Author Archives: Peter Levine

a critique of expertise, part 1

We need expertise to make wise public decisions. You wouldn’t ask just any fellow citizen to operate on your heart; you would find the best-trained and most experienced cardiologist. In the same way, if you want to fix public schools or the justice system, you need economists, psychologists, criminologists, and other experts to advise and perhaps decide.

Everyone finds some merit in this argument, but it can be grossly exaggerated. For example, my friend Harry Boyte often quotes a speech by Donna Shalala that can be found in full here. Shalala was president of the University of Wisconsin in the 1980s and went on to eight years as Secretary of Health and Human Services under Bill Clinton. She epitomized the policy expert who attains public influence. In her 1989 speech, she began by citing scientific discoveries that had “improved human life, prolonged human life, enriched and protected human life. The great plagues are basically behind us,” she said, thanks to “scientific research done under the sheltering arms of research universities.” She went on to defend the “idea of a distinterested technocratic elite” that arrived in America before 1900 and shaped both the modern research university and government:

It persisted because everyone–farmers and professors and business owners and politicians and homemakers and workers–basically agreed on some important ideas: That those without wealth and power must be protected. That government must be open. That there must be some social control over those with huge economic strength. And that the government ought to be used as a tool to achieve social equity–to level the playing field for everyone. All acknowledged that the university’s experts could help secure those goals. And the rightness of those goals was held to be a notion that transcended politics.

Shalala ended her speech with a call for the university’s experts to take on the pressing challenges of the late twentieth century, especially persistent poverty and educational failure, with “grand strategies” grounded in apolitical social science. Four years later, she was running a huge federal agency responsible for health care. The administration she served devised a complex health reform bill, described as the work of a “distinterested technocratic elite.” It was quickly defeated; the major trends in public health remained basically unaffected.

When Donna Shalala was studying for her doctorate in public affairs during the 1960s, the “moon-ghetto” metaphor was popular. This was the idea that engineers and other specialists had put human beings on the moon (and brought them safely home), so it should be possible to tackle the problems of the so-called “ghetto” in much the same way. It was all a matter of scientifically diagnosing the causes of poverty and efficiently deploying solutions.

Actually, the moon and the “ghetto” are very different. The moon is almost perfectly detached from all other human issues and contexts, because it is almost 240,000 miles away from our planet (although NASA’s launch facilities in Florida and Houston might have some local impact). The goal of the Apollo Program–whether you endorse it or not–was clear and easily defined. The challenges were physical; thus Newtonian physics allowed engineers to predict the impact of their tools precisely in advance. The costs were also calculable–in fact, the Apollo Program was completed under budget. The astronauts and other participants were highly motivated volunteers, who had signed up for a fully developed concept that they understood in advance. The president and other national leaders had committed enough funds to make the Apollo Program a success, because its value to them exceeded the costs.

In contrast, a low-income urban neighborhood is enmeshed with other communities. Its challenges are multi-dimensional. Its strengths and weaknesses are open to debate. Defining success is a matter of values; even how to measure the basic facts is controversial. (For example, how should “race” be defined in a survey? What are the borders of a neighborhood?) Everyone involved–from the smallest child on the block to the most powerful official downtown–has distinct interests and motivations. Outsiders may not care enough to provide adequate funds, and residents may prefer to leave than to make their area better. When social scientists and policymakers implement rewards or punishments to affect people’s behavior, the targets tend to realize what is happening and develop strategies to resist, subvert, or profit from the policies–a response that machines never manage. No wonder we could put a man on the moon but our poor urban neighborhoods persist.

Thanks to personal computers, spreadsheets, and the World Wide Web, the resources and skills necessary to analyze social data have fallen by orders of magnitude since Donna Shalala was first trained in social science. Now anyone with a computer and basic knowledge of statistics can copy columns of numbers from official websites and look for correlations or more complex statistical relationships. Yet, if anything, we feel less confident about our ability to diagnose and cure social problems than we did in 1970. Shalala’s “grand strategies” have receded from view.

Although I acknowledge the value of expertise, we can identify several important general reasons why it is never enough and we always need citizens’ participation to tackle social problems.

