Author Archives: Peter

About Peter

Associate Dean for Faculty 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.

what people mean when they say that Trump or Clinton is honest

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It flabbergasts many people to learn that more Americans view Trump rather than Clinton as “honest and trustworthy” (35% versus 33%), even though we can read in The New York Times, “A Week of Whoppers from Donald Trump”; in The Washington Post, “Trump’s Week Reveals Bleak View, Dubious Statements in ‘Alternative Universe‘”; and in The Los Angeles Times, “Scope of Trump’s Falsehoods Unprecedented for a Modern Presidential Candidate.”

In philosophy school, you learn to make distinctions, and I think two distinctions may be useful for interpreting the public’s response. First, “truthfulness” can mean:

Saying what is true. Because they envision truths as claims consistent with evidence, many fact-checkers compare candidates’ assertions to government data and public records or to academic research. For instance, Donald Trump has said that Lester Holt, the debate moderator, is a Democrat, but official records show that Holt is a registered Republican. The Times calls that a “whopper.” I am confident that Hillary Clinton’s claims are far more often verifiable than Donald Trump’s, and in that sense, she is more truthful and trustworthy.
Investing skill and effort in finding the truth. If truth is correspondence to some independently verifiable reality, then a person could say something true–or false–by accident. We can also err when we fact-check. But some people truly strive for truth. They are careful not to opine on matters for which they lack evidence, they listen to alternative views, they complicate their positions when they encounter contrary evidence, they may even seek contrary evidence, and they select appropriate methods for answering empirical questions. They can still be wrong, but they have a respectful attitude to truth. I am confident that Hillary Clinton is a much more dedicated and skillful truth-seeker than Donald Trump is, although one could raise serious criticisms of her truth-seeking in episodes like her vote to authorize the Iraq War (when she had privileged access to intelligence) or her endorsement of the “super-predator” theory of crime.
Speaking what is in your mind. For many people, honesty and truthfulness mean candor, sincerity, or forthrightness. Provoked by tricky Odysseus, guileless Achilles exclaims, “I hate like the Gates of Hell a man who says one thing and thinks another in his mind!” A candid straight-shooter can say lots of things that are false, either by accident or because he’s not a good truth-seeker. If he really, truly thinks that taxes are higher in the US than any other country, he looks you in the eyes and says so. Judged by that third standard, I am not sure whether Trump is “honest.” Although he may be guileful, it’s at least plausible that he blurts out what he really thinks, reflecting an ideological/normative worldview that he genuinely holds. Sometimes he even says things that cost him tactically because they make him look dumb or alienate a specific voting bloc that might have preferred him. And just for that reason, lots of people think he’s “honest.” As for Hillary Clinton, I perceive that she thinks many things in her mind and puts them through a very careful screen before she speaks aloud. Voters are sensitive to that kind of processing. They take slip-ups, like her “deplorables” comment, to be glimpses of a hidden stratum of sincere beliefs. This is what some have in mind when they call Trump more honest than Clinton.

“He tells it like it is”

My own view would be something like this: Truth-seeking is an important virtue for political leaders. It raises the odds that leaders will know the actual truth, although I’d forgive any human being for making errors if she demonstrates both commitment and skill in her truth-seeking.

Politicians should also demonstrate some candor. To struggle to know the truth and then to say something less than, or different from, the truth in public is not very democratic. On the other hand, politics isn’t a seminar room, a lab, or a witness stand in a court of law. Other political virtues may conflict with candor, such as tact, diplomacy, privacy, national or global security, and sheer effectiveness. A political leader must strive to enact and change policies, and it can undermine her effectiveness if she says everything she believes. I am pretty sure that’s why Clinton talks as she does, but because many people equate truthfulness with candor, she pays a price.

It’s also worth distinguishing between …

the immediate empirical truth of statements (e.g., “Lester Holt is a Democrat,” which is false), and
the truth or validity of broad ideological positions (e.g., “The media is biased against regular folks”).

I believe that Hillary Clinton’s center/left ideology is much more defensible than Trump’s authoritarian ethno-nationalism, but that requires arguments rather than empirical data; and other positions are more defensible still than Clinton’s.

I am also inclined to think that Trump is pretty candid about his own ideological position, although he fails to acknowledge its implications (which is a fault of his truth-seeking). I am not sure how candid Clinton is about her ideology; that is hard to assess from afar. I’d argue that center-left American politicians exhibit a general lack of ideological candor because they presume that many beneficial policies are unpopular. For instance, it would be wise to borrow and spend on infrastructure, but you can’t say that because the American people don’t trust government. It would be desirable to standardize curricula and tests because in lots of communities, parents are creationists or otherwise misguided, but you’d better not say that because those people vote. I’d posit that Clinton struggles to attract trust in part because she belongs to a whole ideological bloc that has struggled since the 1970s to present itself candidly to the electorate.

A New Model for Citizen Engagement

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Myung J. Lee, the executive director of Cities of Service, and I have an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review that is free to read or download until November 17.

We define citizen engagement as a combination of deliberation (communicating and learning about issues), collaborative action, and the working relationships that form during such interactions. We summarize a growing body of literature that finds that citizen engagement–so defined–is crucial to addressing the most stubborn social problems.

But the harder question is always: How can America get more civic engagement? Who would be motivated to expand the number and breadth of active citizens or to make their work more consequential?

In the SSIR piece, we propose one answer. Municipal governments have much to gain by enlisting more citizens in more consequential civic work. This serves their self-interest. Furthermore, many cities already have thousands of citizens involved in organized volunteering efforts. Volunteering, by itself, does not have the positive effects that we find from citizen engagement understood more broadly. But all those volunteers are expressing a willingness to take action. Municipal governments are capable of turning ordinary volunteering into opportunities for deliberation about issues, collective action, and sustained relationships (including relationships among government officials and other citizens in their communities).

