(Washington, DC) I have two major professional interests: civic engagement and the humanities. Thanks to a partnership with the organization Indiana Humanities, I am enjoying an opportunity to bring the two together. Up to now, my arguments for the humanities have been theoretical and philosophical. (They are in my books Reforming the Humanities: Literature and Ethics from Dante through Modern Times, 2009; Living Without Philosophy: On Narrative, Rhetoric, and Morality, 1998; and Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities, 1995.) But there are also empirical questions about what happens when people experience the humanities–and especially when laypeople participate in the “public humanities” in the form of book clubs, museum visits, or maintaining local historical sites. We at CIRCLE are helping Indiana Humanities with a case study of their state’s humanities “ecosystem.” As it says on their website:

Using a survey method, Indiana Humanities (along with leading researchers) will collect data on humanities-related institutions and program opportunities in Indiana, how they are connected to one another, and how people in Indiana participate in the humanities. The goal is to “map” the network of relationships among the various public and academic humanities sectors and between the humanities enterprise and the broader community.

The next stage–if we can pull it off later on–will be to find out whether the strength of the humanities “ecosystem” in a community is related to important social outcomes.

A Black Youth project study entitled “Gun Violence and Public Opinion on Gun Control among America’s Young People” presents data that should be basic to the national debate, along with some relatively surprising findings. First, almost half of White youth (18-29) recently carried a gun or know someone who did. Less than one in four Black and Latino youth report that experience. Yet Black and Latino youth are much more supportive of gun control. Given a choice between protecting the rights of gun owners versus controlling gun ownership, Black youth favor control by a three-to-one margin, but a majority of White youth prefer gun owners’ rights. Two-thirds of Black and Latino youth would ban assault weapons, versus just over half of White youth. Perhaps more interesting is the finding that two thirds of Black youth support having “More police/armed guards in public places like schools and malls.” Considering the frequent tensions and complaints involving those guards, that is interesting. It may reflect something of a Hobson’s choice: more guns or more armed guards. After all, almost one quarter of Black youth say that they or someone they know “experienced gun violence in the last year,” versus just 8.3% of White youth.

Yesterday, I wrote a long post about the uses of the words “democracy” and “republic” to describe the United States. I argued that they’ve had various and sometimes indistinguishable meanings–and both words are appropriate.

In the process, I started looking at some old newspapers, which are wonderfully accessible via Google’s news archive. This clip comes from the Aurora General Advertiser (Philadelphia), Apr. 30, 1795.  I read several days’ worth of the Aurora. It is enthusiastic about the French Revolution, hostile to Britain, and suspicious of the Federalists. It is Jeffersonian, so its favored politicians are mostly Southerners. However, this brief article concerns a Massachusetts congressional election that would give heart to the “Southern brethren.” The winner is described as an “independent Democratic Republican (and of consequence a true genuine Federalist, (according to the real sense of the word).” I was amused by that conjunction of four supposedly irreconcilable concepts: independent, republican, democratic, federalist.

For the record, Joseph Bradley Varnum was later Speaker of the House and a US Senator, and an abolitionist. His defeated opponent, Samuel Dexter, was a Federalist, later turned Republican, and a temperance advocate.