Fellow Posts

By Dalton Langdon, DCI Fellow

In the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative (DCI), we have focused our efforts all year on creating environments where everyone has the liberty to share their opinion, so long as we uphold the conversation agreements set to each other at the beginning of every forum. We have done this in the spirit of healthy conversation and to show participants it is possible to have productive discussions with individuals of differing opinions.

This sounds good in theory, and I believe we have often achieved this goal. Nevertheless, it is not at all easy, especially when either deliberators or facilitators have strong feelings about the issue in question. It is even more difficult when people come from radically different traditions and have worldviews that are critical of other people’s identities. Is it really possible, for example, to productively deliberate with someone who has deep problems with a part of you that is core to your identity?

In my experience, this issue often arises in discussions about gender and sexuality, which was the focus of our most recent D Team meeting. The topic of gender and sexuality is contentious for many yet so integral to how many of us conceive of our identities. For those of us who have been scorned because of our gender or sexuality, participating in a discussion about either can be particularly challenging. As a queer individual, on many occasions I have felt forced by convention, society, and my own upbringing to suppress and contain myself, thus causing a separation between my sense of who I am and who I present myself to the world. Hearing echoes of those conventions in conversations about gender and sexuality can feel like re-experiencing those painful occasions. This can happen especially when the conversation begins to approach the topic from a religious standpoint, which often highlights just how deeply integrated Christianity is in the morality of U.S. citizens. I’ve found that some people have difficulty compartmentalizing their religious beliefs when it comes to discussing policies related to gender and sexuality. Others don’t feel the need to do so at all, but for me, such compartmentalization is critical.

I strongly believe that we should uphold the concept of separation of church and state, and that we should not dictate decisions that affect others based mostly on personally held religious beliefs, especially when those affected by our biases may not hold those beliefs. I am a firm advocate that everyone has the right to believe in whatever higher power they want, but I cannot in good conscious back notions or policies that impose those beliefs on others. And for this reason, I don’t think gender and sexuality identity should be up for debate at all. These identities may seem like an abstract concept and may be hard to talk about, but for many of us, and particularly those of us whose identities have been marginalized, they are quite real and important.

But as hard as it is to do so, I also recognize that people’s religious identity may be as deeply held and important to some people as gender and sexuality identities are to others, including myself. They see the normalization of gender identity and fluidity of sexuality as threatening to their identities, just as perhaps I view their religious views as threatening to my identity. While I don’t see them as equivalent, part of the point of dialogue and deliberation is to engage with ideas and people you don’t agree with and first try to understand where they are coming from.

Like I said, none of this is easy, and it is probably impossible for any of us to do all the time. It is particularly challenging for facilitators to remain “passionately impartial” when they care deeply about the issue in question. But we should all try to openly engage with our differences at least some of the time, if we have any hope of bridging our divides. The DCI has made its mark on our community by encouraging tolerance and sound reasoning skills when it comes to deliberation surrounding sensitive areas such as trans rights. I would encourage us all to remember the DCI as we go out and discuss topics on identity with your family and friends. Remember to think critically about your own opinion, and that there is always a story behind the opinions you encounter. Try to understand why those stories mean so much to us and how we can find connections between them. Then we might be able to foster real understanding and real progress on these deeply contentious and important issues.

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 Kyle Broxton, DCI Fellow

On Tuesday, March 30, the Davidson College Deliberative Citizenship Initiative, in partnership with the Center for Civic Engagement and North Mecklenburg Economic Mobility Collaborative, hosted an expert panel and deliberative forum on pressing issues related to housing in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region. Members from Davidson College and the broader community were invited to first hear from a panel of five stakeholders and experts on a variety of challenges to housing, including affordability, gentrification, and segregation. Following the panel, participants engaged in small-group deliberations during which they shared their own ideas about addressing the housing challenges facing the community.

