Free Online Professional Development for Civics, Government, and US History!

Posted on July 27, 2020 by stevemasy

Good evening, friends! Are you looking for free online professional development? You may be interested, then, in our The Civics Classroom series.

The Civics Classroom Overview

prepared-classroom

A Prepared Classroom provides teachers with an understanding of:

Course descriptions and the Civics End-of-Course Test Item Specifications,
How to utilize curriculum and pacing guides,
The value of strategic planning and preparing for instruction, and
Making informed decisions about instruction based on formative and summative data.

cognitively-complex-classroom

A Cognitively Complex Classroom provides teachers with an understanding of:

The role of cognitive complexity when facilitating instruction and assessment,
Utilizing strategies and structures, and
Developing learning activities that integrate English Language Arts and disciplinary literacy skills.

cohesive-classroom

A Cohesive Classroom provides teachers with an understanding of:

identifying the needs of students for scaffolded and differentiated supports aligned with the Universal Design for Learning and,
how to develop a responsive civics classroom that builds academic and social-emotional competencies.

The fourth course in the series, developed in collaboration with our partners at Bay District Schools, explores the underlying ideas of the US Constitution and is ‘hosted’ by Dr. Charles Flanagan of the National Archives’ Center for Legislative Archives!

constitutional-classroom

A Constitutional Classroom will provide teachers with an understanding of:

Major ideas in the U.S. Constitution,
How to apply disciplinary literacy skills, and
Preparing for instruction to make content accessible for all learners.

You can get info to register for these courses and download the syllabi, over at Florida Citizen!

but wait

We have also completed and are now launching the first course in what we hope will be a strong and long series for high school US history! The High School US History: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era is, like A Constitutional Classroom, hosted by our friend Dr. Charles Flanagan from the National Archives’ Center for Legislative Archives and was developed in collaboration with our partners at Bay District Schools.

high-school-us-history-classroom

The High School US History: Civil War and Reconstruction course will provide teachers with pedagogy, content, and resources for:

the major ideas of the cause, course, and consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era
primary sources and disciplinary literacy
strategies and structures for accessible learning

You can get info to register for the new course and download the syllabus at the course page on Florida Citizen.

But what about you folks in high school US Government? We have a new course for you as well!
high-school-government-classroom

The High School Government Classroom: Building Critical Knowledge course will provide teachers with pedagogy, content, and resources for:

lesson planning and preparation in social studies
the principles of American democracy
the US Constitution
Founding Documents
Landmark Cases

For Florida teachers, this course is intended to help you prepare students for the new Civic Literacy Assessment. However, it also provides a basic foundation in US government content, pedagogy, and resources and aligns with the newHigh School US Government modules on Civics360!

You can get info to register for the course and download the syllabus over at, you guessed it, Florida Citizen.

We hope that you find these new courses beneficial!

Questions? Email Steve!

how change is made

Posted on July 27, 2020 by Peter

From June 1-June 11, 2020, “support for the [anti-racism] protests grew 10 points among Mixed Feelings voters, 14 points among Lean Biden voters, and a head-spinning 25 points among Lean Trump voters. ‘I had never in my research career seen public opinion shift on the scale in this time frame,’ Michiah Prull said.’”

But how much does this change matter? Beyond affecting the vote in November, what does the shift in public opinion portend?

I’d offer the following general observations.

Public opinion is subject to fairly quick and major shifts when people assess something that doesn’t affect them directly and substantially. For instance, the Civil Rights Movement persuaded many white Northerners to turn strongly against segregation in the South ca. 1958-65. This mattered because it changed votes in the US Congress, yet Northerners were not asked to renounce any of their own advantages. The Civil Rights Movement struggled when it shifted to the North and the issue became White Northerners’ behavior.

