In case you missed it, NCDD member organization The Davenport Institute, in partnership with the Pepperdine School of Public Policy, is offering their next professional Certificate in Advanced Public Engagement for Local Government [non-academic] from February 7-9 in Malibu, CA. Excellent for anyone involved or working with local government, or in graduate school for local government/public policy. NCDD members receive a 20% discount off the tuition if you sign by tomorrow, January 15th, so make sure you register ASAP to receive this great benefit. They are accepting applications until the class is full, so sign up while you still can! You can read the announcement below or on the Pepperdine School of Public Policy’s website here.
Become a Certified Public Engagement Champion
The Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and the Pepperdine School of Public Policy invite you to become part of the 6th cohort to receive your Professional Certificate in Advanced Public Engagement for Local Government on February 7-9, 2020 at the Pepperdine campus in Malibu, CA.
During this three-day intensive program, you will be prepared to lead a publicly-engaged organization by gaining a deep understanding of the context, purpose and best practices for engaging residents in the decisions that affect their lives and communities.
The cost is $1990 which includes instruction, materials, and meals. NCDD members get a 20% discount if they apply by January 15. You can find out more and apply here.
No other program harnesses the collective knowledge of frontline leaders quite like the Davenport Institute. My cohort helped me develop solutions to programs and introduce new strategies to fuel collaboration across my organization. I implemented what I learned the same week I got back ~ Yvonna Cazares, Director of Community Engagement, Office of the Mayor, City of Oakland.
I’m teaching Public Policy Analysis to undergraduate this spring–a new course. I’ve pasted the working syllabus (minus the grading rubric, rules about technology, and other practicalities) below. As always, comments and suggestions are welcome. I don’t think this design is a very unusual, but it may lean more toward institutional analysis (per Elinor Ostrom) than is common.
Objectives
To learn to analyze institutions and develop strategies that improve the world by changing these institutions or creating new ones. A good strategy must be just (which requires normative argument), effective, and politically viable.
Summary of Content
The class will first investigate one policy question together. That question is: Which students should attend which k-12 schools in the USA, and who should decide that matter? Concrete policy options include mandatory assignment to neighborhood public schools, school choice, charter schools, vouchers, etc. Every student will write a short paper on that topic.
Each student will then select one policy issue and write three 5-7-page essays that connect to produce one policy memo on that issue. As students conduct research for their individual papers, in class, we will discuss methods and theories of policy analysis.
Our overall framework will the Institutional Analysis and Design (IAD) framework developed by Elinor Ostrom and colleagues. We will use it both for the k-12 school example and for each student’s individual project.
Working with this framework, we will pose these questions:
What is the institution? What is its name? How would you define it uniquely, and which people, resources, locations, etc. does it involve?
What problem or set of problems interests you about it? This problem may be a failure (the institution doesn’t yield the intended results) or an injustice (it has bad results), or it could be the intellectual problem posed by its success: why does this institution work and can we replicate it?
What other institutions are closely related to it, and how?
Which institutional form(s) does it reflect, e.g., a government, a firm, a market, a network, an association, a community?
What are important relevant biophysical conditions? What natural resources does it use, and which natural processes come into play? What characteristics of these resources and processes are relevant to the institution: e.g., scarcity, fragility, adaptability, ability to reproduce and grow, interdependence, tendency to move?
What are important technological conditions, where “technology” means the relevant affordances and limitations that have been created–or will predictably be created–by human beings?
What cultural meanings (in the sense of Geertz 1973) are involved? Are these meanings shared or disputed?
What official, formal, usually written rules govern the institution? What are its rules-in-use? (These may diverge from the official rules.)
Are the rules grounded (Links to an external site.)in phenomena beyond the institution? For instance, an institution might use a currency whose value is determined by other institutions. Tufts runs on an academic calendar related to the solar calendar, which is grounded in the motion of the earth. (Grounding is different from causation.)
What goods are relevant? Who has which kinds of ownership over which goods? Are the goods subtractable? Are they excludable?
Who are the relevant actors?
What choices confront each actor? What does each actor know about the available choices?
What does each actor value, and why?
Under what conditions do the actors choose (e.g., with or without discussion, once or repeatedly, simultaneously or in turn, with or without knowledge of what the others are choosing)?
What are the consequences of the most important or most likely combinations of choices made by all the actors?
Are these consequences desired by the actors?
Are these outcomes desired by people who are not among the actors?
Are the outcomes fair or just by various normative criteria?
Are they sustainable–meaning a) literally repeatable many times, and/or b) good for nature?
How do the outcomes affect the issues raised in questions 1-15? In other words, do the outcomes of the institution change the institution itself, in a feedback loop?
What deliberate changes in institutional forms (4), technologies (6), meanings (7), rules (9-10), or values (13) would produce preferable outcomes according to the criteria raised in questions 18-20?
How can we go about altering the institution in the light of 22?
Book to purchase
Sigal R. Ben-Porath and Michael C. Johanek, Making Up Our Mind: What School Choice is Really About (University of Chicago Press, 2019)
Robert Pondiscio, How The Other Half Learns: Equality, Excellence, and the Battle Over School Choice (Avery 2019)
These will be in the bookstore but you are welcome to purchase electronic versions instead.