First, professions cannot be trusted to make decisions for the public, even when their tools and techniques are appropriate and effective. Professionals are human, and if people outside their group turn to them for guidance but do not closely scrutinize their work, they are sure to become lazy, biased, careless, or even corrupt. In 1913, George Bernard Shaw wrote about the reluctance of doctors to testify against one another in malpractice suits. “The effect of this state of things is to make the medical profession a conspiracy to hide its own shortcomings. No doubt the same may be said of all professions. They are all conspiracies against the laity.” I think Shaw was joking, but there was a kernel of truth in his aphorism. Unless professionals are forced to justify their methods, assumptions, and conclusions in frequent, detailed, open discussions with laypeople, corruption is inevitable.

Second, social issues involve inescapable questions of value. It is not enough to know that A causes B. An engineer, an economist, or a biochemist might tell us that with some reliability. But we must also know whether B is desirable, whether A is an ethically acceptable means to B, and whether the cost is worthwhile. For example, you can often cause a low-income neighborhood to vanish by building a mass-transit station that links it to the downtown business core. Rents will rise around the station and poor people will move out. Crime will fall and investment will follow. Whether those changes count as “success” depends on your values, not on the data alone.

Third, experts are trained to think in terms of categories: to classify situations and then to recommend the rules, methods, solutions, or “best practices” that apply to each classification. There is value to thinking in categories, and experts do it better within their own fields than other people do. However, there are also serious limitations to categorical thinking, and laypeople often see a particular situation better than experts do. I believe this point has great significance for how we arrange our politics and will develop it tomorrow.

Film Your Issue

The What’s Your Issue Foundation has launched its 2010 Film Your Issue Competition with a YouTube channel, blog posts, and Twitter feed.

People between the ages of 14 and 24 are invited to submit 3-minute videos with their ideas for improving society. “Prizes include having your winning video shown to senior Obama administration officials in D.C., flying to L.A. for an awards show with Sony Pictures, a Student Pass to the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and Apple products like a Macbook or iPod Touch. Winners will be selected by a VIP Jury, including Tom Brokaw, our own Chad Hurley, Yoko Ono and Nicholas Kristof, and by public voting on YouTube.”

An incredible asset of this project and its founder, HeathCliff Rothman, is their ability to draw celebrity support. They’ve got Jack Black saying “Dude, I can’t wait to hear your issue,” and George Clooney saying, “Film Your Issue brings your voice into the arena. It belongs to you.” I’ve had fun advising them a little bit, and I look forward to the winners.

our work with games

I begin with the philosophical premise that we should treat young people as actual citizens, capable of doing actual public work and politics. I don’t begin with great enthusiasm for simulations or play-citizenship. On the other hand, there is evidence that real youth-led civic projects often lower kids’ sense of “efficacy”—their belief that they can make a difference. My friends Joe Kahne and Joel Westheimer reviewed ten excellent programs–mostly focused on low-income students–and found that students’ efficacy tended to fall.

The reason seems clear enough to me. Gather a group of 14-year-olds, tell them to identify a problem that is important to them, and give them a few hours a week to work on it. They will begin with a typical adolescent American sense of optimism–We can make a difference!–and will end in disappointment. The challenge is worse if they are poor. Suburban kids may choose something like traffic congestion in the school parking lot as their problem, come up with a great idea, and get thanks from their principal for their excellent thinking. Inner-city kids may choose homicide, homelessness, AIDS, or racism as their problem–and end in frustration.

So we are experimenting with curricula that mix realistic simulations with real-world work. We draw on David Williamson Shaffer’s concept of epistemic games: enjoyable, computer-based simulations of adult roles. We are interested less in simulating fancy adult jobs (like ambassador to the UN) than in allowing kids to play roles that are actually accessible to them. The idea is to create a realistic but controlled context in which they can make a difference and learn concrete skills and knowledge. Playing the game takes them off the computer screen, because they must hold face-to-face team meetings, conduct research on their real communities, interview actual adults, and make final “live” presentations.

With our colleagues at University of Wisconsin, we have tested a pilot version of a game called Legislative Aide. A high school class simulates the role of staff to a fictional US Congresswoman who represents their real district. They go to a computer lab that becomes her district office. They receive emails from fictional characters who are senior Washington staff for the politician. They can also email each other. They are asked to interview real adults and develop an action plan for the Congresswoman. When the simulation is complete, they can do some real-world tasks that are part of the action plan.