People will voluntarily renounce advantages over other people (“privileges”) so long as they don’t have to pay a tangible price or undergo a serious risk as a result. Most straight people have decided that it’s no problem if gay people also marry. In a way, this means renouncing a privilege or a status advantage. But since straight people can still marry, it’s not really a sacrifice. Marriage equality is win/win. To be sure, some people take challenges to their status advantage as threats, but they can often be outvoted by people who are willing to give up merely symbolic privileges.

It is not true that people always act out of self-interest. More than 600,000 Americans died in the US Civil War (putting both sides together), which is hard to explain in terms of individual self-interest — or coercion. Many were eager to sacrifice. But when human beings sacrifice, it is very rarely for other people. It is usually for some “we” to which the individual feels loyalty. And that “we” usually takes a tangible, concrete form as well as an abstract one. Maybe Americans will sacrifice for America because it’s part of our identity, but each soldier is more likely to sacrifice for his own buddies in the squad.

Although people sacrifice when they belong to cohesive groups or during moments of dramatic change, self-interest tends to prevail over the longer term. Relative advantages are astoundingly durable, surviving even revolutions and invasions. The descendants of pagan, Roman gentry became medieval French bishops. Even in the hardest circumstances, people find ways to pass relative advantage to their own offspring and justify doing so using the ideological materials of their time and place.

Still, we are capable of building fairer societies, ones that guarantee more security and opportunity to the least advantaged. Typically, those societies are also democratic, and a substantial majority sees the social contract as beneficial to them.

People will also make concessions to organized groups who can extract a price. For instance, we’ll pay more for a good if the people who manufacture it can strike for better wages. We’ll give up a social advantage to calm a restive group so that they leave us alone. In these cases, a majority yields to a minority for pragmatic reasons.

If these generalizations generally apply, then it’s unlikely that White Americans will voluntarily change their behavior in ways that are actually costly to them or their descendants. I believe that efforts to educate people about their relative advantage are apolitical in the sense that they do not reflect a coherent strategy for addressing power. I fear that these efforts can actually alert people to their own advantages and cause them to dig in. As Steve Biko wrote, “No amount of moral lecturing will persuade the white man to ‘correct’ the situation.” Trainings in diversity, equity and inclusion may be ways for institutions to maintain the status quo, not tools for changing it.

But that does not mean that change is impossible. In fact, I am optimistic that change is coming. It will come in other ways.

First, a majority of the American electorate is shifting on issues that they see as not directly costly to themselves, although these issues matter. Aggressive, racially biased policing and mass incarceration really don’t benefit you if you happen to be white and middle class. In fact, you may suffer collateral damage. Even though African Americans are much more likely than whites to report discriminatory treatment by the police, a plurality of all the people who report such treatment are white. White people can definitely be persuaded to oppose militarized, muscle-bound (and expensive) policing.

We may shift toward a new social contract that prevails because a broad cross-section of voters see it as beneficial to them–and it reduces racial injustice. Many Americans will vote for universal health care or cheaper college because of their self-interest. A society with better access to health and education should also be more racially equitable.

Second, the composition of the public shifting. Although a majority of the electorate remains White, about half of Democrats are now people of color. Their concentration on one side of the aisle poses risks but also offers advantages. When Republicans falter for any reason, people of color suddenly have a lot of leverage.

Third, skillfully organized people of color can (and are) extracting concessions by protesting, boycotting, and otherwise challenging institutions that need them in various ways.

Finally, change can result from random events that are skillfully exploited. I think, for example, that both childhood and gender have been transformed by the rise of girls’ team sports. One reason was Title IX (1972), which was not intended to popularize girls’ athletics. Girls’ sports didn’t arise automatically as a consequence of Title IX; many women and girls (and some men) had to work hard to create teams, leagues, training programs, role models, etc. However, the law created an opening–more or less by accident–and people took advantage of it. We should look for such opportunities today.

