Monthly Archives: February 2013

mapping the civic movement in higher education

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Last week, at a conference of scholars interested in the civic mission of colleges and universities, I offered some general remarks about how academia can help strengthen democracy. I said something like this:

Although it’s a complex story, we do not live in a good era for democratic government in the US. Whether measured by levels of participation, citizens’ satisfaction with the political system (broadly defined), gaps in engagement and power by social class, the actual performance of public institutions, or norms of public reason and civility–most of the trends do not look good.

But we do live in an era marked by three potentially exciting developments that are relevant to the conference.

First, the last 30 years have seen interesting and important developments in democratic theory, broadly defined. Civic republicanism, deliberative democracy, communitarianism, sophisticated new versions of populism, and cosmopolitanism are some of the intellectual movements that have real momentum.

I am particularly interested in intellectual movements that are related to practical experiments. I entered this broad field 25 years ago by studying the deliberative democratic philosophy of Jürgen Habermas in a sophomore seminar and then spending a summer at the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, OH. Kettering was then organizing the deliberative events that are still known as National Issues Forums. I am not sure whether Habermas is personally all that interested in such practical experiments, but the next generation of deliberation scholars definitely is interested, and the exchanges between practice and experience have been fruitful.

I’d like to take a moment to recognize one particular stream of democratic theory that is exemplary, that has influenced several of us at the conference, and that deserves recognition today because we recently lost its founders, Elinor Ostrom and Vincent Ostrom, in rapid succession. Lin Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in economics for revealing how, when, and why groups of people overcome collective action problems to manage common resources. A definition of good citizenship is implicit in her theory: the good citizen is a person who co-manages the commons. That ideal contrasts at least slightly with some other worthy definitions, such as the citizen as an altruistic volunteer, a judicious decision-maker, a or fighter for justice.

Because Lin found that people regularly succeed as good citizens, but only under certain conditions, her theory had profound implications for public policy, for education, and for the strategies of reformers and activists. For her whole life, she was engaged in dialogues and collaborations with all those kinds of people, in her classroom, in Bloomington (where she and Vincent lived), in Indianapolis, in settings around the world, and online–she helped to explain the structure of cyberspace. And yet I would basically want to honor her as a contributor to the intellectual renaissance of democratic thought.

A second stream of work also begins in academia, but it takes higher education itself as the main site of reform. The presenting complaints are: students and professors have lost a sense of mission and calling; they are not learning all that well or flourishing as people; and they are harmfully disconnected from their peers within academia and (even more so) from the broader society. This conversation took roughly its modern shape during the 1980s and has since spawned a whole range of influential practices. For instance, when students collaborate with community-based organizations that have ongoing partnerships with colleges, the theory goes, they can benefit intellectually and psychologically while contributing to the public good. But that requires engaged scholars, robust community partnerships, appropriate pedagogy, etc.–all of which we have been busily developing for the past thirty years.

The third stream is democratic renewal and innovation that emerges from outside academia. I have already mentioned deliberative democracy, which, in practical terms, means recruiting citizens to talk about public issues. That is a large-scale enterprise now. The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation has more than 2,000 individual members who are interested enough in organizing and facilitating public discussions (often linked to local action) that they subscribe to the NCDD mailing list, which is full of practical suggestions.

I also already mentioned the idea of citizens managing common resources. In the robust field of civic environmentalism, people are busy doing that, often applying concepts directly from Ostrom. Just to mention one example, the River Network has formal partnerships with 600 local nonprofits that are involved in managing watersheds.  America’s 4,600 community development corporations have financed and built 86,000 housing units. (I don’t want to bury you in statistics but merely suggest that these democratic reform efforts are serious business.) The American Libraries Association is a different example of an organization that thinks of itself as the guardian of a commons–in this case, a “knowledge commons.”

Another thread in the tapestry is contributed by broad-based community organizing, which often has a deliberative aspect (participants talk and decide on strategies and goals), but certainly differs from pure deliberation in its emphasis on action–including “Direct Action” events. The Industrial Areas Foundation has 47 regional affiliates now, most of them capable of drawing 2,000 people to a given event.