Criteria for assessing class participation:
Attendance.
Engaging in a discussion that is informed by the assigned texts.
Focusing on the topic and the texts, which does not preclude drawing connections beyond them.
Being responsive to other students. Responsiveness needn’t always be immediate, verbal, or occur within the class discussion itself.
Building on others’ contributions, and sometimes making links among different people’s contributions or between what they have said and the text.
Demonstrating genuine respect for the others, where respect does not require agreement. In fact, sometimes respect requires explicit disagreement because you take the other person’s ideas seriously.
Taking risks, trying out ideas that you don’t necessarily endorse, and asking questions that might be perceived as naive or uninformed.
Seeking truth or clarity or insight (instead of other objectives).
Exercising freedom of speech along with a degree of tact and concern for the other people.
Demonstrating responsibility for the other students’ learning in what you say (and occasionally by a decision not to speak).
Wed. Jan 15
Introductions. Some preliminary discussion of school choice based on our own experiences
Sigal R. Ben-Porath and Michael C. Johanek, Making Up Our Mind: What School Choice is Really About, pp. vii-81
(Johanek will visit class via videoconference.)
Mon., January 29
Values: What are We Trying to Acccomplish?
Sigal R. Ben-Porath and Michael C. Johanek, pp. 83-129
Monday, February 3: no class (instructor is traveling)
Wed. Feb 5
Does Choice Work? Qualitative evidence
Robert Pondiscio, How the Other Half Learns: Equality, Excellence, and the Battle Over School Choice (2019); especially recommended pages: 3-51, 77-104, 111-113, 156-163, 175-179, 184-194, 210-219, 257-267, 271-279, 295-311, 320-340.
Meira Levinson, “Is Pandering Ethical? Power, Privilege, and School Assignment,” in Levinson and Jacob Fay, Dilemmas of Educational Ethics: Cases and Commentaries, pp. 143-78
(Feb 17: no class; President’s Day)
First paper due: 4-6 pages about school choice
Part II: Other Issues
Wed., February 19
Policy analysis: mainstream approaches
Bardach, E. A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis. (2000), excerpts
(Feb 17: no class; President’s Day)
Mon, Feb. 24
Unpacking institutions
In class, we will build and operate an extremely simple institution by playing a “tragedy of the commons” game. We will apply the IAD framework to it.
Ostrom, Elinor. 1987. “An Agenda for the Study of Institutions.” Public Choice 48:3-25. Reprinted in McGinnis (2000), Chapter 3.
Monday, March 2
Rules
Toulmin, Stephen. 1974. “Rules and Their Relevance for Understanding Human Behavior.” In Understanding Other People, ed. Theodore Mischel, 185-215. Oxford: Blackwell. Excerpts: pp. 189-214.
Wednesday, March 4
Attributes of community: Example # 1, the community’s social capital
Coleman, James S. “Social capital in the creation of human capital.” American journal of sociology 94 (1988): S95-S120.
Monday, March 9
Attributes of community: Example #2, the community’s culture
Geertz, Clifford. “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” Culture and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2000. 175-201.
Wednesday, March 11
Games: players, situations
Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff, Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life: Competitive Edge in Business, Politics and Everyday Life, excerpts
Second paper due: 4-6 pages presenting a public policy issue in terms of “players,” choices, and outcomes.
Monday, March 9
Exit Voice and Loyalty
Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970), excerpts
Wednesday, March 11
Evaluative Criteria: 1) Cost-benefit analysis
Richard Layard and Steven Glaister, eds., Cost-Benefit Analysis, second edition: chapters on Safety and the saving of life: The theory of equalizing differences, pp 272-289; by Sherwin Rosen; The environment: The environment and emerging development issues pp 319-348, by Partha Dasgupta, Karl-Göran Mäler ); Regulation and deregulation: Enhancing the performance of the deregulated air transportation system, pp 375-395 by Steven A. Morrison
(March 16-19 is Spring Break)
Monday, March 23
Evaluative Criteria: 2) Rule of law
Scalia, Antonin. “The rule of law as a law of rules.” U. Chi. l. reV. 56 (1989): 1175.
Wednesday, March 25: no class (instructor is traveling)
Monday, March 30
Evaluative Criteria: 3) Rights
Dworkin, Ronald, and Jeremy Waldron. “Rights as trumps.” Arguing about the Law (1984): 335-44.
Third paper due: 4-6 pages analyzing the value conflicts and choices raised by your policy issue
Wednesday, April 8
Types of institution
Aligica, Paul Dragos, and Vlad Tarko. “Co-production, polycentricity, and value heterogeneity: the Ostroms’ public choice institutionalism revisited.” American Political Science Review 107.4 (2013): 726-741.
Feedback loops
Mettler, Suzanne, and Mallory SoRelle. “Policy feedback theory.” Theories of the policy process 3 (2014): 151-181.
Complexity and Wicked Problems
Rittel, H., M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences 4(1) (1973) 155-169
Monday, April 13
How policy gets made
Sabatier. P.A. and C.M. Weible. The Advocacy-Coalition Framework: An Assessment. 189-220
Schlager, E., C.M. Weible (2013). New Theories of the Policy Process. Policy Studies Journal, 41(3), 389-396.
