Monthly Archives: July 2011

CIRCLE in the news

Here is a roundup of some recent news articles citing CIRCLE:

In an article about voter ID requirements, CIRCLE’s Abby Kiesa says, “‘There’s a huge gap in the research right now’ concerning how many college students lack the proper identification to register to vote … But, she wrote in an e-mail, ‘regardless of the effects of voter-ID laws on turnout, we think that more youth participating is better, and putting obstacles in the way of this is unconscionable.'” (Molly Redden, “As 2012 Elections Loom, Partisans on Both Sides Argue the Effect of Voter-ID Laws on Students,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/11)

Emily Schultheis writes in Politico, “Engagement with other users is one of the main ways candidates can distinguish themselves on Twitter, experts say. ‘Certainly, what you’d be aiming for if you’re a politician … is not that [voters] are just following you but reprocessing your material,’ said Peter Levine, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University” (“New Gingrich Miles Ahead in Twitter Primary,” 7/12).

Katie Banks (Medill News Service) covers campaigns by young politicians and cites CIRCLE data on youth turnout: “Tomorrow’s Leaders Here Today: Young Adults Making Waves by Challenging Older Incumbents,” Austin Weekly News, 6/29

CIRCLE’s Peter Levine tells The Hill newspaper, “the GOP primary might not be too helpful to the Republican Party, as primaries typically draw low youth turnout. ‘To the extent that the primaries are dominated by strong conservative candidates and issues, the Republicans will tend to alienate independent young voters who are following the news,’ Levine wrote in an email. ‘It will be hard to recover with them in the general election.’ …

“Levine agreed that in 2008, college voters were particularly important because they overwhelmingly favored Obama. Yet this year, Levine wrote, the magnitude of their impact ‘depends on whether the president is able to mobilize his “base” again, and also whether Republicans are able to make some inroads with young voters. In 2008, Republicans performed extraordinarily badly with the college vote, but they have plenty of room to improve.’

“Much of college students’ roles in the 2012 election will depend on the Republican nominee, Levine said.

“Since 2004, young people have become heavily Democratic,” he wrote. “The question now is whether they will be a lasting part of the Democratic coalition, or whether the Republicans will put them back into play somehow.” (Becki Steinberg, “College 2012, “ The Hill, 7/11)

what is the “good citizen”?

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As we work our way through voluminous readings at the third annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies, I like to ask how various authors understand citizenship. Here is a brief sample of their (hypothetical) definitions of “the good citizen”:

Elinor Ostrom: the designer or improver of techniques and processes that solve collective-action problems. For instance, someone who figures out how not to over-fish a local public lake is a very good citizen.

Vaclav Havel: anyone who has a “heightened feeling of personal responsibility for the world” and who is aware “that none of us as an individual can save the world as a whole, but that nevertheless each of us must behave as though it were in our power to do so.” Each of his or her acts (even if “tiny and inconspicuous”) is informed by this belief.

Aristotle: the man (but nowadays it could be a woman) who is skillful in both ruling and being ruled, who deliberates and judges on matters of official policy, voting and then obeying the results of each vote, and thereby serving the safety of the constitution. Also, the good citizen abstains from participation in the marketplace.

Jurgen Habermas: a person who comes together with diverse peers to decide collectively what ought to be done, giving and hearing reasons but refusing to use threats or incentives to obtain agreement.

Michael Schudson: the question is misleading because each stage of political history requires a different kind of citizen.

More coming ….

the Summer Institute of Civic Studies

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Today is the beginning of the third annual Institute of Civic Studies at Tufts University’s Tisch College of Citizenship. For the next two weeks, I will be meeting daily from 10 am-6 pm with a group of 20 people who include young faculty and graduate students as well as experienced practitioners, such as the city manager of a Midwestern city and the executive director of a service corps. The participants represent the disciplines of divinity, education, engineering, human development, philosophy, policy, political science, planning, and public administration.