We are applying to develop a similar game in which the class simulates the staff of a fictional environmental nonprofit with an EPA grant. In this game, scientific knowledge and skills are emphasized.

We have also helped write two applications to the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Competition. They are for two versions of urban planning games. In both cases, the goal is to get teenagers around Somerville, MA to simulate the role of urban planners who are considering the momentous change that is about to hit their real city: the extension of the Green Line subway service. We hope that playing the game will not only teach the individual kids useful skills and concepts; it will also yield data about youth needs and priorities that can be transmitted to real planners and community activists.

The MacArthur grant competition includes a stage that invites public comments on applications. Please visit ours and comment.

the path not taken (so far): civic engagement for reform

Yesterday, the Huffington Post published a short piece of mine about the Obama Administration’s failure–so far–to engage the public in our great national challenges. A more complete version of the same argument follows.

As a candidate, Barack Obama made the strongest case since Bobby Kennedy in 1968 that we need to engage Americans in changing America. His biography and writing suggested that he knew what that would mean–concretely and practically. His civic engagement theme was popular with voters (although largely unreported by the press), and I believe it helped him win the primaries.

However, my own experience on two Obama campaign policy committees and my observations since then suggest that no one who has any influence in the party or the administration–other than possibly the president and the first lady–really understands the power of civic engagement. All the diagnoses of what’s going wrong focus on top-down strategy: the Democrats are too arrogant or too cautious, they took too long or tried to rush too fast, they focused on health care when they should have attended to unemployment, they catered too much to Congress or they didn’t give Congress enough leeway. Now the advice from all quarters is to change legislative objectives and to craft a new “message.” This whole discourse ignores what could be the unique advantage of having a community organizer in the White House.

The “Active Citizenship” Theme in the Campaign

Announcing his presidential candidacy in Springfield, IL on February 10, 2007, Senator Barack Obama said, “This campaign has to be about reclaiming the meaning of citizenship, restoring our sense of common purpose, and realizing that few obstacles can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change. (Cheers.) … That is our purpose here today. That is why I’m in this race, not just to hold an office but to gather with you to transform a nation. (Cheers.) …”

Ten months later, as he campaigned to win the Iowa Caucuses, Senator Obama described his work as a community organizer: “In church basements and around kitchen tables, block by block, we brought the community together, registered new voters, fought for new jobs, and helped people live lives with some measure of dignity. … I have no doubt that in the face of impossible odds people who love their country can change it. But I hold no illusions that one man or woman can do this alone. … That’s why I’m reaching out to Democrats, and also to Independents and Republicans. And that is why I won’t just ask for your vote as a candidate; I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am President of the United States. This will not be a call issued in one speech or program; this will be a cause of my presidency.”

What Did Obama Mean by “Active Citizenship?”

Based on Obama’s writing and experience, I would interpret his general statements about “active citizenship” as follows. He believes that positive change comes from organized social movements, not from the government alone. (Michelle Obama hammered on this theme when she spoke last summer in San Francisco.) Social movements should be broad-based, not narrow groups of people who all agree with one another. They should promote discussion and collaboration across lines of difference–including ideological difference. Hence the need to build bridges to Republican citizens.

What critics of ACORN-style “community organizing” don’t understand is that Obama’s specific brand of faith-based organizing in Chicago was intentionally broad-based–not narrowly ideological, and certainly not partisan. As he said in May 2007, “politics” usually means shouting matches on TV. But “when politics gets local, when the person talking to you is your neighbor standing on your front porch, things change.” In that speech, he called for dialogues in every community on Iraq, health care, and climate change.

Further, Obama believes that social change requires work by many people. We must tap their skills, energies, networks, and local knowledge. Government programs cannot substitute for public work; nor can rights or entitlements. The “work” theme has been strong and consistent in his speeches. For example, on the 100th day of his presidency, in Arnold, Missouri, he said, “We’re living through extraordinary times. We didn’t ask for all the challenges that we face, but we’re determined to answer the call to meet them. That’s the spirit I see everywhere I go. That’s the spirit we need to sustain, because the answer to our problems will ultimately be found in the character of the American people. We need soldiers and diplomats, scientists, teachers, workers, entrepreneurs. We need your service. We need your active citizenship.”