Amani’s Story of Facilitation, Triumph and Friendship

Posted on July 27, 2020 by Isabella Guzman

Often times the emotional toll immigrant students experience while adapting to the learning curve is overlooked and can have profound consequences on academic performance. In this post via the Interactivity Foundation, an NCDD member organization, we shine the spotlight on Amani and her experience navigating higher education D&D classes as an international student in the US from a middle eastern country. This story communicates an array of emotions from the uncomfortable isolation she felt during in-class prompted discussions, to the eventual ease she discovered in facilitation harnessed by the support of her peers. This article is a reminder of the importance of cultural humility and understanding when designing and implementing engagement practices. Read the beautiful story of Amani in full below and find the original post here.

Internationally Speaking

Amani came to study in the United States from a middle-eastern country. She was on a government scholarship and had to meet specific academic benchmarks to keep it. Her freshman year consisted primarily of general education courses plus freshman English. Amani did well in her courses except for the parts that were discussion-based.

In her courses, Amani would be placed into small discussion groups to explore a topic related to the course content. Many of the topics made her veryuncomfortable because they focused on cultural issues within American society. She was afraid to express her own views because of her cultural differences. Her classmates didn’t help. They often made ill-informed comments disparaging her background. Amani was also afraid to make comments that might threaten her scholarship. She was aware that some students from her country might be keeping tabs on their fellow students. They might report any comments that could be seen as critical of her government. As a result of these constraints, in any course with a discussion component, Amani resigned herself to receiving a letter grade lower than she might otherwise have earned. Amani moved into her major in her sophomore year. While many of her major courses still used discussion or project groups, they were set up to allow her to stay with the same students in each group. She especially bonded with a few of the women students in her group who really wanted to know about her home country. Amani was very stylish. The other women loved talking about the clothes she wore and especially her jewelry. The discussion groups gradually became easier for Amani. One thing that helped was that the students were taught how to discuss topics more collegially, and especially how to value the thoughts of others.

Amani was expected to facilitate discussions as well. She was terrified of doing this. When her facilitation day arrived, the first thing that she noticed was that her female classmates were all wearing hijabs. Her confidence soared because her classmates really went out of their way to show they were on her side. At the end of the class, her professor complimented her on very successful facilitation. This was another great boost to her confidence.

In contrast to her first discussion-based classes, her classmates showed her respect. They would often ask follow-up questions to better appreciate the culture that she came from.

Amani’s experience is like that of many international students who come to America. How might we better understand the issues they’re facing before they enter into classroom discussions? How might we better frame discussion experiences to foster cross-cultural understanding? How could we use discussion groups to develop learning communities that are sustained beyond just one class? What background in the process of discussions do we need to provide for our students so that discussions boost rather than diminish their self-confidence?

* * *

Discussion experiences can have a great multiplier effect if designed and executed properly. Without careful design, they can also be damaging. We need to think of how our students are entering into classroom discussions—and where they are coming from.

You can find the original version of this interview on the Interactivity Foundation site at www.interactivityfoundation.org/internationally-speaking/

a video introduction to the Civic Studies Major at Tufts

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Peter

This is meant for incoming Tufts undergrads but might have some interest beyond:

NIFI Updates Issue Guide on Immigration

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Isabella Guzman

NCDD member org, the National Issues Forums Institute released their new updated issue guide, Immigration: What Should We Welcome? What Should We Do? In this short updated guide, you can find helpful information and three approaches to assist conversations on this topic that affects almost every single person in America. Read the new announcement below or find the original on NIFI’s here

New Issue Guide – Immigration: Who Should We Welcome, What Should We Do?

This issue is part of the Hidden Common Ground initiative, and sets of free materials are available for conveners and moderators. Scroll down for the Immigration issue guide and other related materials. Need help with your order? Contact customer service.

The immigration issue affects virtually every American, directly or indirectly, often in deeply personal ways. This guide is designed to help people deliberate together about how we should approach the issue. The three options presented here reflect different ways of understanding what is at stake and force us to think about what matters most to us when we face difficult problems that involve all of us and that do not have perfect solutions.