Fourth paper due: 4-6 pages presenting and defending a policy recommendation on your issue.
Scholars in many disciplines are grappling with how to produce rigorous scholarship that addresses significant social challenges in collaboration with communities, organizations, and agencies. They strive to learn from those working outside of academia, to benefit from the insights of all kinds of groups and institutions, and to give back to communities rather than extract value from them. Although political scientists offer models of excellence in civically engaged research, relevant methods and strategies are not yet widely taught in the discipline’s graduate programs or sufficiently valued in the profession as a whole.
In 2019, in an effort to address this need, the APSA Presidential Task Force on New Partnerships launched the now-annual APSA Institute for Civically Engaged Research (ICER). ICER is intended for advanced graduate students in political science and political scientists at any stage of their careers who wish to shift to using civically engaged research. (It is not meant for scholars who are already experienced in that approach.)
To apply, please complete this form. Application deadline: March 1, 2020.
Content of the Institute
Topics covered will include:
Expertise: what do political scientists uniquely contribute? What are the limitations of scholarly expertise? What types of expertise do those outside of academia have?
The ethics of collaboration: sharing of credit, funds and overhead, navigating IRB, dealing with disagreements.
Communicating results: to partners, relevant communities, the press, and directly to the broader public.
How to navigate common social science values and norms while doing civically engaged work
Career considerations: publication and credit, tenure and promotion, funding your research.
Mapping the different and varied ways that political scientists engage through research and beyond.
We will explore these issues by discussing relevant readings, by analyzing specific examples of civically engaged research from political science and cognate disciplines, and by considering the research plans and ideas of institute participants.
People
Speakers and visitors are currently being finalized. Confirmed speakers include: Anjuli Fahlburg (Tufts University), Michelle Fine (CUNY), Samantha Majic (John Jay College/CUNY), Jamila Michener (Cornell University), Pearl Robinson (Tufts), and Ethel Tungohan (York University).
The Institute Directors are Amy Cabrera Rasmussen (California State University Long Beach) Peter Levine (Tufts University), and Valeria Sinclair Chapman (Purdue University). If you have further questions about the institute, please contact APSA’s Centennial Center at centennial@apsanet.org.
Practicalities
The Institute will take place on the campus of Tufts University, in the Boston area, from June 15-18, 2020. Approximately twenty participants will meet each day for intensive discussions and workshops. Thanks to support from the Ivywood Foundation, participation in the Institute for Civically Engaged Research is free, and scholarships are available to defray costs of travel, food, and housing on the Tufts campus. Applicants are expected to seek financial support from their home institution, but admission to the Institute for Civically Engaged Research will not be affected by financial need.
ICER participants are invited to attend the Frontiers of Democracy conference immediately following the institute, from the evening of June 18 until noon on June 20 in downtown Boston. Frontiers offers the opportunity to engage directly with over 120 activists, policymakers, and engaged scholars from across multiple disciplines, to present one’s work to and learn from potential partners about their interests and best practices for collaboration. ICER participants will have the Frontiers’ conference fee waived and be provided lodging assistance.
Applicants to ICER will be notified of decisions by late March.
Frontiers of Democracy is now accepting applications for its upcoming 2020 conference happening from June 18th until June 20th! The conference will be held at Tufts University in downtown Boston, following the American Political Science Association’s Institute for Civically Engaged Research, and preceding the Summer Institute of Civic Studies. Frontiers will be an opportunity to connect with members from these programs, as well as, practitioners and professionals working in democratic social movements, political reform, civic engagement, dialogue and deliberation, and more! Applications for sessions will be accepted until April 1st and we encourage members from the Coalition to submit an application and/or attend the conference. You can read the announcement below and find the original version on Peter Levine’s blog here.
Frontiers of Democracy: June 18-20, 2020
Frontiers of Democracy is an annual conference hosted by the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University since 2009.
In 2020, the conference will take place from June 18 (5 pm) until June 20 (noon) at the downtown Boston campus of Tufts University: Tufts Center for Medical Education, Room 114; 145 Harrison Avenue, Boston. You are invited!
You can propose a concurrent session for Frontiers using this form. Proposals will be accepted until April 1, 2020
The agenda is still in development but will include short plenary talks, concurrent sessions, and interactive activities for the large group. Among other whole-group activities, we will experience Pre-Texts (“pedagogical acupuncture”) and will use several new “teaching cases” to prompt intensive discussions in small groups. (Teaching cases are short narratives about real events that conclude at a moment when the protagonists must make a difficult choice.)
Frontiers will follow the American Political Science Association’s Institute for Civically Engaged Research and precede the Summer Institute of Civic Studies and will convene members of those two programs plus about 100 others: activists and practitioners in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors; scholars, educators, students; and others. Participants will come from many countries and many streams of work related to democracy–social movements, community organizing, civic education, arts and media work, political reform, civil liberties, dialogue and deliberation, political theory, and more.
A major objective is to build relationships among people who work in diverse ways at the frontiers of democracy in the United States and around the world.