At the root of many of our problems, Obama argues, are fractured relationships–among Americans and between Americans and major institutions. Bad policies are not the ultimate cause of our problems, and solutions require repairing relationships–something that only people (not institutions) can accomplish. Finally, there is a strong moral dimension to this work. Personal moral choices are responsible for our national successes and failures; and social movements can change those choices. In New Hampshire in 2006, Obama said: “We are going to re-engage in our democracy in a way that we haven’t done for some time … We are going to take hold of our collective lives together and reassert our values and our ideals on our politics. And that doesn’t depend on one person. That doesn’t depend on me or the Governor or a congressman or a speaker. It depends on you.”

Before the campaign, Barack Obama had been a broad-based community organizer, provoking moral discussions with diverse neighbors for social change. Because of his deep interest in the theoretical issues connected to that work, he was one of just two elected officials who joined Robert Putnam’s Saguaro Seminar, a leading project on civil society. Michelle, meanwhile, ran an AmeriCorps program (Public Allies in Chicago) that emphasizes civic skills, and then she took the job of building better relationships between the University of Chicago and its surrounding communities. I had the privilege of meeting her in October 2006 at a Campus Compact conference. The themes that I have quoted so far ran deep in the lives of this couple.

Did the Civic Engagement Theme Help Obama Win?

The press, including liberal columnists and bloggers, paid virtually no attention to the civic engagement theme in the campaign. I transcribed several of the quotes given above from YouTube videos because I could not find them in any print coverage of the campaign. Reporters regard a statement about “active citizenship” much like a comment about how wonderful it feels to visit New Hampshire in January. It’s just throat-clearing that precedes the attack or proposal of the day. Yet the videos clearly show rising applause at the civic moments in these speeches.

Within the campaign, policy advisers didn’t pay much more attention to the civic themes than the press did. The campaign did endorse expanding AmeriCorps, as did John McCain. But the Democrats’ proposals on matters like education and the environment included no concrete ideas for civic empowerment. A substantial proportion of Obama’s advisers were liberal technocrats who believe that society is divided into distinct interest groups. Progressive change comes from mobilizing the weaker interest groups to vote and then promoting their interests. Legislation is complex and fast-moving, and only insiders and the heads of interest groups can really understand it. Good government means informing, motivating, and negotiating with political leaders. All of these premises are at odds with the candidate’s own speeches, but I think that the “active citizenship” theme slipped past Democratic Party elites just as it escaped the notice of the press.

If the media didn’t report on active citizenship, and the candidate’s policy positions didn’t reflect it, how could it help him to win? One reason is that voters now get direct, unmediated access to the candidate’s speeches and his books. They could hear his civic rhetoric. I know, as an empirical fact, that they clapped and cheered at it.

More importantly, the campaign was structured in ways that reflected Obama’s civic philosophy. Volunteers were encouraged and taught to share their stories, to discuss social problems, to listen as well as mobilize, and to develop their own plans. There was a rich discussion online as well as face-to-face. This deliberative style was particularly attractive to young, college-educated volunteers, who felt deeply empowered and who played a significant role in the election’s outcomes, especially in Iowa. (And without Iowa, Barack Obama would not be president.)

The civic theme was consistent with Barack and Michelle Obamas’ personal stories and so helped to create a coherent narrative. I don’t believe that “narratives” determine general election outcomes (which can be predicted precisely based on macroeconomic indicators), but I do think that Obama told a better story than Clinton in the Democratic primary–and that mattered.

The idea of civic empowerment may not have generated major policy proposals, but it did play an important role in campaign debates. For example, Clinton and Obama argued over the meaning of the Civil Rights Movement, with Obama crediting the grassroots and Clinton praising Lyndon Johnson and other national leaders. That was a legitimate disagreement, but Obama’s position was consistent with his whole campaign. A related argument arose between Obama and Paul Krugman of the New York Times, with Krugman saying that America’s problem was the Republicans, and Obama replying (although not directly to Krugman) that the problem was our civic fabric.

What Happened After the Inauguration?