The panelists included the Town of Davidson’s Housing and Equity Director, Eugene Bradley, CEO of A Roof Above, Liz Clasen-Kelly, Associate Professor of Geography at UNC Charlotte, Elizabeth Delmelle, Affordable Housing and Community Development Professional, Willie Jones, and Senior Analyst in Regulatory Studies and Research Editor at John Lock Foundation, Jon Sanders. Each of these panelists brought a unique perspective to best contextualize the issues related to housing throughout the first hour of the event.

The expert panel was immediately followed by a deliberative forum in which participants were divided up into small groups and tasked to deliberate on the issue themselves. Having been given some background by the expert panel on a wide array of issues that relate to housing, the groups were prepared to engage in deliberations of their own. Similar to the panel of stakeholders and experts from the first hour, my group was composed of participants with a diverse range of perspectives on the issue. They each brought meaningful insights to the conversation.

My group adopted an open-minded approach in identifying the needs and goals of housing. While favorable to the idea of increasing the supply of housing, we all remained aware of the costs that result from achieving this supply. Furthermore, we acknowledged the drawbacks that would ultimately manifest with each goal that was posited. By the time we were considering solutions to accomplish the goals of housing we had discussed, my sense was that a negative and pessimistic view of the topic had been adopted by most of the participants of my group.

At that point, one of the participants asked a question that I believe made for an excellent way to close out the latter half of the event. Instead of suggesting a solution to address the housing challenges, the participant simply asked if there were any housing victories the group had seen in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region in recent years. Initially, the other participants denied any victories existed. However, after a brief pause, one participant corrected herself, recalling an instance when her community convinced a developer to construct affordable living spaces where more luxurious housing was originally planned. Following her, another participant expressed her appreciation for the recent work of one of the panelists, Willie Jones. Another noted the benefits that would result from bringing more voices to the development phase of housing through development dividends. In that moment, I recognized the significant effect that the question had on our small group.

Simply asking the group what housing victories they had seen in recent years seemed to motivate the participants to adopt a slightly more positive and optimistic view of the topic. By noting what has worked in the past, the participants were far more motivated to suggest what we should do for the future. While the drawbacks and challenges related to housing were still acknowledged by the group, we closed out feeling more motivated than we were before the forum.

This experience revealed to me the value of striking a balance between realism and idealism in deliberative contexts. Too much of the former can be discouraging and depressing, while too much of the latter can be ungrounded and misleading. In my group’s context, having looked at what has succeeded to better gauge what can succeed (considering the many challenges we had already identified), I believe we struck a healthy balance between realism and idealism by the end of our deliberation. Ultimately, not only did our group take on a more hopeful view of that evening’s topic, but of deliberative democracy itself.

By Sandro Chumashvili, DCI Fellow

Today I will be sharing the experience of an international student who is also a deliberation facilitator. Coming from a totally different country, Georgia, with different societal norms and, most importantly – issues, it was essential for me to establish an emotional connection with the struggles that people face here in order to feel sincere empathy and understanding during the deliberations. This step was crucial for my everyday social life, but today I will only focus on achieving empathy for deliberations.

Humans tend to subconsciously prioritize the problems that they face. When done at a group level, this nudges people towards a better collective understanding and unites them around a common issue. After coming to the US, I have heard about many issues that people face here but would never see back home. For example, racism. Georgia is a primarily white country, and the topic of racism never arose due to the general lack of racial  diversity.

Another vast difference is where the issues originate from. I came from the country which has 20% of its territory occupied by Russia and from the country against which Russia has started war most times, also known as Putin’s most hated country. This shows that Georgia’s significant problems emanate from external threats, while the US, having the strongest military in history, is mainly troubled by internal issues. This all forced me to take another look at my opinions that seemed set for me, such as those regarding military budgets. Georgian military budget is miserable considering the external threats, while the US overpays for many services and armaments. So what has been my approach to sympathize with issues I have never experienced myself without losing my own identity?

Diverging from logos to pathos. 

