Author Archives: Peter

About Peter

Associate Dean for Research and the Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Tufts University's Tisch College of Civic Life. Concerned about civic education, civic engagement, and democratic reform in the United States and elsewhere.

public opinion on Critical Race Theory

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The Economist/YouGov has released a survey of 1,500 U.S. Adult Citizens (fielded from
June 13 – 15, 2021) that asks some questions about Critical Race Theory (CRT). This is their summary.

This issue is deeply partisan and breaks in Republicans’ favor. Eighty-five percent of Republicans are very unfavorable to CRT, whereas 58% of Democrats are very favorable. But the public as a whole breaks against CRT, 58%-38%, due to Independents’ opposition (71% are very unfavorable) and Democrats’ somewhat mixed support.

Party ID appears more significant than demographics. For instance, a slight majority of Blacks (52%) are very favorable to CRT, but 16% are very unfavorable: a less positive balance than we see among Democrats. Women, college graduates, and young people are a bit more favorable than others, but those differences are small. (With access only to the printed report, I can’t run a regression to see how these variables may interact.)

Fifty-four percent of Americans say they have a very good idea what CRT is. The remainder are split between not being sure whether they know and being sure that they do not know what it is: 23% each. Thirty-five percent have heard nothing at all about CRT, 38% a little, and 26% a lot.

I think most of the people who say they know what CRT is are giving themselves too much credit. It names a rather specific academic movement that few of us understand. I would not claim that I have reliable knowledge of CRT (when knowledge = justified true belief) even though I study this general topic. But 54% of Americans are confident that they know what it is.

Although almost half of people are not sure what CRT is, 96% of respondents state a favorable or unfavorable view of it, and a total of 78% hold either a very favorable or a very unfavorable view. In other words, many people have opinions–even strong ones–about CRT even though they do not believe they know what it is and have heard nothing at all about it.

A mainstream position in political science these days is that Americans lack well-justified and autonomous opinions about most political issues. Achen and Bartels argue that even politically conscious citizens usually display “just a rather mechanical reflection of what their favorite group and party leaders have instructed them to think” (Achen and Bartels 2017, p. 12).

I dissent from this general view and have spent the past week on a methodological paper that aims to show that individuals hold more complex and individualized structures of opinions than one can glean from standard survey research. Yet the nature of public opinion depends on the issue, and especially on whether political professionals are exploiting it.

CRT is a great example of an issue on which public opinion reflects partisan heuristics and cues from leaders rather than careful thought. It’s bound to stay near the top of the national agenda, not only because it serves as a proxy for deeper issues related to race, but also because of the partisan politics. Republicans aren’t going to drop an issue that polls so well for them, but Democratic leaders–even if they wanted to–can’t strongly oppose CRT while 58% of their voters strongly favor it.

Civic Studies at Tufts

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In this summer’s issue of Jumbo Magazine (which is sent to prospective Tufts students), I say that Tufts offers “the best mix of experiential [opportunities], like internships and service learning, with academic rigor about civic engagement.”

In this public forum, I should apologize for my competitive claim. If other campuses do more or better than we do, that is good news. But I can elaborate on what I meant.

Virtually every US college or university offers experiential civic education, in the form of student-led groups, service placements and internships, and projects assigned in courses.

Meanwhile, all colleges and universities offer courses relevant to being an effective and responsible citizen, from “Intro to American Government” in political science to courses on specific social issues, to courses that help one to understand cultural identities and differences. Indeed, the liberal arts curriculum as a whole is civic education, if it is done well. (It can be civic mis-education, if it is done very badly.)

However, there is typically a gap between students’ civic experiences and the curriculum. When they are engaged in civic activities, students–like all human beings–usually interact with finite numbers of other individuals within voluntary groups and networks, formal organizations, or enterprises. As individuals and collectively in these groups, they make value-judgments: What counts as a problem? What would be a good outcome? They create and enforce (or undermine and revise) norms that influence their collective behavior. They work together in various ways, producing products and outcomes. And they face characteristic challenges. Some people may slack off, some may misinterpret the purpose of the group, some may mistreat others, and so on.

These issues are addressed in the curriculum, but in a scattered way and not as a major focus. One can learn about ethical judgments in philosophy, about free-rider problems in economics, and about voting procedures in political science. But a student would be hard pressed to identify these relevant aspects of many different courses from various disciplines and put them together.