Once elected, President Obama signed the Kennedy Serve America Act, which triples the size of AmeriCorps. That means that about 250,000 Americans–mostly young–will perform civilian service for a year or so. On his first day of office, the president issued a strong executive order on Transparency, Participation, and Collaboration, and he renamed the White House Office of Public Liaison the Office of Public Engagement. The Administration took steps to release public information online so that citizens could use it, and the White House held online dialogues about how to implement the executive order.

The agenda so far has been strong on service and transparency, but almost entirely missing participation or collaboration–equal pillars in the original executive order. Service does not necessarily build civic skills or address fundamental problems; besides, even an expanded AmeriCorps offers no role to most people. “Transparency” means feeding information to organized interest groups, reporters, and a few independent citizens who have deep interests and skills in particular areas.

These forms of civic engagement are not nearly “edgy” enough; there is no fight in them. People are angry, in America–from the Tea Partiers to MoveOn. When citizens try to solve serious social problems, they identify enemies. They do not just hold hands and serve together; they strike back at those whom they perceive as threats. If “active citizenship” reduces to non-controversial “service,” it will completely lose touch with the legitimate anger of the American people.

The White House chose to make health care their major focus and included no aspects of civic engagement in the deliberations about the bill, in their advocacy for the legislation, or in the design of the statute. There could have been real public discussions, instead of sham “Town Meetings” that were really speeches by politicians with time for Q&A. Progressive volunteers could have been encouraged to conduct face-to-face dialogues in their communities and to form relationships with one another (instead of merely finding themselves on the receiving end of an email list). The legislation could have included health co-ops as an experiment in engaging citizens in policy.

In other words, a range of civic engagement strategies was available to the administration, including a deliberative approach (bringing liberals and conservatives together at the grassroots level to develop policy options), a more partisan and ideological strategy (empowering progressive citizen-activists to build relationships and persuade neighbors), and/or incorporating community panels or local insurance co-ops into the bill itself. The White House chose none of these strategies but opted instead for an inside game, trying to negotiate their way to a bill.

A health care bill may still pass, and it would probably be on its way to the White House already if it were not for a weak Democratic senatorial campaign in Massachusetts. On the other hand, the emerging bill was strikingly fragile because no passionate, organized, credible group of citizens supported it. It had the endorsement of some smart, independent policy experts but no enthusiastic popular backing. Nobody “owned” it. Lincoln was right: “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.”

The President’s rhetoric has been subtly shifting from civic empowerment to a focus on his own personal leadership–from “we” to “I.” Seeking the nomination in Iowa, Barack Obama said, “I hold no illusions that one man or woman can do this alone.” More than two years later, responding to the Massachusetts Senate election, he said:

So long as I have some breath in me, so long as I have the privilege of serving as your President, I will not stop fighting for you. I will take my lumps, but I won’t stop fighting to bring back jobs here. (Applause.) I won’t stop fighting for an economy where hard work is rewarded. I won’t stop fighting to make sure there’s accountability in our financial system. (Applause.) I’m not going to stop fighting until we have jobs for everybody.

Before the Democrats turned to health care in 2009, they passed a stimulus package that could have been described–justly–as “public work.” Thanks to the stimulus, some Americans are building roads, bridges, and schools. Some are monitoring federal spending on websites. Some are advocating for priorities. Some are volunteering time in the same schools and hospitals where the federal funds go. Some could also deliberate about where the money should be spent at the local level. All this should be called “active citizenship” and described as a common project. Instead, it turned into a service of the federal government to us–inadequate for the task.

I recognize the challenges. Empowering grassroots volunteers to advocate for health care might have yielded a peaceful army in favor of “single payer,” which would then die in Congress. Public discussions of health care, even if moderated and appropriately structured, could be ruined by deliberate and angry opponents. No one knows for sure how to involve citizens in the administration of health plans over time. Yet the lack of innovation and experimentation in these areas is striking after the impressive record of the campaign. It is hard to identify anyone who even wants to try a civic strategy.

If “active citizenship” seems abstract and utopian, consider Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE), a program within the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). CARE makes grants to communities that have formed local partnerships to address environmental issues and determined their local needs. CARE also provides training and technical assistance and puts an interdisciplinary EPA team in partnership with each community. According to Carmen Sirianni, CARE has built a culture of collaboration and has obtained very energetic and enthusiastic support from EPA staff. However, as I understand it, CARE’s funding has been cut by the Obama Administration. Major national environmental organizations have little enthusiasm for its style of policy; they want top-down directives.