There is much to be said about the relationship of commons to climate change, but let me offer this short glimpse into the clash of worldviews that must be negotiated. Whatever the outcome in ongoing arguments with capitalist climate-deniers, our best recourse will be to build and fortify our many commons as a failsafe against the earthly reckoning that is coming.
A recent editorial in The Daily Telegraph (UK) resentfully noted the toll that climate collapse is wrecking on human civilization: “As if climate change does not engender enough worries about flooding, storms and bush fires, there is another consequence we often fail to appreciate -- the impact on financial services and pensions in particular.” The editorial went on to conclude: “In the end, in spite of what Greta Thunberg believes, it is the capitalist system, the economic growth it generates and investment in green technologies that will make it possible to move to a carbon-free future without triggering a global recession.”
Just another day in the Anthopocene Era: a self-absorbed denial of the encompassing realities of the living Earth.
Michael Dunwell, a painter who works with Transition movement in Bristol, England, took issue with this myopic, anthropocentric attitude – the idea that, as if flooding, storms, etc., were not enough, the financial system is being affected!
To which Dunwell indignantly replied: “As if! As if climate change was some purely arbitrary and isolated event that for some unknown reason menaces the basic necessity for our existence on the planet of our financial services!”
He continued:
“I am continually taken back to the story of the enclosure of the commons, which perfectly illustrates the problem of the market and the environment. There is no denying that you can make more money by putting a fence round a piece of land and grazing sheep, when the market for wool is thriving, than you can by letting a group of men who have helped you conquer that territory pursue a subsistence living on it, with their families.
“This ‘fact of life’ justified the conversion of half the land in England, over three or four centuries, from common land to private property, and instilled in the minds of everyone the ‘necessity’ of an economy based on productivity for the market. The massive increase in productivity and wealth produced by the industrial revolution simply emphasised what had already been effected by enclosure, i.e., the marketisation of land and labour. The resulting woes of social injustice and environmental ruin now confront a global economic culture in an entirely new way; it is no longer just a matter of inequality and differing values, but of survival. If we cannot reclaim land and labour from the market it will devour us.
“But the neoliberals now in power complain that not enough people realise that climate change has an impact on their core institutions! In Opposition we complain that the neoliberals are in denial of the impact of an unregulated economy on all the natural and social systems in the world. It looks inevitable that the breakdown of these systems themselves will be more likely to settle the argument than any rational debate, in the course of the next decade. So what do we do in the meantime?
“We get together in groups that have already shown signs of resilience through their awareness of the danger of the growth economy. We plan for food and energy security on local bases regardless of existing policies – or lack of them. We sustain ourselves with the love and comradeship we have experienced in the Transition and XR movements. We do not wait for politics to change; we just concentrate on reconnecting with our human instinct of collaboration. We are about to say goodbye to a lot of luxuries we can manage without, and re-discover the principles of the biosphere.”
I feel strangely comforted by the series of giant paintings that Michael exhibited in 2016. Here is one that I especially like:
For the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, RAND’s Social and Economic Well-Being Team conducts a regular and large representative survey of National Health Attitudes (authors: Katherine Grace Carman, Anita Chandra, Sarah Weilant, Carolyn Miller, and Margaret Tait.) It includes items about civic engagement as well as health and healthcare and other topics. I look forward to detailed analysis that examines which kinds of Americans answer each question in various ways and how the various topics relate to each other.
For now, here is my graph showing simple topline responses to a question about the impact (whether positive or negative) of various “groups or organizations” on health.
None of these groups and institutions scores very well. Only two (local nonprofits) barely satisfy a majority of the population as being good for health.
To be specific, respondents were asked about about “Local organizations that provide health services (e.g., health care, public health)” and “Local organizations that provide other social services (e.g., food assistance, job training) such as faith based orgs, nonprofits.” It’s interesting that the perceived health impact of these two types of groups was about the same. You might guess that health-service organizations would have a bigger impact. Perhaps people understand the importance of the social determinants of health, such as employment. Or perhaps the mention of “faith-based orgs” in the latter question boosted its score.
Local businesses were rated higher than any government entity and higher that other residents. Of course, businesses provide goods and services that benefit health; the drug store and the vegetable aisle of the supermarket are really important. Still, this answer shows a gap between public opinion and the progressive view that the net impact of business is probably negative, or at least less positive than the net impact of government. (Just 1.6% thought that the impact of local business was very negative.)
As in almost all surveys, local government scores better than state government, which scores better than federal government. In this case, the information is somewhat ambiguous because respondents are asked about “local government,” and then about “leaders” at the state and federal level. It’s not clear whether the difference in their responses results from the change in scale or the shift from government to leaders. After all, the most evident federal leader is Donald J. Trump. Still, I suspect that if the question had been about government (not about leaders) at each level, confidence would have decreased with scale.
One response to these data might be: See, most Americans are not aligned with strong progressive proposals to increase the imprint of the federal government on health. They trust business much more. But some respondents may think the government helps less than local businesses do because the government is insufficiently ambitious. In any case, these data may support policy recipes that involve more federal funding–with a key delivery role for local nonprofits and local businesses, including your neighborhood drug store and supermarket.
