October 5-7, 2014, at Syracuse University
  • presenting at the annual Lynton Colloquium on September 15, 2014 at UMASS Boston
  • publishing in the Metropolitan Universities Journal, and
  • participating in one or more webinars on community-based scholarly work

2014 Lynton Award Nominations

  • Nominations can be made by academic colleagues, administrators, students, and community partners. Each nominator should aim to present a comprehensive account of the nominee’s publicly engaged teaching, research, and service. To this end, the application provides for the inclusion of the names and affiliations of additional nominators. Further, endorsements from individuals familiar with one or more aspects of the nominee’s work can be included in the supporting documentation of the application.
  • In cases in which multiple individuals submit a single application for the nomination of a faculty member, one person should be designated as the primary nominator responsible for completing and submitting the application. Additional nominators can be noted in the appropriate section of the application.
  • More than one faculty member from a single college or university may be nominated. Please complete separate applications for each nominee.

Nominators will submit nominations via an online application. To submit an application, please see the Application Instructions.

Questions regarding this framework should be addressed to the Lynton Award Coordinator, Dr. Elaine Ward, at Merrimack College’s School of Education and Social Policy by email at lyntonaward@merrimack.edu (subject line: “Lynton Award Help”) or by phone at (978) 837-3572.

Learn more about the Lynton Award