On health care, it is probably too late to try a civic approach. Climate change is so obviously stuck in the United States Senate that it is the issue I would use. The inside game can’t work. The bully pulpit is inadequate: after thousands of speeches by respected leaders and celebrities, there is still not enough political will for major reform of energy policy. Since negotiation cannot yield an acceptable bill, the administration should try a grassroots strategy that includes a genuine element of open discussion, not just “messaging.” And the legislation should include strong support for citizens’ work (not just volunteer service) to reduce our carbon emissions.

Six months ago, I was more persuaded by the risks of employing civic engagement to address a high-profile, deeply contentious issue like health care. I then saw the argument for ramming it through Congress. With that strategy in tatters, the case for active citizenship is stronger than ever.

St. Teresa

We are going to Spain in February, for a short vacation. As we prepare, I am focusing on St. Teresa of Ávila, in part because of the opening lines of Middlemarch (which is my favorite book):

Teresa was always in peril of her life. Even her ancestry was a danger to her, for her grandfather Juan was a Jew. The Inquisition (skeptical of his conversion) paraded Juan through Toledo in a yellow robe embroidered with lying tongues. Who knows whether inwardly he recited the Ave Maria or the Hebrew psalms of exile?

Juan fled to Ávila and raised his son to be as good a Catholic as a man could be. The family became wealthy and attained the minor nobility. But then his granddaughter Teresa arrived to challenge and perplex them. First she ran away to a nunnery–which was not so unusual–but she would not behave like a proper nun, saying the ritual Latin prayers prescribed by tradition and authority. Like her grandfather’s grandfathers, she felt compelled to struggle with ancient texts and apply their paradoxes to her own implacable conscience. Like a Protestant heretic, she held private dialogs with Jesus in the common tongue, often perceiving him as a bodily (if invisible) presence in the room beside her. Other spirits also visited her as she exercised her prodigious memory and imagination. Angels arrived frequently as intellectual presences and once as a visible form. On one unforgettable occasion, a seraph drove a fiery lance again and again through her heart and left her scorched and tingling.

Women who summoned spirits through private incantations were generally known as “witches.” Friends and elders warned Teresa that her visions could be diabolical, and privately she feared that they were. Yet her struggles with her conscience led inevitably to terrifying moments of insight, and her imagination made those moments tangible. It was not by choice that she was sensitive and receptive. But it was her choice to train her sensitivity through laborious intellectual and spiritual exercises. The results–audible conversations with invisible spirits, reports of fiery angelic penetrations–could hardly fail to provoke deep suspicion.

All of Spain’s most dangerous enemies acted rather like Teresa, whether they were Mayan priests in trances with bloody hearts in their hands, Protestants claiming brazenly that they conversed directly with God, witches fornicating with Satan, or mystical Jews and Moors enraptured by musty texts.

If her spiritual exercises weren’t bad enough, Teresa was driven to condemn the social order by force of her example. Daughter of a wealthy knight, she had run away to a convent for gentle ladies. It was a comfortable place where spinsters lived together in only partial seclusion. One spoke there in refined accents, relied on servants for manual labor, entertained visitors, and expected the deference of the poor. The cloister was decked in American gold; the porcelain Christ-child on the altar wore the finest Manila silks. But the real Jesus had consorted with poor fishermen and prostitutes. When Teresa vowed poverty, she meant it. She founded a new convent that was utterly humble, just a rough stone shed with straw on the floor. She walked barefoot and ministered to the poor and sick. Her closest confidants were a motley assortment of women and men from every social background.

Teresa was a tireless organizer as well as a mystic. She traveled thousands of miles, wrote innumerable letters, personally founded scores of reformed convents. She took flawed human material and built institutions. Yet the arrogant powers always circled her. Her friend John of the Cross was kidnapped, imprisoned in a Toledo monastery, and there viciously flogged every morning for favoring reforms like Teresa’s and for writing unpretentiously moving poetry on her model. She eluded the same enemies year after year, clearly driven by a compulsion that commanded respect against all odds.