We are now three days into the first annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship & Public Service (Tufts University). We meet daily for four hours of seminar discussion and then a two-hour talk from a visiting scholar. On a personal level, I am finding the experience deeply gratifying and reinforcing. We sit in the main meeting room of a college of citizenship, decorated with posters about “engagement,” “learning,” and “democracy.” Our students/colleagues are 16 people from around the US and four from other countries who have come together to talk about civic renewal. They are not paying anything, not receiving credit, not formally enrolled, and not being graded. They are here for the love of the subject, and many of them choose to spend their lunch hours and other “free” times continuing to hash out the issues in the readings. The assigned texts have been written by authors who, to a substantial degree, know one another. The first two visiting speakers, Carmen Sirianni and Archon Fung, are also prominently featured on our syllabus (PDF). It’s possible that what we have here is an incestuous in-group; but I don’t think so. I think this is a diverse but coherent intellectual community, and I feel very privileged to be part of it.

(Durham, NH) I think that Vaclav Havel’s 1992 speech in Poland is famous, but I am focusing on it for the first time because we have assigned it for our summer institute of civic studies, which starts on Monday.

Not long after the fall of communism, Havel argued that the special ethos of the democratic dissident movements was being lost, and he wanted to “breathe something of the dissident experience into practical politics.” He explained:

The dissident movement was not typically ideological. Of course, some of us tended more to the right, others to the left, some were close to one trend in opinion or politics, others to another. Nevertheless, I don’t think this was the most important thing. What was essential was something different: the courage to confront evil together and in solidarity, the will to come to an agreement and to cooperate, the willingness to place the common and general interest over any personal or group interests, the feeling of common responsibility for the world and the willingness personally to stand behind one’s own deeds. Truth and certain elementary values such as respect for human rights, civil society, the indivisibility of freedom, the rule of law these were notions that bound us together and made it worth our while to enter again and again into an unequal struggle with the powers that be.

By politics with a spiritual dimension, I do not understand politics that is merely technological competition for power, limited to that which can be practically achieved and seeking primarily to satisfy this or that particular interest. Nor do I understand by it a politics that is concerned merely to promote a given ideological or political conception.

I am moved by the idea of politics that’s not “technological”–which means, I think, that it’s not about trying to get the goal you want (even an altruistic or idealistic goal) in efficient ways. Efficient politics leads to manipulation and social engineering. Havel later adds that the “aim of an ideology … can be achieved.” Ideologies have end-states, such as socialized medicine or a free market. Havel prefers something that can never be achieved, a “never-ending effort” to make the world better by acting well. Each good act leaves a benign “trace.”

I am also moved by his understanding that “to follow this path demands infinite tenacity, infinite patience, much ingenuity, iron nerves, great dedication, and last but not least, great courage.” That is even more evident 17 years later than it was in 1992, shortly after the great democratic revolutions in Europe and South Africa.

But I am not sure what I think about Havel’s main claim–which I haven’t quoted so far–that the heart of a better politics is achieving a personal “moral stance.” Three possible responses occur to me:

1. The dissidents could be revolutionary by being personally moral in a courageous way, without risking controversy about what was moral. Communism in its later stages was so bankrupt (literally and otherwise) that by simply telling the truth, refusing government jobs, signing manifestos, and so on, one rebuked the system and helped to bring the whole rotten edifice down. Under those circumstances, Catholic conservatives, free-market libertarians, and even Frank Zappa fans could unite without controversy. But that moment ended when they inherited a complex, flawed, but not easily fixed democratic society. Then groups inevitably disagreed about what should be done, and simply being moral on a personal level could no longer repair the world. The dissident experience became basically irrelevant. Havel is nostalgic but not strategic.

2. Havel is right that all we need is to be moral, but the question is: What does morality demand? If you’re comfortable answering that question with a phrase like “classical utilitarianism,” or “Catholic social doctrine,” then you have an adequate political theory. But obviously, it will be controversial, because everything really depends on your moral views. So there will be no consensus or harmony, just a conventional debate about moral positions.

3. Havel is onto something about the need to avoid ideological and technocratic politics, but his emphasis on personal morality is misleading–especially when he talks about “thousands of tiny, inconspicuous, everyday decisions” that are moral. That’s not the path to an alternative politics. The right path involves carefully developing and then fighting to protect venues in which people can discuss and address common issues without pursuing pre-determined goals or following pre-determined scripts. It requires specific moral commitments: to equal respect, openness, and “negative capability.” As Havel says, “all of this is easy to say but difficult to do.”

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” –Margaret Mead

This is one of the most popular quotations in my world. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen it printed out and hung on office walls. I think I understand the motivations that led Mead to say it. She was exhorting us to work together and make the world better.

But what she said isn’t literally true. Technological changes, institutional inertia, markets, clashes of social classes and other demographic groups, disciplined organizations, violence, tyranny, and sheer accidents also “change the world.” For instance, a big flood recently changed New Orleans a whole lot. It changed the city for the worse, and that brings up a separate problem with Margaret Mead’s quotation. Changing the world is morally ambiguous–it can be good or bad. The World War I veterans who gathered around Mussolini and Hitler were “small group[s] of … committed citizens,” and they made the world a lot worse. I deleted the word “thoughtful” in describing them, but they did think a lot about social issues and strategies. They just thought in a bad way.

I don’t mean to take cheap shots at Margaret Mead, but rather to emphasize that we need a really serious investigation of these questions:

• When can “a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens” change the world?
• How can they be most effective?
• What are good means and good ends for these groups?

Of course, there is great writing on these topics, of which we selected some favorite texts for our Summer Institute’s syllabus. But I believe there is much less scholarship than you would expect, for these reasons:

1. Addressing these questions requires a mix of facts and ethics, “is” and “ought” (or, in academic jargon, empirical and normative discourse); and that mix is rare. The social sciences are still heavily positivist and unable to deal openly with normative questions. Political philosophy is too abstract and not informed enough by practical experience.

2. Paying attention to the effects of small-group politics seems naive, since big, impersonal social forces probably have more impact on outcomes. Academic “realism” marginalizes human agency. But small-group politics is morally important–it’s what we should do. It’s also more significant than the “realists” believe, although less powerful than Margaret Mead implied.

3. Human agency takes place at a moderate scale. It’s not just “micro”–a matter of individual choices such as whether to lie, or to vote, or to use birth control. It’s also not just “macro,” involving the basic structure of a whole society. We human beings cannot directly change basic structures, but we can do more than make individual choices. We can work in political groups. Somehow, political theory and philosophy ignore the moderate scale in favor of the micro and the macro. (A exception, just to illustrate what we need more of, is this paper by Archon Fung.)

We are gearing up for the first annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies at Tufts University’s Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service. We have enrolled about 25 graduate students from universities across the country (and a few overseas visitors).

Designing the curriculum has been an exercise in deciding what is central and what is peripheral to the study of active citizenship. What is most important to know if you want to be an active, effective, member of a community? That question could be asked in various contexts. For instance, high school students should probably learn different things from adult activists who want become more effective citizens. We have been focused on students in PhD programs, whose interests will be relatively academic and theoretical. I am looking forward to a rich debate about what is most important for these PhD students to learn if they choose to study active citizenship. Our syllabus represents just one answer to that question. I have posted it below the fold.

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