The US government essentially shut down immigration, at least temporarily, during the coronavirus pandemic. But as our country begins to reopen, difficult questions remain:

Should we strictly enforce the law and deport people who are
here without permission, or would deporting millions of people outweigh their crime?
Should we welcome more newcomers to build a more vibrant and diverse society, or does this pose too great a threat to national unity?
Should we accept more of the millions of refugees and asylum seekers fleeing gang violence and war, or should we avoid the risk of taking in people whose backgrounds may not have been fully checked?
Should our priority be to help immigrants assimilate into our distinctively American way of life and insist they learn English, or should we instead celebrate a growing mosaic of different peoples?

The concerns that underlie this issue are not confined to party affiliation, nor are they captured by labels such as “conservative” or “liberal.”

The research involved in developing the guide included interviews and conversations with Americans from all walks of life, as well as surveys of nonpartisan public-opinion research, subject-matter scans, and reviews of initial drafts by people with direct experience with the subject

You can find the original version of this announcement on the National Issues Forum site at www.nifi.org/en/issue-guide/immigration.

Congressman John Lewis, 1940-2020

Posted on July 20, 2020 by stevemasy

Congressman John Lewis, from Apple.com

This past weekend, the nation lost a legendary civil rights leader in the passing of Congressman John Lewis. A passionate advocate of racial equality and civil rights, Congressman Lewis rose to prominence during the Civil Rights Movement, one of the leaders of the Freedom Rides, speaking at the 1963 March on Washington and playing a key role in the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge out of Selma, a day which came to be known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ for the violence of the law enforcement response.

John Lewis was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi in 1961 as a consequence for his part in the Freedom Rides, sent to Parchman Penitentiary for using “white” restroom https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis/status/486142489527844865

Lewis’ speech at the March on Washington is worth a watch. Interestingly, his speech was rewritten literally at the last minute to tone down his powerful words.

Congressman Lewis was a paragon of civic engagement, a leader in the fight for justice, and a strong advocate for holding our nation to the ideals laid out in its Founding Documents. May we all learn from his example.

Differences in COVID-19 response

Posted on July 20, 2020 by Peter

Women, college graduates, Democrats more likely to self-isolate to reduce coronavirus risks

Survey also finds differences in prevalence of COVID-19 testing based on geographic, personal and socio-economic factors

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass (July 20, 2020)—Women, older Americans, Democrats and people with more education are more likely to try to isolate themselves from contact with other people to reduce COVID-19 transmission risks, according to a new Tufts University national survey.

The survey also identified notable differences in whether people have received testing for COVID-19 based on geographic regions, age group, educational level, political affiliation, income, race/ethnicity and gender. Those who have been tested for COVID-19 most commonly live in the Northeast, are affiliated with the Democratic party, and are African American, according to the research.

“The results of our survey indicate that there are significant demographic and geographic differences in how people respond to COVID-19 pandemic risks, and that these disparities in protective responses need to be taken into account by public health and public policy officials,” said Tom Stopka, an epidemiologist at Tufts School of Medicine, and a co-lead on the study.

“As public health officials continue to increase access to testing across the U.S. in light of persistent surges in COVID-19 infections in many states, they need to consider how to increase testing in geographic hotspots and the highest-risk groups to better understand infection patterns and inform data-driven public health and clinical responses,” Stopka added.

The survey was designed and analyzed by Tufts University’s Research Group on Equity in Health, Wealth and Civic Engagement. The research group previously released data showing that only 57 percent of Americans plan to get vaccinated for COVID-19. The group will soon release additional research about the economic impacts of the pandemic.

Self-isolation rates differ

Overall, 71% of adult Americans say they have tried to separate themselves from others to avoid COVID-19.