We’d love to start off the new year sharing our sincerest appreciation to everyone who supported NCDD during our End-of-Year Fund Drive, either by donating, renewing their memberships or by officially joining the Coalition for the first time as a dues-paying member!
With all of your support, we were able to raise nearly $4,500 to help support this amazing network of movers and shakers. We are only one week into 2020 and it is already shaping up to be a profound and pivotal year, for this country and the world. This powerful network has many tools, experiences, and connections, necessary to address the challenges of our era and positively impact the course of our future. We have a lot of exciting ideas in store that we hope to implement using these funds and continue to nourish this vital coalition. Thank you so much to all who contributed to making this possible!
Please join us in offering a deep and immensely grateful THANK YOU to our contributors!
Contributed $1,000:
Simone Talma Flowers
Contributed $500:
Ele Munjeli, Devopracy
Contributed $100 or more:
Cobie deLespinasse
Linda Ellinor, Sr. Partner & Founder, Action Dialogue Group; co-author of “Dialogue: Rediscover the Transforming Power of Conversation”
Hawaii State Senator Les Ihara
Betty Knighton
Contributed $75:
Carrie Bennett
Douglas Black
Jim Chamness
Russ Charvonia
Stan Deetz
Sara Drury
Kyla Epstein
Kelsey Foster
Richard Frieder
Seva Gandhi
Mary Gelinas
Diane Goodman
Jeff Hasenfratz
Peggy Holman
Kathleen Knight-Abowitz
Sharon Kniss
Joseph McIntyre
Premysl Pergler
Charles Pillsbury
Raquel Ramos
Dr. Sandor Schuman
Lori Shontz
Arjun Singh
Contributed $50:
Roshan Bliss, Organizing Director, Project VOYCE
Richard Burg
Elizabeth Traubman
April Struthers, Consultant, Wit Works Ltd, Canada
Contributed $25 or more:
Caroline Lee
Caroline Mellor
Ruthy Rosenberg
Dr. Carolyn Shadle, Owner, Interpersonal Communication Services, Inc.
Contributed up to $20:
Nicole Farkouh
Wade Hudson
Judith Mounty
Andrew Russell
Your contributions mean so much to NCDD and our staff! Thank you for your continued support of our network and its work!
Frontiers of Democracy is an annual conference hosted by the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University since 2009.
In 2020, the conference will take place from June 18 (5 pm) until June 20 (noon) at the downtown Boston campus of Tufts University: Tufts Center for Medical Education, Room 114; 145 Harrison Avenue, Boston. You are invited!
You can propose a concurrent session for Frontiers using this form. Proposals will be accepted until April 1, 2020
The agenda is still in development but will include short plenary talks, concurrent sessions, and interactive activities for the large group. Among other whole-group activities, we will experience Pre-Texts (“pedagogical acupuncture”) and will use several new “teaching cases” to prompt intensive discussions in small groups. (Teaching cases are short narratives about real events that conclude at a moment when the protagonists must make a difficult choice.)
Frontiers will follow the American Political Science Association’s Institute for Civically Engaged Research and precede the Summer Institute of Civic Studies and will convene members of those two programs plus about 100 others: activists and practitioners in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors; scholars, educators, students; and others. Participants will come from many countries and many streams of work related to democracy–social movements, community organizing, civic education, arts and media work, political reform, civil liberties, dialogue and deliberation, political theory, and more.
A major objective is to build relationships among people who work in diverse ways at the frontiers of democracy in the United States and around the world.
This spring, I will be teaching a capstone seminar on the life and thought of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The draft syllabus is below (minus grading rubrics, policies, etc.). At this stage, I welcome suggestions!
Summary In this seminar, we will study Martin Luther King Jr. as a political thinker. The whole class will read major works by King and excerpts from biographies and historical documents. Additional readings will be distributed among students, who will contribute insights from their assigned texts to the seminar discussions. The additional readings will include works that influenced King, writings by some of his contemporaries, and interpretations from a recent volume, To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry. We will investigate King’s understanding of the Civil Rights Movement—why it was necessary and what it aimed to achieve. Specifically, we will study his ideas about the political and economic organization of white supremacy, the impact of racial ideologies, and the importance of racial integration and the right to vote. We will investigate King’s philosophy of civil disobedience and nonviolence as well as a set of values he relates to that philosophy: dignity, sacrifice, self-reflection, self-improvement, love, faith, and freedom. We will relate these values to King’s understanding of justice. Criticisms of King will also be considered. Studying King and his critics will provide a window into post-WWII American political thought.
Syllabus
Wednesday, January 15: Introductions and overview
1. Predecessors and Early Influences
Monday, January 20: Major African American political thinkers, 1885-1940
Students choose one of these authors and be prepared to discuss the author as well as the readings.
Booker T. Washington, “Letter to the Editor” (1885); “Atlanta Exposition Address” (1895); “Speech to the National Afro-American Council” (1895); “Letter to President Roosevelt” (1904); “Speech to the National Negro Business League” (1915); “My View of Segregation Laws” (1915); “The Talented Tenth” (1903).