Innovations that originate within government and as the result of public policy also deserve mention. Just to name one type, Federally Qualified Health Centers provide health services at the local level. By law, they must have governing boards of which more than half are current clients of the center who demographically represent the population that the center serves. They employ 123,000 full-time staff and may have, by my estimate, 120,000 citizen board members.

I could go on. In fact, a book of mine coming out this summer is substantially devoted to mapping the whole field of civic renewal and providing some theoretical underpinning. Maybe it can suffice for this evening to say that there is a lot of civic innovation outside of academia, and I estimate that at least 1 million Americans are actively involved.

By the way, my list of organizations and my count of the civically engaged Americans both depend on what qualifies as authentic “civic engagement.” That is (and ought to be) a contested question, related to fundamental debates about what makes a good society and a good human life. I won’t defend my whole philosophical position here, except to say that the efforts that impress me most always have three dimensions. They are deliberative, involving talking and listening about public issues. They are collaborative, involving actual work that yields public goods or helps build the commonwealth. And they improve civic relationships, which are relationships characterized by mutual respect, appropriate power dynamics, and such civic virtues as loyalty and hope.

Having identified three major streams (intellectual movements, reforms in academia, and civic renewal efforts outside of higher education), my next obvious move is to argue that they must flow together. That’s built into the cliché of “streams.” It’s always easy to say that several important things are going on and now it’s time to combine them. The hard part is actually doing bringing them together. But more than usual, we need combinations of intellectual work and practical experimentation–within and beyond academia–because our students lack compelling political movements that would give their activism shape and purpose. Fortunately, these streams do come together in all kinds of interesting and fruitful experiments that may ultimately produce the political movements we need.

Abe Lincoln the surveyor, or the essential role of strategy

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There’s a great scene in the movie Lincoln when the president tells Thaddeus Stevens:

A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it’ll—it’ll point you True North from where you’re standing, but it’s got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms that you’ll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp, what’s the use of knowing True North?

These are the words of Tony Kushner, not (as far as I know) of President Lincoln himself. But they make an important point. Knowing where we ought to end as a society tells us very little about our best next move. Sometimes a tactical retreat or a sidestep is well advised. Thus political philosophy does not address the question, “What should be done?” unless it is married to political strategy–and the division of disciplines and departments makes that combination rare.

I would actually push the point further. There is no end, no literal True North. As we move through time as a people, we keep deciding where we ought to go. Moving in the right direction is important, but so is holding ourselves together as a community so that we can keep deciding where to go. Sometimes, the imperative of maintaining our ability to govern ourselves is more important than forward motion.

In his fine book, Reconstructing the Commercial Republic: Constitutional Design After Madison (University of Chicago Press, 2007), Stephen Elkin introduces this metaphor:

Those who wish to constitute a republican regime are like shipbuilding sailors on a partly uncharted sea who know the direction in which they sail, since the kinds of ports they prefer lie that way. This much they can agree on. To attempt to agree on anything more specific will defeat them, their opinions on the matter differing significantly. They also know too little for substantive agreement to be possible. … It is clear that the relations among the shipbuilders are fundamental. Because they must build, rebuild, repair, and modify the vessel as they sail and learn–and because they must alter their course… — it matters whether the shipbuilders’ modes of association are such as to facilitate this learning and the decisions they must make. … These modes of association are then at least as important as the ports toward which the shipbuilders sail [pp. 107-108].

So it is with a republican regime, Elkin adds; the “essential problem is one of creating a design that provides the capabilities that are needed to keep the regime oriented in the right direction.”

Lincoln provides a rich example for thinking about this problem. He knew the North Star (in that case,  abolition) but he also strove to keep the ship of state together because abolition was not the only or final destination our ship could reach. Lincoln’s was the great case, but the same situation confronts every leader–and every citizen. For instance, our president named the North Star in his Second Inaugural: “We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.” But how can a divided America move closer to that objective?