Hence the Civic Studies Major at Tufts. Our introductory and capstone courses and the electives (including internships) are specifically designed to address the problems of acting together in voluntary groups. These problems have practical significance, and one can learn how to manage them from practical experience. But these problems are also intellectually complex, and one can learn from theory, history, and empirical studies. Our aspiration is put those forms of knowledge together.

See also civic education and the science of association.

do wicked problems justify inclusive processes?

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The original article that coined the idea of “wicked problems” has been cited nearly 19,000 times. In their 1973 piece,* Rittel and Webber explained why we lacked fully satisfactory social policies and criticized two popular approaches: expert-designed solutions and maximum individual choice.

Rittel and Webber did not offer an alternative to those two flawed approaches, but many people since then (including me) have argued that wicked problem necessitate inclusive processes. Because social problems have the features Rittel and Webber name, everyone must play a role in defining and addressing problems–continuously and together. Our focus shifts to designing good processes.

In this post, I want to raise a dilemma: inclusive processes must include many people who hold strong and plausible reasons to reject the social theory that leads to the idea of wicked problems in the first place. It is hard to envision a process that is hospitable to people who reject the social theory that justifies it.

But first, what social theory are we talking about? Rittel and Webber offer 10 criteria to define wicked problems. I have summarized their list (with some reorganization) here. For the moment, let’s focus on these specific issues:

“Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad” (p. 162). Yet people disagree about what is good. Furthermore, “Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem” (p. 165). Thus we can endlessly disagree about the center or “locus” of the problem. This is one reason that “There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem” (p. 161). There is no way to develop an exhaustive list of all the possible solutions (p. 164). And “Every wicked problem is essentially unique” (164)

The underlying model in Rittel and Webber is a network of causes and effects. Each problem affects others. There is no root cause. For instance, the issues of racism, poverty, guns, militarization, violent crime, lack of public safety, disinvestment, segregation, substance-abuse, mental illness, educational deficits, etc. are all tangled up. We can intervene at many different points, and each intervention has limitations and challenges. Also, facts cannot be separated from normative judgments, and judgments are permanently contested. For instance, to say that “crime is up this year” is to imply a whole set of judgments about how people should be able to act, who gets to decide, and what should matter to the community.

The challenges that Rittel and Webber identify do not (by themselves) entail democratic processes. These challenges might instead imply pessimism: maybe there simply are no solutions. Or these challenges might suggest some kind of modus vivendi: people who disagree about problems should leave each other alone. Or perhaps we need more sophisticated technical methods in order to identify satisfactory solutions.

I happen to endorse Rittel’s and Webber’s social theory. I would add a commitment to collaborative self-governance as a quasi-intrinsic good. Communities should create the social world through their deliberate action. If that is right, then Rittel and Webber provide helpful arguments against expert-led, top-down approaches and make space for democratic processes. However, democratic processes require additional justification. They certainly do not always succeed–no matter how you define success. And if you don’t agree that collective self-government has intrinsic value, you may understandably look for alternatives.

Further, many people have reasons to doubt the underlying social theory. If the root problem is capitalism–which is really bad and not just disliked by some–and if the solution is workers’ control of the means of production, then all this talk of “wicked problems” is just a ham-handed justification of the status quo. The same is true if individual negative liberty is the highest good, the problem is state coercion, and the solution is a free market. Or if the problem is white supremacy and the solution is liberation from that.

These three views are incompatible with mine and (to an extent) with each other. Obviously, I could be wrong, and one or more of these alternatives could be correct. Since I am unsure, and since I respect my fellow human beings, I favor a democratic process to debate our differences and decide together. Yet the kinds of processes I would build or endorse reflect my social theory. They are ameliorative rather than revolutionary. They envision people constantly focusing on a few tangible, immediate problems at a time, taking concrete steps to ameliorate those problems, and reflecting on the effects as they ripple out. The processes I envision are truly inclusive, which means that at some stage, the police, the capitalists, and the state bureaucrats should be part of the discussion, not defined as the problem.

The question is why people who disagree with those premises should want to participate. That dilemma is not merely theoretical; large numbers of people actually do disagree. Perhaps it is wiser not to use the theory of wicked problems to justify inclusive processes.

