Deliberative Citizenship Initiative

Building Democracy One Conversation at a Time

Events

Event Re-Cap: Campus Conversation on Civic Discourse in the Wake of Political Violence

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Students presenting in the 900 Room.

By Stephen Walker ’26 (DCI Senior Fellow and Co-Convener)

This Fall, Deliberative Citizenship Initiative Fellows Saeran Daewar ‘28 and Oliver Genovese ’28 and Senior Fellows Casey Scheiner ‘28 and Stephen Walker ‘26 worked with the guidance of DCI Director Graham Bullock and Professor Ike Baliey to host a Campus Conversation entitled “Civic Discourse in the Wake of Political Violence: How Can We Foster the Campus Culture We Want to Have?” on Thursday, November 20th.

The event builds on the work that they have been doing together this semester as they’ve thought about how Davidson can best respond to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and rising political violence in general. The work was motivated by the interest from students in following up on an opinion-editorial in The Davidsonian, in which the large political organizations on Davidson’s campus came together to condemn all forms of political violence.

Student participants, many of whom represented political organizations and student publications on campus, were treated to snacks and ice cream in the 900 Room of the College Union as the student fellows discussed the pertinent issues and the task of moving forward from it as a campus community.

The fellows began the presentation by walking attendees through relevant background details concerning free expression and campus discourse at Davidson, so all participants had some context before entering into the conversation portion of the event. This included strategies for maintaining a healthy political culture and past work to determine how that is best done at Davidson.

The Fellows also introduced themselves and their work to produce a list of aspirational commitments meant to bring community groups together around a set of community standards for engaging in public discourse. These standards were framed as rooted in the spirit of students’ shared decision to attend Davidson and agree to uphold an Honor Code and the college’s statement of purpose at all times.

Specific core components of the aspirational commitments document included a commitment to free expression and open debate, the inherent worth and dignity of all people, and organizing opportunities for respectful engagement across the political spectrum. The fellows then discussed a selection of passages from the College Constitution pertaining to free expression and rights of students, as well as the different terms at the heart of the commitment and the process by which students determine definitions for those terms.

The commitments document was designed to serve as a framework to start a conversation between participants, who were encouraged to discuss what they liked and thought should be added or changed in the document itself. The goal is to create a document truly shaped by the community it is designed to represent.

The participants were then asked to discuss the following questions to determine what their priorities were and how they would amend, if at all, the commitments document:

  • How can we foster civic discourse in the wake of political violence?
  • What should civic discourse look like on campus?
  • What value(s) or aspirational commitment(s) are most important to you in the context of civil discourse?

After sharing with other participants seated next to them and writing out their answers on a whiteboard, students shared their answers with the full group so everybody could see what their views on the three questions were.

The conversation then transitioned to several rounds of scenarios related to controversial expressions of speech. Participants were asked to discuss hypothetical situations and rank them on a scale ranging from 5 for maximum allowance to 1 for the least permissible forms of expression. Students were asked to contemplate the scenarios and discuss what specific facts influenced their ratings.

Then, students were asked to share with the full group before moving on to another round of hypotheticals. Each one was designed to demonstrate the nuance of a particular situation and the importance of a variety of relevant factors in determining whether a certain behavior was acceptable or not. It pointed towards the value of a document like the set of aspirational commitments that can serve as a point of reference in the future.

Such determinations are difficult, and the attending students showed careful consideration for the specifics of the document, the scenarios, and the issue of political violence at large. Being able to practice their analytical skills while contributing to a community document was a meaningful experience for the presenting fellows and participants in the audience. The conversations also provided important insights that will inform future revisions of the aspirational commitments document as it is further developed. Stay tuned for more updates coming soon!

DCI Hosts Young European Leaders on State Department Visit

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DCI x International House image with map of Europe in the background

By Casey Scheiner ’28 (DCI Senior Fellow and Co-Convener)

A group of ten European leaders, ranging from a member of the Croatian Parliament to an Austrian democracy advocate, paid the DCI a visit on Wednesday, August 20. As part of their tour of the United States with the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, they spent a couple of days in Charlotte, where International House Special Projects Coordinator and Davidson alum Olivia Norten ‘25 brought the leaders to Davidson. On campus at the Cunningham Theater Center, Dr. Bullock and I led them in a deliberation on defensive democracy.

During the deliberation, I was in my usual spot as the facilitator moderating the discussion. However, this was uncharted territory for me: as a news junkie and DCI deliberation guide writer, I was accustomed to having a strong base of knowledge on the topic that would allow me to support deliberators’ thoughts with relevant factual insights. In this deliberation, I found myself by far the least versed member of the conversation in the inner workings of European politics and the defense of democracy across the Atlantic.

This made the experience all the more enriching for me, allowing me to learn so much from my deliberators, who were actively shaping the future of European democracy. Asking follow-up questions and calmly moving us from one section to the next, I did my best to play my usual role of the even-keeled facilitator, but I was awestruck by the sheer amount of knowledge, experience, and capacity to change the world in one room.