(see also “a real alternative to ideal theory on philosophy” and “beyond civic piety“

Millennials Civic Health Index released today

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Today, the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC), CIRCLE, Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, and Mobilize.org have released the Millennials Civic Health Index. It paints a comprehensive picture of young Americans 18 to 29 and describes the diverse ways in which Millennials are taking action in their communities beyond the voting booth, online and offline, across different regions of the United States.

Some headlines:

  • this generation of Americans represents a potent civic and political force – comprising a national voting bloc of 21.3% of eligible voters who are playing a critical role in our democracy and driving community action nationwide;
  • education is strongly connected to civic engagement—some indicators show a college graduate is four or five times more likely to engage than someone without a high school diploma;
  • Millennials are hard hit by the economic crisis—62.9% are currently working, of which 31.2% work on a part-time basis—with potential implications for civic engagement;
  • some surprising trends–while engagement typically increases with age, 22-25 year olds have lower levels of social cohesion and volunteerism than older or younger peers. And, while education predicts most forms of engagement, young people without a college education are more likely to help their neighbors on a regular basis.

The full study can be found here. To hear a press call on the release today at 10 am Eastern, please dial 866-889-3913  and enter password YOUTH.

using the full space of moral reasons

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I am certain about some of my moral ideas: genocide is definitely and unequivocally wrong. Some other moral ideas seem equally important, and I would be loath to abandon them, but I feel uncertain or equivocal about them. They capture moral truths, yet they are not fully or certainly right.

Some of my moral ideas are alive in me, informing and guiding the rest of my thoughts and my actual behavior. Other ideas are theoretical or inert: I assent to them but they don’t influence my mind or my actions. Yet (once again) I would be loath to abandon them because they may capture truths that should bind me in new circumstances. For example, if a tyrant arose, I hope I would recall my latent objections to tyranny.

Some of my moral ideas are very general; for instance, Do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself. And some are very particular: make sure that we honor our own organization’s mission statement. My particular ideas do not seem to be mere applications of my general principles, nor are my principles mere abstractions from the particulars. They are different and not fully connected. Again, I would not want to do without any of them.

You could think of these as three dimensions; that would create a space of moral reasons. Each idea can then be placed at a point in the space. I believe that we (because of the kinds of creatures we are) need the full expanse.

Alexis de Tocqueville once remarked that God “stands in no need of general ideas” because He “does not regard the human race collectively. He surveys at one glance and severally all the beings of whom mankind is composed; and he discerns in each man the resemblances that assimilate him to all his fellows, and the differences that distinguish him from them.” Thus God would need no abstractions. God would also have the capacity to act on all of His moral principles, all of the time. He would be fully certain about each of them; and they would all be mutually consistent.

The same is not true for us. Although influential philosophers typically hold subtle and complex views about moral certainty, generality, and the application of moral ideas, I am not sure that we explore–or value, or teach our students to consider–enough of the moral space. We tend to assume that we’d be better off if all our moral ideas could be certain, general, and directly applicable to a broad range of issues and actions. We imagine that the ideal moral agent would fully assent to something resembling a Categorical Imperative (even if not the Kantian version) that would link straightforwardly to the rest of her or his ideas and actions. Nothing like a spiritual exercise (processes for making ideas live in the soul) need intervene between the principles and their application.

The simple view also encourages us to clean things up, getting rid of the ideas that seem partly good and partly bad, or mostly true but not perfectly so, or good under limited circumstances but liable to switch their meanings in different contexts. But the cleanup just deletes some of the the rich experience stored in the full space of our moral reasons.

soft skills for the 21st century workplace: empowered teamwork or emotional labor?

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In the New Republic, Timothy Noah describes how the restaurant chain Pret a Manger forces its workers to be cheerful:

Pret keeps its sales clerks in a state of enforced rapture through policies vaguely reminiscent of the old East German Stasi. A “mystery shopper” visits every Pret outlet once a week. If the employee who rings up the sale is appropriately ebullient, then everyone in the shop gets a bonus. If not, nobody does. This system turns peers into enthusiasm cops, further constricting any space for a reserved and private self.

