John Leiner

By John Leiner, DCI Fellow

It has been hard not to look at the calendar and recognize that the Class of 2021 has such little time—now less than three weeks—left until we graduate as Davidson College alumni. Many conversations have been had since August about what our class has missed out on during our senior year. The lack of socializing and spending time with our friends with whom we’ve grown so close has been especially frustrating. And, as a transfer student, I’ve thought about how much I would have loved to have spent more than 2 ¼ years on this beautiful campus.

To be sure, my friends have expressed their condolences for my abbreviated Davidson experience. Sometimes I wish I had spent my first year at Davidson—enjoying Frolics at least once would have been a treat. However, in many ways, my time not at Davidson is what led me here as a sophomore, and I try not to lose sight of that. I spent my first year at another small, academically rigorous liberal arts college. A great school, but not the best fit for me, in part because of what I felt was groupthink in the classroom and a lack of political-ideological diversity in the campus community.

Davidson felt different from the get-go. I recall my political philosophy professor early on during the fall of my sophomore year giving a short history lesson related to Aristophanes’ The Clouds. It struck me how the theme of the discussion could have been taboo, as it related to a practice common among Athenian philosophers that would be frowned upon today. There wasn’t anything particularly unique about the conversation.

Yet it struck me that we were having this discussion without anyone making virtue-signaling remarks about this practice having no place in today’s society. That we were discussing something antiquated was obvious. The class discussion was indeed refreshing, as we recognized that our goal in this particular moment was not to make political statements and apply our own values to the text but to understand why the practice mattered in the context of The Clouds. We needed to first “listen” to the text and its author before concluding anything about it.

It’s possible that I would have had a similar discussion were I taking the class at my previous college. I do know, though, that during my three years as a Davidson student the general openness of my peers towards discussing ‘touchy’ subjects, considering historical context, and acknowledging opposing viewpoints has not wavered. With this in mind, I strongly believe that class discussion at Davidson can be deliberative, insofar as it can encourage all participants to meaningfully and sincerely participate. Considering diverse perspectives and sharing ideas with those we disagree with can be possible in the classroom provided that campus culture is ‘ripe for’ deliberation. I believe that Davidson’s is.

From what I’ve learned as a DCI Fellow, the first step towards creating a deliberative culture in the classroom would likely be acknowledging that opposing views exist. In deliberative contexts, we call this ‘setting the scene,’ and I have certainly witnessed this step here at Davidson. Facilitators (professors) work with deliberators (students) to clarify uncertainties and points of dispute about the topic of deliberation. Prior to class discussion, my professors have often introduced relevant questions and points of contention before opening the floor.

Next, the professor invites students to begin the conversation. One student begins by offering a perspective or claim about the topic of discussion, perhaps using an “I” statement. This process continues until each student gives general remarks about their position. What differentiates a standard class discussion from a deeper deliberative experience are the next four steps. The first occurs when students are encouraged to clarify the assumptions, reasons and evidence underlying their positions. The professor may point out, for example, how students have reached similar conclusions based on different premises or why certain perspectives were not brought forth for discussion. They might also ask students to consider what implicit assumptions and biases have informed their ideas during a deliberation. This encourages everyone to think about the values or principles that underlie their beliefs, which they perhaps share with their classmates even if they disagree about the issue on the surface.

The next step involves students actively engaging and evaluating their own and each other’s reasons and evidence. The penultimate step comes when they begin to generate new ideas that transcend their original conceptions and understandings of the topic at hand. And the final step towards creating a deliberative classroom encourages reflection about the deliberation itself and an assessment of how it went, what was discovered, and what is left to be explored.

If students are not forthcoming about their perspective or choose to provide a different perspective from their honest opinion, the professor may not always recognize which perspectives are not being expressed in the deliberation. There may be many points of contention that are not discussed, after all. As Fellows, we’ve remarked time and again about how hard it is to incorporate all perspectives into our D Teams. How do we bring into the discussion those who are apprehensive about ‘being in the minority?’

There is no obvious solution to this puzzle. I do know, however, that establishing conversation agreements is key for the comfortability of deliberators—whether inside or outside of the classroom. If students come into the deliberation having read these guidelines, such as “critique the idea we disagree with, not the person expressing it” or “respect the confidentiality of the discussion,” then they may become more confident that their peers will respect their viewpoint. This could, in theory, allow students to be more open in their deliberations.