Women are about nine percentage points more likely to self-isolate (75% versus 66% for men). People with a bachelor’s degree are almost 20 percentage points more likely to self-isolate than those with a high school diploma (79% versus 59.3%, respectively). Democrats (77.5%) and Independents (73%) are about 10 points more likely to self-isolate than Republicans (66%). Almost eight out of ten Americans who are 60 or older report trying to self-isolate, while two-thirds of respondents in all other age categories report similar attempts.

The disparities among those who are more likely to self-isolate may reflect opportunities and perceived risks, according to the researchers. For instance, retired people and people who work at computers can isolate more easily than people who provide in-person services. Also, people in older age groups may be paying close attention to the elevated risks that they face based on national and international epidemiological data and news.

“Below age 60, all age groups are self-isolating at the same rate. That may counter speculation that the young are flouting restrictions,” said Peter Levine, an associate dean of academic affairs at Tufts’ Tisch College.

Testing rates vary by geographic region

Overall, 7% of those polled say that they have personally been tested for COVID-19, and 17% report that someone in their family has been tested.

These testing rates vary by region. In the Northeast, 10% have been tested, and 21% have a family member who has been tested, compared to 5% and 14% in the Midwest, respectively, with the other regions in between. Democrats are significantly more likely to have been tested (9%) or to have a tested family member (22%) than Republicans (6% and 13.5%, respectively). African Americans are the most likely to be tested (10%) or to have had a test in the family (26%), compared to 5% and 14% for Whites, respectively. Increased testing may reflect the higher rate of infection among African Americans that has been widely reported.

About the survey

The survey was fielded online by Ipsos between May 29 and June 10, 2020, using its KnowledgePanel. The sample was nationally representative, and the number of complete responses was 1,267 non-institutionalized adult residents of the United States. More technical information about the survey is at https://equityresearch.tufts.edu/the-survey/.

Tufts University’s Research Group on Equity in Health, Wealth and Civic Engagement was established in 2019 as part of a strategic effort to use resources and expertise across the university to address major global issues. It brings together researchers from across Tufts campuses and schools to discuss and investigate aspects of equity and inequity in the United States and the world. The research has been funded by Tufts University’s Office of the Vice Provost for Research as one of several such initiatives.

The group’s principal investigators are Jennifer Allen, professor of Community Health in the Tufts School of Arts and Sciences; Levine; and Stopka. Other members of the group can be found here.

By September 2020, the Research Group will launch a website at https://equityresearch.tufts.edu that will allow anyone to explore numerous dimensions of equity and inequity with an interactive data-visualization tool. Tufts’ Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life is funding the data-visualization tool.

###

About Tufts University

Tufts University, located on campuses in Boston, Medford/Somerville and Grafton, Massachusetts, and in Talloires, France, is recognized among the premier research universities in the United States. Tufts enjoys a global reputation for academic excellence and for the preparation of students as leaders in a wide range of professions. A growing number of innovative teaching and research initiatives span all Tufts campuses, and collaboration among the faculty and students in the undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across the university’s schools is widely encouraged.

The Frontier Beyond Open Access Publishing? Commoning

Posted on July 17, 2020 by David Bollier

For nearly twenty years, the idea of “openness” for Internet content has been seen as the gold standard for progressive scholarship. If content can be freely shared, goes the thinking, then it will improve the quality of our scholarly and scientific inquiry, democratic debate, and cultural creativity. It will empower individuals and yield a richer collective wisdom.

Well, it hasn’t really worked out that way. While corporate publishers initially resisted open platforms, most have conceded the inevitability of open networks and shifted to clever business models that allow for a version of openness. Closed and proprietary content has often become (more) open and shareable, within limits.

But that shimmering mecca of emancipation symbolized by “openness”? It has proven to be a mirage. Academic publishers have shown themselves adept at adapting to open access publishing models while consolidating their proprietary market power and control. The benefits to scholars, students, academic disciplines, university budgets, and freedom of expression have not been what they were cracked up to be.