Noah cites Arlie Hochschild’s notion of “emotional labor.” Whereas factory owners merely purchase their workers’ labor, managers of nursing homes, boutiques, and even fast-food franchises now buy their employees’ moods and attitudes. This is a creepy idea, easily bringing to mind the Stasi. In fact, the East German secret police probably tolerated a certain amount of grouchiness that would get you fired at Pret a Manger.

Meanwhile, we read that 21st century employers need more advanced and challenging interpersonal skills than factory-owners once required. Today’s employees work in diverse groups to analyze problems and invent original solutions. They are no longer assigned to durable and hierarchical teams, but navigate and build shifting networks. This may be stressful, but it is also empowering and challenging. During work-hours, the traditional firm was a dictatorship, but the post-industrial workplace is more democratic–even a “directly deliberative polyarchy” in the words of Michael C. Dorf and Charles F. Sabel.

Which is the more pervasive trend? There is evidence that “soft skills,” “interpersonal skills,” or “people skills” are worth more now, and hard skills are worth less. The boss can teach you the latest hardware and software on the job, but good employees must be able to work together. Thus Borghans et al. (2006) find that the labor-market value of “people skills” has increased rapidly in Britain, Germany and the US since 1970. Their measures of “people skills” include, for example, a preference for work that requires contact with people and a “preference for working for the presumed good of people.”

The tricky part is that these “people skills” include capabilities that are part of a good and rewarding life (such as deliberating about goals, or genuinely caring for other people) as well as creepy invasions of private life (such as always smiling at clients and coworkers).

If employers want the former, then work skills converge with democratic or civic skills. Education can become empowering and experiential; we can teach children to be ethical problem-solvers in all aspects of their lives. But if employers want workers to perform Hoschschild’s “emotional labor” (cheering up their clients or patients by always displaying a sunny attitude), then work skills sharply diverge from civic skills. Then education becomes a matter of disciplining kids to be “positive,” and the boss can grab a bigger part of your soul.

By the way, it’s not so easy to tell when it’s bad for workers to display positive attitudes. Noah writes, “Emotional labor is not itself new. Prostitutes have faked orgasms for millennia. With greater sincerity (one hopes), undertakers calm the grieving, nurses comfort the sick, and migrant nannies lavish on other people’s children the love they aren’t present to furnish back home.” He argues that what is different about Pret a Manger is the absence of valid emotional needs in a fast-food restaurant. “The only imperatives typically addressed in a Pret shop are hunger and thirst. Why must the person who sells me a cheddar and tomato sandwich have ‘presence’ and ‘create a sense of fun?”

I don’t think that’s how to draw the distinction between acceptable and creepy forms of “emotional labor.” People seem to want smiles along with their sandwiches. Why is that desire illegitimate when it’s fine to prefer a sympathetic undertaker? We used to prefer the jolly grocer or miller to the grouchy one, and for similar reasons, we may like to shop at Pret more than McDonalds because of the smiles. In my view, the important question is the underlying power dynamic. If you own your own funeral home and you adopt a posture of sympathy toward your grieving clients, that’s both commendable behavior and good for business. If you’re a famous actor and you feign joy or love, that deserves applause. But if you work for a hospital, a nanny service, a pimp, or an upscale sandwich chain and you have to act cheerful to keep your job, that represents a loss of freedom.

I’ll end with the implications for education, although education is certainly not the only tool we can use to address the problems of 21st century work. Schools should not just teach people to be good employees; instead, they should develop those interpersonal skills that are both intrinsically worthy and valuable in the marketplace. Let employers figure out what to do if their workers have “bad attitudes.” The job of schools is to make people free, although in ways that are compatible with their earning a living. In other words, there is an overlap between what 21st century employers want and what good educators should teach, but their objectives are not identical.

See: Borghans, L., ter Weel, B., & Weinberg, B. A. “People people: Social capital and the labor-market outcomes of underrepresented groups (2006); Dorf, M.C. and Sabel, C.F. “A Constitution of Democratic Experimentalism,” Columbia Law Review, vol. 98, no. 2 (March 1998);  Hochschild, A.R., The Managed heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, 20th anniversary edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).