Horst Rittel and Melvin M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences 4.2, 1973, 155-169. See also: wicked problems, and excuses; Complexities of Civic Life; and what must we believe?

the student

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A Victorian house on a stately street,
Formal, ornate. The bell breaks the silence.
Would a gift have been wise--something to eat? 
When to shift from pleasantries to science?
A ticking clock, long rows of serious books,
China, polished wood, a distant dog barks.
Pay attention, this might have some value.
It's rude to seek help without taking advice.
Now say what you've really come for, shall you?
Then: time to go? Did our talking suffice?
Not for years now have I been the visitor.
This is my parlor and I am the grey one,
The host, the ear, the kindly inquisitor.
How can it be that it's my turn to play one?

See also: Midlife.

Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky

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In the Guardian, Steve Rose called Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky (1966) “the best arthouse film of all time.” When I had a day alone recently, I watched its three hours. Here are some notes that don’t duplicate anything I can find in English on the Internet. They do contain plot spoilers.

The setting is Russia in the first decade of the 1400s. The people are beset by Tatars, oppressive rulers, and plagues. The landscape often looks like an environmental catastrophe. Tarkovsky uses many long takes, panoramic shots, and set-pieces in which the actors are positioned like figures on a stage or in a painting.

Rublev is a monk and icon-painter. Despite being the moral focus of the film, he is on screen not much more than three other monks. Maybe it was just me, but I found it challenging to keep track of individuals from one scene to another. That task is easier in a written text, because narrators typically use names and may inform us when we have already encountered a given character. Tarkovsky seems content to present life in the confusing way that it actually unfolds.

In the opening scene, a man makes a solo hot-air balloon ride, rising next to an unfinished Orthodox cathedral and then across a river dotted by small boats. Some people help him while others try to bring him down. Although the balloon is anachronistic, it looks suitably medieval. It closely resembles the great bell that is cast in the final scenes of the film–for the same cathedral–and raised from its subterranean mold across the river to the belfry. The balloon and the bell have similar sizes, shapes, and trajectories. The balloon-ride appears to be a stunt that fails, whereas the bell is a spiritual and aesthetic success accomplished by the people, working together.

The second third major scene opens with a man being tortured in the public square as someone cries out that he might be innocent. The artist-monk Kirill walks past this execution and into the cool interior of a church, where he meets another icon-painter, Theophanes the Greek. They discuss the project that will involve Rublev and become his masterpiece. Back outside, we see the dead man’s bloody body.

In several key scenes, the Russian folk are shown in authentic rituals or celebrations–enjoying a jester mocking the Boyar nobility, enacting the Passion of Christ, or engaging in a midnight pagan orgy. (Compare Natascha’s dance in War and Peace.) In several scenes, they are cruelly crushed by Russian nobles, Tatars, or a conspiracy of both.

Observing these events, Rublev develops a populist and antinomian Orthodox theology. He feels he cannot complete his commission to paint the cathedral because it would require an image of the Last Judgment to terrify the people. Inside the bare cathedral, an apprentice reads 1 Corinthians 11 while the mute girl Durochka, a “holy fool” with long blond hair, watches in fascination:

“If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head. A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man …

Rublev gets an idea: “They are celebrating. It’s a holiday! They are not sinners. Nor is she [Durochka], even if she doesn’t wear a cover.” He will paint joyous scenes for the people.

The interior of the church immediately after Rublev has announced his plan, showing the Holy Fool and the monk Daniil, who had commanded the reading of Corinthians.

Muteness is a motif. The jester has his tongue cut out. Durochka cannot speak. Andrei takes a vow of silence and refuses to paint after he kills a man to save Durochka. The new bell almost fails to ring–and if it never works, the Grand Duke will have its caster flogged to death.

Andrei has several foils, starting with the man in the balloon ride. Another is Kirill, who betrays the jester to the authorities and later quits holy orders, decrying monkish hypocrisy but seeking worldly gain for himself.

An important foil is Boriska, the young son of a bell-caster who died–with the whole family–of the plague. Boriska claims to know his father’s professional secret. With passionate intensity and perfectionism, he leads a crew to make a great bell, using the melted plate of the Grand Duke. He has lied about the secret, but he turns to God for help. Whether the bell will work is genuinely suspenseful. Foppish Italian visitors observe the young artist with pity: “il povoro regazzo” is bound to die a Russian’s death, tortured by a tyrant, because the bell won’t work. Their foreigners’ chatter is interrupted by the bell sounding sonorously. Boriska confesses his lie to Andrei, who says, “Let’s work together, you casting bells and me painting icons.” He then paints the cathedral’s interior in resplendent colors that we see in the epilogue, after three hours of monochrome.