It was with great pleasure, therefore, that I recently encountered a major statement by some British open-access renegades calling for a “commonifidation of open access.” The call to action is entitled “Labour of Love: An Open Access Manifesto for Freedom, integrity, and Creativity in the Humanities and Interpretive Social Sciences,” by Andreas E. Pia, Simon Batterbury, and eleven other colleagues.

The manifesto essentially makes the point that openness is not the same as commoning. My colleague Silke Helfrich and I had this epiphany when writing our book Free, Fair and Alive. In a section called, “How Commoning Moves Beyond the Open/Closed Binary” (pp. 68-72), we note how the open/closed binary focuses on the supposed status of the content itself – open or closed – and not on the social dynamics by which a community generates the content in the first place. (The chapter with these pages can be found online here.)

It turns out that the social system for generating, curating and maintain knowledge is critical to how that knowledge can circulate. As more scholars are discovering, open and closed are both compatible with predatory forms of corporate control – high subscription fees, limited user access, copyright and contract restrictions, encrypted formats, and even outright censorship in response to nations like China.

Commoning, by contrast, puts the responsibilities and entitlements of commoners as the primary goal. This helps to ensure that peer-generated knowledge is accessible and shared in ways that are free, fair, and respectful.

With that preamble, I’d like to share some excerpts from the “Labour of Love” manifesto and invite you to read the full piece at at The Commonplace, a project of the Knowledge Futures Group. The Commonplace is “a space where people discuss the digital infrastructure and policies needed to distribute, constellate, and amplify knowledge for the public good.”

The manifesto declares at one point: “With this manifesto we wish to repoliticise Open Access to challenge existing rapacious practices in academic publishing—namely, often invisible and unremunerated labour, toxic hierarchies of academic prestige, and a bureaucratic ethos that stifles experimentation—and to bear witness to the indifference they are predicated upon.”

You had me at “re-policiticise.”

The manifesto makes clear the “paradox of knowledge commons” in academia, noting that “academics are effectively required to hand over their research, which is often supported by public funding, to publishers whose primary goal is to earn profit rather than to make the material freely and uncompromisingly accessible.” This is “the real threat to academic freedom,” the group declares.

The problems that flow from this paradox are myriad, as the manifesto explains. (All links and boldface below are in the original text.)

In recent decades, academic publishing has been transformed into a highly profitable business. In the past, scholarly journals were primarily published through professional associations or academic institutions; today, many are owned or distributed by commercial publishers with large profit margins. These profits are achieved through a system of academic exploitation: not only is the writing and reviewing provided free to the publisher, but authors are increasingly required to pay an article processing charge (APC) to avoid having their work being placed behind expensive paywalls. Libraries face a rapid increase in costs, at an aggregate rate of 11% per annum, to maintain access to journals and their contents.

Meanwhile, insofar as publication in “high-ranking” journals and name-brand presses is required for jobs, tenure, funding, and research assessment exercises of all kinds, academics feel under increasing pressure to “play the game.” This has serious implications for scholars with interdisciplinary or otherwise unconventional research agendas, and it places enormous pressure on early-career and precarious academics. It is particularly punishing for women, who are still disproportionately charged with various forms of care work.

While this dismal state of affairs is fast approaching what property rights theorists call “a tragedy of the anti-commons,” the irony of seeing the same communities that make qualitative social scientific research possible excluded from full participation in the production of knowledge (in the form of expensive journal subscriptions and APC charges) is too often lost on researchers consumed with the forward progress of their own careers.

Over the past few years, a number of high-profile incidents have further exposed the corrosive influence of commercial considerations, including the willingness to censor content in order to maintain access to profitable markets. In August 2017, it was revealed that Cambridge University Press had complied with the demands of Chinese government censors to block access within China to over three hundred “politically sensitive” articles published in the prestigious journal, China Quarterly. Prompted by public outcry, the press ultimately reversed its stance, restoring access to the censored contents for Chinese readers and making them available free of charge for all.

