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.