W.E.B. DuBois, “The Evolution of Negro Leadership” (1901); “Declaration of Principles” (1905); “The Crisis” and “Agitation” (1909); “Race Relations in the United States” (1928); “Marxism and the Negro Problem” (1933); “Pan -African and New Racial Philosophy” (1933); “The [NAACP] Board of Directors on Segregation” (1934); “A Negro Within the Nation” (1935).
A. Phillip Randolph: “Lynching: Capitalism Its Cause; Socialism its Cure”; editorials on “Racial Equality” and “The Failure of the Negro Church,” “The Negro Radicals,” “Segregation in the Public Schools: A Promise or a Menace,” “Negroes and the Labor Movement,” “The Negro and Economic Radicalism,” and “The New Pullman Porter.”
Another modern Black thinker of your choice likely to be influential in King’s early milieu. E.g., Ida B. Wells, Marcus Garvey …
(Unless otherwise noted in the PDFs, these readings are scanned from Gary D. Wintz, ed., African American Political Thought 1890-1930 (M.E. Sharpe, 1996).)
Wednesday, January 22: Theological Influences
Students choose one of these authors and be prepared to discuss the author as well as the readings
Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited, pp. 7-35.
Reinhold Niebhuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, pp. xv-xvii and 231-277
Walter Raushenbush, A Theology for the Social Gospel, pp. 57-109
Monday, January 27: Biblical echoes
Students will choose one of these, read it, and also read a bit online about the context:
Book of Exodus, Chapters 1-3, in the King James Version (click “next page” to read all three chapters)
Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World (2018), chapter 16 (“The March to the Sea”)
Choose one of these:
Bikhu Parekh, Gandhi, Chapter 4 (“Satyagraha”), pp. 51-62;
Gandhi, Satyagraha(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing Co., 1951), excerpts; and Gandhi, Notes, May 22, 1924 – August 15, 1924, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publications Division Government of India, 1999, 98 volumes, vol. 28, pp. 307-310
Karuna Mantena, “Showdown for Nonviolence: The Theory and Practice of Nonviolent Politics,” in Shelby and Terry, pp. 78-110
Martha Nussbaum. “From Anger to Love: Self-Purification and Political Resistance,” in Shelby and Terry, pp. 114-135
Monday, February 3 – no class (instructor is away)
Wednesday, February 5: Precursors–African American campaigners against segregation
Everyone watches Episode 1 of Eyes on the Prize, “Awakenings, 1954-1956”
Choose among:
Charles Payne, “Ella Baker and Models of Social Change“; and Ella Baker, “Developing Community Leadership“
James L. Farmer Jr., Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement (excerpts)
2. Montgomery
Monday, February 10: What Happened?
Choose between:
David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1986), pp. 105-205.
Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 , pp. 11-82.
Wednesday, February 12: How Does King Present What Happened?
Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom, chapters 3, 4, and 5.
Wednesday, February 19: Theory of Social Movements
Charles Tilly, “Social Movements, 1768-2004“
Marshall Ganz, “Why David Sometimes Wins: Strategic Capacity in Social Movements,” in Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning, and Emotion (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) pp.177-98.
3. Albany and Birmingham
Thursday, Feb 20 (makeup day): What Happened?
Students will choose between:
Episode 4 of Eyes on the Prize, “No Easy Walk: 1961-1963”
David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1986), 173-286.
Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 , pp. 524-561; 673-802
Monday, February 24: How Does King Present What is Happening?
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Wednesday, February 26: More Analysis of the Letter
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Monday, March 2: King’s version versus the Supreme Court’s
David Luban, “Difference Made Legal: The Court and Dr. King” (start at p. 2165)
David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1986), pp. 357-430
Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65 , pp. .
5. Issues During the “Heroic Moment” of the Civil Rights Movement
Wednesday, March 11: What Should be the Goal?
Choose among:
Martin Luther King, “The Ethical Demands for Integration” (1962) and Danielle Allen, “Integration, Freedom, and the Affirmation of Life,” in Shelby and Terry, pp. 155-169
Stokely Carmichael, “Toward Black Liberation,” The Massachusetts Review, Autumn 1966
Derrick Darby, “A Vindication of Voting Rights,” in Shelby and Terry, pp. 170-83
Wednesday, March 25 – midterm in class
Monday, March 30: Change from Below or from Above?
Garth E. Pauley, “Presidential rhetoric and interest group politics: Lyndon B. Johnson and the civil rights act of 1964,” Southern Communication Journal, vol. 63, no 1 (1997), pp. 1-19
My family and I were in Delhi and Rajasthan over the winter break, and I cannot resist some notes. I offer them with intellectual humility, understanding that India is a vastly complex place, our experience was superficial, and I cannot grasp many aspects of Indians’ experience, starting with what it’s like to live on $616/year (a plausible, although dated and contestable, estimate of the median per capita income).
Furthermore, we were tourists, often following a paid guide, riding in a van with a professional driver, or staying in a nice hotel. These are colonial experiences, almost literally; some of the hotels where we stayed had been residences for British authorities. Modes of interaction still harken to colonial days. When I dropped a tissue as I tried to say namaste to a hotel employee, he leapt to pick it up faster than I could have moved my hand downward.