As an economics major, I love analyzing numbers and drawing a conclusion as a result of statistical analysis. Still, I have tried to employ my “emotional intelligence” when it comes to person-to-person interactions and be as compassionate and understanding of personal stories as possible. This has allowed me to become more emotionally open to others’ experiences and develop empathy towards situations that sometimes sounded surreal to me due to my background.

Rejecting assumptions. 

I believe this point is vital in all kinds of relations and deliberations, not only when one is becoming accustomed to a new society. Past experiences shape our present actions and views; therefore, just discussing the latter without taking the former under consideration is problematic and takes away the opportunity to understand one’s companion fully. One should not judge another’s path unless they have walked it in the same shoes. This orientation has not only allowed me to understand where others are coming from but has dramatically sharpened my active listening skill.

Historical understanding. 

Every insightful discussion, and especially every deliberation, needs a deep understanding of the past links that have led to a particular contemporary policy, opinion, or movement. In this case, unlike in my first point, logos and pathos are closely intertwined and cannot be separated. Understanding historical background has been crucial for me in developing empathy since it goes further than emotions and plays an important role cognitively as well. This creates an important synthesis of compassion on both rational and emotional levels.

As an international facilitator, these points have allowed me to widen my worldview and be able not only to bring something new to the table but understand what is already present. I firmly believe that deliberation without empathy is like a clock without ticks – useless. Understanding people from two different societies is essential to the critical task of being compassionate to deliberators with different experiences and backgrounds.

By Andrew Gardner, DCI Fellow

On February 11th, the DCI had the privilege of hosting an expert panel and deliberation on the topic of Supreme Court reform, an issue that has become especially salient in the last few years. We had the chance to hear from some of the leading scholars on this topic, each presenting a unique and thought-provoking perspective on the possibility of court reform. Ryan Doerfler proposed ways to disempower the court by limiting its jurisdiction and requiring supermajorities to pass critical decisions. Kent Greenfield presented his idea of a separate Constitutional Court to address some of the most controversial questions of constitutional law. Finally, James Lindgren made the case for term limits for Supreme Court justices.

While the panelists may have disagreed about their proposed solutions, there seemed to be consensus in identifying the problem: the modern Supreme Court has become too politicized and partisan. Each proposed reform tackled the issue of judicial partisanship in its own way. Dr. Doerfler and Dr. Greenfield seek to limit the prerogative of the court in hopes of removing it from the most vitriolic of partisan battlegrounds. Dr. Lindgren’s plan aims to routinize the nomination process by imposing regular term limits while also ensuring justices do not serve beyond their capacity for either personal or political reasons.

While it was fascinating to hear these experts speak on such an important and interesting topic, my favorite part of the evening came after the panel had concluded, when we broke into small groups to discuss what we had just heard. It was the first time the DCI has hosted a deliberation with this panel-discussion model, and I was encouraged by the results. Hearing experts weigh in on the topic before beginning our deliberation gave everybody a foundation from which they could approach what is undeniably a difficult question and gave me, as a facilitator, plenty of opportunities for specific questions.

It was rewarding as a facilitator to see my group struggle through some of the tough questions posed by the prospect of Supreme Court reform. We seemed to agree that the politicization of the Court was a problem, but like the panelists we had difficulty finding a solution we could all agree on. By the end, the group seemed to be mostly unanimous in supporting the idea of term limits, but even then, we acknowledged the limitations of such a proposal in its ability to mitigate partisanship.

The greatest challenge we faced, and one in which I’m sure the experts share, is the inextricable tie between politics and law. Removing the Supreme Court from politics, we felt, is to remove it from its innate purpose. What role does the Court serve if it is disallowed from weighing in on the issues which people cannot find political consensus? Reducing the greatest legal institution in the land to an arbiter of dry, inconsequential legal questions seems antithetical to its place in American politics. Thus, we felt the issue was not removing the Court from politics, but partisanship from the Court.

Sadly, an hour was insufficient time for a small group of non-experts to resolve a decades-long enigma, but I was nevertheless encouraged by the quality of our discourse and am certain that everybody, myself included, came away from our conversation with new perspective and insights.