The focus is not on how to educate people for citizenship, but rather what “citizenship” ought to mean and how (in general) to promote it. Our concern is less with who counts as a citizen than with what citizens should do. My co-organizer, Prof. Karol Soltan, and I are motivated by the goal of building a new discipline of civic studies, aligned with the principles in this “manifesto.”

The institute will segue into the third annual Conference on Civic Studies and Civic Practices (Ju;y 21-23), which has attracted more than 120 registrants from several countries. Space at that conference is now severely limited but you could still apply to attend.

The Summer Institute is, I feel, education at its best. We charge no tuition and offer no grades or credits. Participants attend for sheer love of the topic and have, in past years, formed strong intellectual communities.

Because my facilitation duties will be pretty intense, I anticipate blogging less than daily between now and July 25. Some of my posts may be revisions of previous entries about our institute’s readings and authors.

snapshots of Black politics

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Since the 2008 election, I have been privileged to spend seven or eight days in meetings with predominantly African American scholars or activists, talking about politics and Black issues.

It’s said that wherever there are two Jews, there are three opinions. That is true of most communities, at least when the political discussion is healthy, and it is certainly true of politically active Black Americans. There is much healthy disagreement. Nevertheless, I will offer a few tentative generalizations.

Obama is a widely seen as a challenge. The administration has not forthrightly addressed issues of particular significance to African Americans, such as the incarceration industry, workplace discrimination, police profiling, or teen violence. I am not sure why: it could be that the president is leery of alienating independent White voters, or it could be that his administration is not sure what to do about these problems. Or maybe they think that the Race to the Top education reform was the best response to the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

Even though the president does relatively little to address the specific issues of African Americans, some loud White voices are accusing him of hating White people–as if to send a warning. Obama is increasingly controversial in Black America, too (see Lupe Fiasco, Cornel West, and others), but African American organizations are still leery of putting him in a tight spot by pressing on issues like incarceration and racial discrimination. He is, after all, the best defense now against disastrous policies. He is beset by maniacal enemies–like the people in my town who stand outside our post office with pictures of Barack Obama in a Hitler mustache, advocating for him to be removed from office as mentally incompetent under the 25th Amendment. With this going on, who wants to criticize the president for giving way too easily in budget negotiations? Nevertheless, Black groups would probably put more pressure on a White Democratic president, and they might get more action from a Democrat who was more worried about Black votes. One final irony: the flow of progressive money to the Obama campaign apparatus in 2008 caused older, community-based, Black-led political organizations to take a financial hit, which was then compounded by the recession. So the infrastructure is weaker than it was before the Obama era.

African American scholars and leaders of organizations are socioeconomically diverse, and some are relatively privileged. Yet many have deeper and more pervasive connections to people who are seriously suffering than comparable White scholars and leaders would have. In any group, some people bear private traumas. But in a group of African American leaders, the issues on the official agenda are also personal. Some participants have lost their own sibling or parents to murder. The intensity of concern is much deeper; the level of detachment, much less. Yet an inimitable, wry, worldly sense of humor often emerges to keep the intensity under some control.

The deepest irony or paradox is the combination, which everyone recognizes, of astounding progress on some fronts and disastrous setbacks on others. Today, Black scholars and leaders can gather in halls of power and privilege, connected not only by similar skin color but by personal networks to the president of the United States, the heads of major foundations and universities, and rich and influential celebrities. (Here is Cheryl Contee, who was at the meeting with me, reporting on her meeting with the president the day before.) That status was unthinkable 30 years ago. Yet the number of young Black men killed in a single year in any of our large cities is greater than all our deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan since those wars began. Where do we go from here?

African American youth civic engagement

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I am at the Open Society Foundation in Washington, DC for a convening on Black Youth Civic Engagement, which has drawn many of the leading experts and activists on African American young people and politics. The CIRCLE PowerPoint that I presented provides an overview of this issue from our perspective:

African American Youth Civic Engagement

Here is a sample graph from the presentation, showing that African American young people set the all-time record for youth turnout by any racial or ethnic group in 2008:

It’s important to note that the trend was already up in 2004, so the high turnout was not just an Obama effect.