I fully recognize how problematic all of that is, although my (debatable) justification goes as follows: We are already deeply tied to India, already affecting it with the goods we buy and the carbon we pump into the air—and in many other ways—and there is something to be gained by getting at least a bit closer. But there is also a risk of overestimating one’s own learning. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; hence the need for serious humility.
(By the way, as a side-note on tourism: relatively few European sightseers are visible in India, except at the most famous locations. Almost everyone from the United States is visiting the homeland for a family function. This is not a country overwhelmed by global tourism, and developing the industry more may be beneficial. But you do see many Indian travelers and sightseers—crowds visiting temples and other holy places in relatively traditional ways, youth taking selfies outside of historical monuments, and large, affluent, multigenerational family parties speaking Hinglish.)
Politics
India is experiencing substantial protests against a set of policies introduced by the Modi Government that threaten India’s secularism and the equal standing of its Moslem citizens. We saw no signs of actual protests but did avoid certain parts of Delhi that we would otherwise have visited. I tried to follow local news and the commentary of Indians I respect, such as the excellent Ramachandra Guha. In general, I have nothing to add to their analysis and would question my right to express political opinions about India. But I will comment on one experience.
Our guides, to the extent that they were open to discussing politics, were all pro-Modi BJP voters. They identified strongly with specific kshatriya castes. They presented the history of India as the story of a Hindu “we” that has been conquered by waves of outsiders, including Moslems. In Mogul sites, they emphasized the Hindu temples that had been destroyed to build the visible mosques or mausolea. They complained about affirmative action. They blamed the current protests on Modi’s opponents for “politicizing” his proposals. They presented the Prime Minister as strong and effective and as finally addressing issues never before touched since Independence. (They may have been referring to corruption, but I suspect they also meant Hindu nationalist issues.) They romanticized the Rajput rulers of Rajasthan and their close relationships to British imperialism. They implied that Moslem invaders had wounded India but that Hindu feudalism and British colonialism were colorful episodes. One should adjust for possible politeness to white visitors, but I thought their “saffronisation” was sincere.
For what little it’s worth, I stand on the opposite side of all these issues. I think Islam is an integral part of India’s richness; caste is a problematic inheritance; affirmative action is appropriate (if it works, which I don’t know); and Modi’s India risks losing its character as a “sovereign socialist secular democratic republic” with “liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;” “equality of status and of opportunity”; and “fraternity” among all its people.
But our guides were also nice people—striving to raise good kids and to play constructive roles in their communities; kind to strangers. It was a little like spending time among solid #MAGA voters in the USA (except that Modi is much more competent than Trump, the left alternative is less credible in India, and there are ways of understanding Modi’s rise that make it seem almost inevitable—see Taylor Cowen).
It’s always smart to hold two thoughts in your mind. First, we should strive to identify justice and injustice. For instance, I think that BJP-style Hindu nationalism is unjust; it puts 200 million Indian Moslems at serious risk. Second, people who do not understand justice as I do are still complex, ambivalent, sensitive, fellow human beings, conditioned as I am by their circumstances and usually trying to do their best.
Streetscape
The following is a composite, based mainly on Jaipur and Bundi. It could be more accurate if I’d taken ethnographic notes, or even snapshots as reminders. But the ethics of that degree of scrutiny bothered me a bit, so I chose to just absorb and write much later from stored impressions.
I’m in a narrow but busy street in the town center, as opposed to one of the back alleys that are more residential.
It would be misleading to describe this spot as crowded—say, compared to a street in downtown Boston. The number of people per square mile is probably much lower in an Indian town, because the buildings average 2-3 stories and there is plenty of space among the people whom you can see outdoors. They are not pressed together. But the mix of activity is astonishing.
In the street itself: men working on small-scale industrial or mechanical tasks—banging on metal, for example—or women in saris squatted by vegetables for sale. Almost always, several dogs are sound asleep on their sides, oblivious to the traffic that navigates around them. A cow, ambling along, browsing on the garbage. Maybe a small bristly pig with piglets. A constant parade of motorcycles and scooters, with the occasional auto-rickshaw, and rarely a car or van. Almost every vehicle honks as it passes. Often the motorcyclist is a solo young man, but sometimes you see a pair of women in saris, or two men with a child between them, or an old man with a long white beard, curled mustache, and turban.
Parked motorcycles here and there; an open sewer along one side of the road. People walk up and down, some on cell phones, some with small children, some in traditional Rajasthani clothes, fabulously colorful, and some looking like they bought their wardrobes in an outlet mall.
Moving up: small stores selling food, drinks, and specialty items. Professionally printed signs announce the names of the businesses in English or Hindi. One proprietor is a Moslem man in a scullcap. A Jain temple with flags might be visible a little further down.
Some of the addresses are empty except for rubble or partial construction. A family of black-faced monkeys lopes along a wall. A German shepherd that must be a true family pet looks down from a balcony, barking at the street dogs below. Signs and advertisements are posted at various levels. A relief of Ganesh, covered in silver foil and daubed with yellow.