Insights from the delegation provided important reminders on things showing up in my own life, trivial and consequential. On the seemingly most mundane side, the leaders’ utter joy and fascination at seeing the pomp and circumstance surrounding Davidson freshman move-in that day let me appreciate the smaller things I don’t always recognize as a Davidsonian and American accustomed to certain things.

And on the promotion and defense of democracy, one of the defining issues of our time, the variety of different perspectives and solutions with which they approached the issue gave me hope that democracy does not require coalescence around a single correct solution, but rather a commitment to wrestle openly and honestly with its challenges.

It also reminded me that deliberation is not just an exercise for curious Davidson students, staff, and community members. It is equally, if not even more important, for leaders like these participants in the International Visitor Leadership Program who are the future (and, in many cases, the present) of European democracy to both embrace their differences and strive to find common ground in deliberative settings in ways that can solve the problems dominating our headlines.

DCI’s NC Collaborations Highlighted at National Conference Hosted at UC San Diego

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Panelists sitting in front of a screen on a stage

One of the most innovative and important efforts of the DCI in recent years has been its collaborations with other institutions in North Carolina on promoting civil discourse in higher education. In 2024, for example, we collaborated with UNC Charlotte, UNC Chapel Hill, Elon University, and NC Campus Engagement to co-host the first-ever NC Campus Discourse Leaders Conference that brought together staff and faculty from over 25 institutions across North Carolina. This year, we are co-organizing with Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill another cross-institution initiative, the American Values Deliberative Forum Series, in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

This work has been noticed at the national level, as DCI’s Faculty Director Graham Bullock was recently invited to join a panel of our North Carolina collaborators at a national conference hosted by the University of California, San Diego, the National Conflict Resolution Center, and the Applied Research Center for Civility. The other panelists included Kevin Marinelli from UNC Chapel Hill, Leslie Garvin from NC Campus Engagement, and Donavan Bethea from from North Carolina A&T State University, and we had a lively discussion about our efforts to connect across our institutions. We utilized a range of basketball metaphors to highlight both the opportunities and challenges of doing this work, and had some good laughs along the way.

The other sessions of the conference were equally important and engaging; they included panelists from some of the organizations doing this work at the national level, including the Constructive Dialogue Institute, BridgeUSA, Narrative 4, and the Sustained Dialogue Institute, and on other campuses, including the University of Chicago, Colorado State University, Seattle University, UCLA, and Seattle University. The conference began with welcoming and keynote remarks from Elizabeth Simmons, UC San Diego’s Executive Vice Chancellor, Steven Dinkin, President of the National Conflict Resolution Center, and Jennifer Mnookin, Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin. See the short video below with highlights from the conference.

The conference introduced a major new report by researchers Karina Shklyan and Kelly Nielsen from UC San Diego’s Center for Research and Evaluation that examined 45 civil discourse programs at higher education institutions across the country. The DCI is one of four programs spotlighted in the report and is recognized for its “all-of-campus approach” that “not only broadens participation but also deepens institutional commitment to fostering a campus-wide culture of dialogue civic engagement.” Dr. Shklyan also mentioned the DCI in her remarks at the conference when a poll of the audience revealed a strong preference for “all of the above” approaches to campus civil discourse that includes a cohort model, course-based model, embedded courses, campus-wide efforts, and faculty fellows. She noted the DCI as an exemplar of this “wrap-around” model and encouraged participants to reach out to us to learn more. See her full remarks and the proceeding panel discussion in the video below.

The conference concluded with breakout sessions for participants to learn about specific approaches to civil discourse in higher education. Overall, the event provided lots of opportunities for the nearly 200 participants to share insights from their work with one another, as they explored how to best create opportunities for robust and respectful deliberation on college campuses across the country.

Past Events

Past Events

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Civic Discourse in the Wake of Political Violence: A DCI Fellows Campus Conversation

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Thursday, November 20 | 7:00 p.m. | 900 Room

Ice cream sundaes will be served! Join us and bring some friends!

In a time marked by a troubling rise in political violence, how can we, as a campus community, model the kind of civic discourse our society so urgently needs? This campus conversation invites students, faculty, and staff to reflect together on how we can foster a culture of free expression, respectful dialogue, and robust deliberation at Davidson. This event seeks to follow-up on the September joint editorial in The Davidsonian by the presidents of the College Democrats, College Republicans, and College Libertarians that included a multi-part pledge to promote a culture of free expression that rejects political violence. Several Deliberative Citizenship Initiative Fellows have been developing a set of aspirational commitments designed to build on that pledge by articulating specific, community-driven principles to help us navigate the tensions inherent in public discourse today. 

After the Fellows present their initial ideas, attendees will break into small groups to explore how these aspirations might play out in specific campus scenarios. They’ll also be invited to offer their own ideas on how we might develop a shared vision for an inclusive and deliberative culture of civic discourse at Davidson. The goal is not to generate new rules or regulations, but to cultivate a meaningful and authentic grassroots framework for how we engage with one another across differences, an approach that could serve as a model for other campuses across the country.