Unfortunately the Cambridge University Press incident was just the tip of the iceberg, and there have been numerous other examples of major publishers censoring content on behalf of the Chinese government. In October 2018, it was revealed that Springer Nature had been removing chapters dealing with “sensitive subjects” from its Transcultural Research book series, unbeknownst to the authors or editors. Despite public outrage from the academic community, Springer Nature remained defiant. The company refused to reverse its actions and justified them as being necessary for the advancement of research.

All of this is alarming in its own right, especially since the consolidation of OA publishing under corporate publishers is becoming a new normal. The manifesto states:

Over the next decade, Open Access (OA) is likely to become the default in scholarly publishing. Yet, as commercial publishers develop new models for capturing revenue (and as policy initiatives like Plan S remain reluctant to challenge their centrality), researchers, librarians, and other concerned observers are beginning to articulate a set of values that critically engages the industry-driven project of broadening access to specialist scholarship. [Plan S is the proposal of a coalition of national research funding organizations that seeks to ensure that research is routinely published in open access journals, repositories, and platforms.]

….. The undersigned are a group of scholar-publishers based in the humanities and social sciences who are questioning the fairness and scientific tenability of a system of scholarly communication dominated by large commercial publishers. With this manifesto we wish to repoliticise Open Access to challenge existing rapacious practices in academic publishing—namely, often invisible and unremunerated labour, toxic hierarchies of academic prestige, and a bureaucratic ethos that stifles experimentation—and to bear witness to the indifference they are predicated upon.

In this manifesto we mobilise an extended notion of research output, which encompasses the work of building and maintaining the systems, processes, and relations of production that make scholarship possible. We believe that the humanities and social sciences are too often disengaged from the public and material afterlives of their scholarship. We worry that our fields are sleepwalking into a new phase of control and capitalisation, to include continued corporate extraction of value and transparency requirements designed by managers, entrepreneurs, and politicians.

We fervently believe that OA can be a powerful tool to advance the ends of civil society and social movements. But opening up the products of our scholarship without questioning how this is done, who stands to profit from it, what model of scholarship is being normalised, and who stands to be silenced by this process may come at a particularly high cost for scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

….. What is clear to us is that the future of a more accessible, ethical, transparent, and creative form of scholarly communication largely relies on a labour of love—unremunerated, off-work time that is freely given as a result of political, emotional and otherwise idealistic investment in projects that transcend the quest for academic prestige and seek to transform the publishing system from within. However, scholar-led OA publishing can also benefit from the expertise and institutional solidity of other actors. While scholars can provide the carefully-argued analysis, the peer review, and the editorial work, we also need the support of our universities, libraries, and other like-minded organisations to ensure that our collective effort can be sustained, archived, and scaled up to meet the challenge of the digital information era.

The manifesto concludes by calling for the commonification of Open Access – “scholarship that is collaboratively and responsibly built and shared.” Check out the specific recommendations for authors, senior scholars, deans and provosts, librarians, and journal editors. It's a good outline for how pressure should be applied to universities from the bottom up.

This piece is a gust of fresh air – a much-needed, long-overdue challenge to the corporate and university powers that control academic publishing. Through inertia, ignorance, and sometimes complicity, universities are not challenging the distinct limits of corporate-controlled “openness" and defending the ideals of academic scholarship. Nor are they adequately investigating the countervailing appeal of the commons, which offer a better framework for reinvigorating the life of the academy.

NCDD Confab: Planning D&D Pedagogy in an Uncertain Fall

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Courtney Breese

NCDD is excited to announce a special Confab Call for folks using dialogue & deliberation pedagogy in Higher Education:

Planning D&D Pedagogy in an Uncertain Fall
Using this as a time to collaborate, discover, and create shared resources

This free event takes place Thursday, July 30th from 1:00-3:00 PM Eastern/10:00 AM-12:00 PM Pacific. All who are working with students using dialogue & deliberation are welcome to join. Register today to secure your spot and complete a survey that will help us shape the session to respond to needs!