Higher up: small, square colorful kites, flown from rooftops. A cloudless sky with a thin haze. Sounds of horns, drumming and singing, the Call to Prayer.
Environment
We arrived in Delhi after the really bad smog season had ended for 2019. Yet the air was thick enough that you could easily see it even inside well-constructed modern buildings like the airport or the Marriott, swirling around the lighting.
Amartya Sen once argued that the average Indian should use more carbon. That will be necessary for such major life-improvements as full-sized apartments constructed of concrete, refrigeration, and heating in the chilly winter. Clearly, for each Indian to consume more carbon either means even deeper cuts in the developed world or a technological deus ex machina.
But the level of particulate emissions in Indian cities (not only Delhi; the air was just as bad in Jaipur) is a health crisis for residents, and local cuts are required to address that problem. In that sense, the global benefits of reducing emissions in India are consistent with local needs, not in conflict with them. The same is true of planting trees to lower local temperatures, which the Government is doing. You do see solar panels in the countryside—far fewer than in Europe, but quite a few.
In a small town like Narlai, Rajasthan, which appears to be subsidized (by tourism, remittances, or the major temples, I am not sure which) you can also see the local benefits of environmental investment. There, most of the sewers are covered and there is relatively little trash. Townspeople still live interspersed with street dogs, cows, pigs, and monkeys, but everything feels healthier. Narlai may be sanitized in some problematic way that I do not understand, but I think it is the result of spending more money per capita than in many other towns and cities.
Preserving heritage
Narlai is said to have 350 temples. Some are just roadside shrines, but there are several massive ones, including a stunning Jain building. Inside, its immaculate white surfaces are entirely covered in bas-reliefs and rococo architectural ornamentation, the whole making a peaceful and harmonious impression.
In a place like this, my own ignorance is deep. I am not even sure what language the signs are in, let alone their meaning. I know almost none of the iconography, I have the barest understanding of etiquette, and I cannot guess the history of the structure. Nor did I find any informative scholarly writing online about the Jain temple of Narlai.
But it seems that it dates from the 14th century. Many of the lovely and idiosyncratic reliefs are a bit weathered because they are seven centuries old. At the same time, the whole interior is as bright and symmetrical and perfect as if it had been constructed yesterday. And one can see that, in fact, new reliefs and ornaments are being carved and installed here and there right now. The 14th-century temple is at least partly a work of the 21st century—perhaps mostly so.
In a country like Britain or Italy, sophisticated viewers would recoil at this “restoration.” An old building should be left alone or restored only to the point of stability, with any additions clearly marked so that a viewer can see what is old and what is new. A massive renovation would be seen as destroying the historical record. That’s what Europeans used to do in the 1800s, dramatically reconfiguring buildings like Notre-Dame de Paris to meet their sense of what medieval buildings should look like. We don’t do that any more.
In India, too, the law forbids this kind of renovation. But that law appears not to be enforced, and the Jain community of Narlai—with evident wealth and influence—holds different values.
For my own part, I regret the loss of the 14th-century interior but am also a bit relativistic about the clash of values. After all, the Jains want their temple to look perfect and resplendently new for the same reason that 19th-century Europeans wanted to improve their gothic cathedrals. They believe. For believers, a religious structure is not a record of the past; an artistic style is not the mere expression of its time and place. The structure is a home for god; the style is right and good. If that’s the case, why not fix the building to make it look as good as possible? To turn it into a museum is to deny its intended meaning.
It is no coincidence that the countries that are most concerned about historic preservation are also the most secular; and in a way, the past is not at all conserved. We turn places like churches into something entirely new even as we strive to make them look as they did originally.
Perils of sentimentality
The Rajasthani town of Bundi is dominated by a great fortified palace built into a steep mountainside. With many layers of arches, doors, porticoes, terraces, and battlements, it looks like a background shot from the movie of The Lord of the Rings. Kipling said it must have been built by goblins, not men.
Its ownership has been tied up in a court case filed in 1984, so essentially no one holds property rights to it right now. Much of the vast and multistoried interior has been given over to bats and monkeys. But near the top is a well-preserved maharajah’s harem, with gardens, exquisite miniature paintings of Hindu texts on all the walls and ceilings, and elaborate mosaic inlays. In one small room, almost touching each other, are the henna handprints of five or six ladies with slender fingers. We were told that they placed these prints as they left for sati, to be burned alive on the funeral pyre of their deceased husband.
That is a touching sight in a place saturated with both beauty and subjugation. What did these women think as they pressed their hands to the wall? What did they expect after death? What did they think of the lives they were about to leave?
And yet, what are we doing here, listening to this story about sati (which may or may not be true), we four white people from Boston? The supression of sati was a major justification for British imperialism in India. In 1943, the British let 2.1 million-3 million Bengalis die by starvation. Why are we thinking about five possibly sacrificed princesses instead of millions of definitely sacrificed Bengalis? Why are we paying an Indian guide to tell us this story in this place? Why are we in India at all?
I think those are good questions, but I am definitely glad we went, grateful to all the gracious Indians who made the trip so easy, and hopeful to return. I would recommend that anyone go who can.
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