While talking across our many divides may seem daunting, we have more experience with at least some of the necessary components than we may realize. For example, “dialogues” in which Davidson classmates discuss weighty issues related to social justice often involve establishing conversation guidelines beforehand to assure everyone’s openness and honesty during the discussion. Furthermore, one of my many takeaways from Davidson is that I have learned to interrogate and question my assumptions, values and perspectives. And no substantive discussion I’ve had here has ever ended without formative reflection. So in many ways, Davidson is ‘ripe for’ deliberation, as components of the deliberative process are already part of how we study, learn, and grow as students here. I’m grateful for that, and I’m hopeful that Davidson can build on these foundations to build an even more deliberative culture in the future.

By John Leiner, DCI Fellow

Perhaps it comes as a surprise that a philosophical work written in 350 B.C.E. provides one of the most useful practical frameworks for deliberative democracy. In any case, the crux of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics that balance is virtue can help guide polarized groups—no matter the setting—in making better participatory decisions.

Aristotle argues in his Classical-era treatise that the most practical action each human should take is that which is the most virtuous, thereby leading to one’s happiness and justice. Aristotle explains that these acts lie between acts driven by vice. In other words, an act of virtue is neither excessive nor deficient in its inherent value. To this point, an act of courage strikes a balance between rashness (excessive) and cowardice (deficient) in the same way that the ideal participatory decision strikes a balance between a decision driven by false consensus (excessive) and a total lack of consensus (deficient).

Dr. Carcasson made several references to Aristotle’s Ethics throughout his workshops last week, in which he provided faculty, staff and students valuable strategies for ‘striking the right balance’ through deliberation. In his first workshop on “Deliberative Pedagogy and Program Design” for faculty and staff, Dr. Carcasson introduced Sam Kaner’s model for deliberative decision making. The key to Kaner’s model, Dr. Carcasson emphasized, is that balance is virtue. By identifying pure convergent thinking (i.e. groupthink) and pure divergent thinking (i.e. “talking past each other”) as more or less ‘vices’ in the Aristotelean sense, Dr. Carcasson stressed that educators should embrace both students’ convergent and divergent thinking in classroom discussions.

Consensus, he pointed out, is not the balance sought by deliberation. Instead, mutual understanding and clarification of both areas of agreement and disagreement is the goal. Kaner’s model suggests that by allowing student deliberators to first bring out tensions towards ideas by encouraging divergent thinking and then identifying areas of common ground through a process of convergent thinking, educators can strike the right deliberative balance between perspectives. For Kaner and Carcasson, this balance should be one of the key aspirations of any deliberative process.

Beyond pedagogy, finding balance in deliberation is equally important for facilitators and their efforts to manage the polarization within a group. ‘Passionate impartiality’ is the modus operandi for us as DCI facilitators. Dr. Carcasson stressed passionate impartiality’s importance in facilitating from the standpoint of striking a balance between various tensions, such as impartiality towards ideas, honoring equality and inclusivity towards people and perspectives, and respecting sound data and reasoning. Facilitators should, above all, “model and encourage democratic attitudes and skills” while helping participants “identify the values and interests that motivate their perspectives.”

When facilitators strike a balance between their own tensions, they can assist deliberators in fostering a balanced deliberation. Even outside of deliberation, when competing interests cause groups of people to become polarized in their approaches towards a shared problem, balance is not an elusive concept. By recognizing inherent democratic tensions and placing them on a spectrum—how much we value something versus how much someone else does—we can more easily locate where these tensions balance each other out.

Such polarity mapping/management allows us first to think about and express how we ourselves prioritize different values, and then also to see how others respond to these tradeoffs.  Such a process highlights the underlying tradeoffs that are present in an issue and can help deliberators better understand the underlying drivers of their disagreements.  Dr. Carcasson says that this balance between values is both a short- and long-term goal and is the essence of deliberation. Like justice in Nicomachean Ethics, this deliberative balance is hard to locate precisely. Yet, let this not dissuade us from seeking it.

Watch Dr. Carcasson’s Deliberation-in-Action workshops and keynote address here.