The upcoming fall semester is full of uncertainties. Even if there will be in-person instruction, it seems for many in Higher Education that online components will be a significant part of courses. For those who teach dialogue and deliberation to students, this presents some challenges. How can we do this work with students smoothly in a hybrid or fully online format?

The special NCDD Confab Call is intended to help Higher Ed folks – faculty and student affairs staff working with dialogue & deliberation pedagogy – share and explore together resources for transitioning to a predominantly online format in the fall (and perhaps beyond). On the call, participants will share resources they have been using, as well as talk about what the kinds of resources are needed to assist in this new format. NCDD hopes to utilize this event to help boost collaborative efforts and identify many resources, tools, and approaches that can be cataloged as a resource for everyone going forward.

If you have developed lessons, or tools, or have experience with student dialogues in an online format, join us and share! If you are still figuring out what you will do, bring your questions and needs to the discussion! This Confab is all about working together to make everyone’s work easier, as well as to help show just how connected and vibrant this field is and reinvigorate D&D studies in Higher Ed. We’ll share and explore perhaps what still needs creating for the fall and beyond.

Unable to join us? Fill out the brief survey we have created so we can learn more about your needs and offerings.

Don’t miss this collaborative event – register today!

About NCDD’s Confab Calls

Confab bubble image NCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members (and potential members) of NCDD to talk with and hear from innovators in our field about the work they’re doing and to connect with fellow members around shared interests. Membership in NCDD is encouraged but not required for participation. Confabs are free and open to all. Register today if you’d like to join us!

Shelley: England in 1819

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Peter

England in 1819

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

This is one sentence. Minus the adjectives and adjectival phrases, it says: “A king, princes, rulers, people, army, laws, religion, and senate are graves from which a phantom may burst to illumine our day.” (It’s interesting that one phantom will arise from all these separate graves.)

The “king” is George III, suffering by now from advanced dementia. He has seven surviving sons, which would be the narrowest definition of “princes.” But Shelley could mean a broader category–“princes” in the sense of the crowned heads of Europe. They are back on their thrones after Waterloo, erecting a system of reactionary absolutism that will last until 1830.

“Rulers” would mean the whole government, starting with the Prime Minister, Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, who suspended civil liberties from 1817-19. The “people” are suffering from the Corn Laws (which prohibit importation of grain) and early industrialization. The “army” refers to the cavalry who charged a peaceful demonstration for parliamentary reform (the Peterloo massacre of August 16). The “senate” is parliament, although I don’t quite follow how that noun relates to “Time’s worst statute.” And the “Phantom” is something like liberty.

The situation is bad but unsustainable. The rulers may be evil, but they “drop, blind in blood, without a blow.” The army wields a two-edged sword, liable to slice its own bearer. The people, however, seem passive: they think and do nothing in particular but are “starved and stabbed in th’ untilled field.” The Phantom may (or may not) burst forth; it’s not clear that the people can decide that.

The poem is a sonnet: fourteen 10-syllable lines, rhymed, with a final couplet that answers the question posed by the rest of the poem: What will happen? However, the form is not strictly conventional. Shelley uses just four endings (-ing, -ow, -ield, and -ay) in an ABABAB CDCD CC scheme.

Christopher Spaide says that the poem was too radical to publish in 1819. By the time Mary Shelley included it in Shelley’s posthumous Poetical Works (1839), she thought it needed an explanation, since the “younger generation … cannot remember the scorn and hatred with which the partisans of reform were regarded some few years ago.” In other words, the sonnet went from revolutionary to quaint in 20 years–not because an actual revolution ensued in Britain, but because the political situation mellowed as reforms eased the crises of the day. No Phantom burst, but the laws arguably became less sanguine and the people less likely to be starved and stabbed.