One of several ways that governments can achieve this shift is by helping citizens to set measurable targets for change at the community level and providing them with the data they need to assess progress. Unpaid citizens are not responsible for achieving these outcomes on their own; they collaborate with city employees and people from other sectors and hold each other accountable.

In the article, we offer several promising examples of what we call “impact volunteering” in US cities. We highlight cases from the Cities of Service network–which I strongly endorse–but our argument is meant to apply more broadly as well.

Citation: Myung J. Lee and Peter Levine, “A New Model for Citizen Engagement,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, fall 2016, pp. 40-45.

first year college students and moral relativism

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Justin McBrayer, a philosophy professor, wrote not long ago in The New York Times, “philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.” McBrayer attributes this situation to the Common Core, which recommends teaching young children a distinction between facts and opinions. Because values aren’t viewed as facts, they get put into the opinion basket. So the same basket that contains “I prefer vanilla ice cream” also contains “genocide is bad.”

I happen to be teaching a whole class of first year undergraduates in a philosophy course, and I asked them whether they shared the relativism attributed to their demographic group by McBrayer. About one third agreed that moral claims are “mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.” Roughly the same number disagreed. Many were uncertain. After about an hour’s discussion, it was evident that most students held quite complicated or nuanced views. Everyone’s position sounded different, but I think many would like to hold onto: 1) moral seriousness and the assumption that it makes a big difference what we conclude about moral issues, 2) an ability to decry certain horrible acts as evil, 3) a recognition of ideological diversity, 4) a distinction between moral claims and empirical claims, 5) falliblism and an acknowledgement that context affects, or even determines, everyone’s thought, including our own, and 6) tolerance, which they recognize as a value, not as an absence of values. Those assumptions are in some tension, but it’s possible to pull them together into a complex position.

I don’t want to generalize based on an “n” of 15 people at one college, but if anyone asks me for evidence that Kids Today are amoral relativists–or that they have turned into censorious absolutists–I offer this counter-evidence.

CIRCLE identifies top 50 congressional districts for the youth vote

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Medford/Somerville, MA – Will the youth vote help shape the next Congress? A new index ranks the top 50 districts where young people could have a significant influence on the outcome of Congressional races across the country. The Youth Electoral Significance Index Top 50 was developed exclusively by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) – the preeminent, non-partisan research center on youth engagement at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life.

Taking into account the competitiveness of the Congressional races, as well demographic characteristics, the number of higher education institutions in the district, and historical youth turnout data, the index highlights the districts where young people are poised to have a disproportionately high impact this year.

“Young people can shape our elections and the make-up of Congress, but their potential is limited when campaigns don’t reach out to them,” said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Director of CIRCLE. “We hope this tool encourages campaigns, media outlets, and advocates in these districts – and in many others – to engage young people on issues that matter to them.”

Key findings include:

Iowa’s 1st Congressional District comes out on top due in large part to a large number of college campuses (31) and high percentage of young people enrolled in college in the district.
New York has six Congressional Districts in the YESI Top 50, the most of any state. Though New York tends to be reliably Democratic in presidential and Senate elections, many Congressional races are much more fiercely contested.
Colorado has four districts on this list, including the number 2 spot in the ranking: the Colorado 6^th, which includes the eastern part of the Denver-Aurora metro area. This district ranks highly due to its competitiveness: in 2012, the election was decided by only 7,000 votes, young people cast a high number of ballots, and the seat is expected to be highly contested again this year.
Four Michigan districts make the Top 50, including two in the top 15: Michigan’s 7^th District, which includes parts of Lansing, the western suburbs of Ann Arbor, and the southeast corner of the state; and Michigan’s 1^st District, in which there are 12 colleges and universities with close to 20,000 enrolled students.

Throughout this election season, CIRCLE’s 2016 Election Center will offer new data products and detailed youth voting analyses.

social justice should not be a cliché

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We should strive for social justice. But what is it?

I fear that the phrase can be used to mean: “All the things that we’d like to see in a society.” In that case, anyone who doesn’t commit to pursue “social justice” (by that name) must be against at least some of these good things; and anyone who doesn’t agree with us about what’s good must be against social justice. Then it’s us versus them: the people who care about social justice against those who don’t. The result can be a warm feeling of righteousness and solidarity, perhaps admixed with some regret that our actions don’t live up to our words.

But ask yourself: What are the things you’d like to see in a society? They are likely to be heterogeneous. For instance, equality comes in many forms, all of which may be attractive even though some are in tension (equality of opportunity, of outcomes, of status, of rights; equality for members of a community, for all adults, for all human beings, etc.). And equality won’t suffice, because no one wants to see a society in which everyone is equally miserable and oppressed. So even strong egalitarians also want some combination of liberty, peace, solidarity or community, human flourishing, excellence, and/or sustainability, for all those equal people. But liberty and equality-of-outcomes trade off, as do liberty and solidarity. In some cases, the means to achieve valuable ends are bad or they undermine the ends. For instance, I’d like to see everyone be able to work, but I worry that any policy that guaranteed employment would also undermine the value and dignity of the labor.

Once you spell out what you value with due attention to priorities, means, costs, and tradeoffs, it’s likely that your own view will be unique, or at least unusual. That chips away at the us-versus-them framework. You may begin to see other people’s views as attractive even as you continue to endorse your own. There are certainly selfish and foolish people in the world, but now it begins to seem that many of our fellow citizens also favor “social justice.” They just disagree about what it is, because that’s a profoundly hard question.