Deliberative Citizenship Initiative

Building Democracy One Conversation at a Time

DCI

Communication is Key

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By Camryn Ellis, DCI Fellow

I applied to become a fellow for the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative at Davidson College because it seemed to be an interesting and productive program. It being a space that encourages people to engage in deliberation on social issues that are hard to talk about and are usually only met with controversy was what caught my attention. Usually when I discuss political and social issues, I find that people are not really interested in changing their perspective. It’s always them ranting about all the reasons their beliefs are right and when I question them, the critique is taken personally and then it’s just a whole mess.

I’m not going to lie though, I, too, sometimes don’t always take critiques of my beliefs too well, either. I have recently realized that I sometimes think I’m more open to different ways of thinking than I actually am. I was interested in becoming a DCI Fellow because I want to challenge myself to learn how to listen better to people who feel differently than I do and to have and facilitate conversations that may be filled with controversy.

The DCI displayed itself to be a place where I could engage with people who have different perspectives and come together to productively and respectively deliberate on important social issues. I was excited to see the diversity of lived experiences I hoped to encounter. But after the first day, I knew that racial diversity would not really be in the cards for us this semester given that no one else in the cohort of fellows (except me) was Black.

This was disappointing and honestly not what I was expecting. Then when we received the topics that the cohort had suggested and ranked highest and we would be deliberating on, I was even more confused and unsure about how I felt about this program. While I think they are important social issues to discuss, the topics of Davidson’s history of enslavement and police brutality felt very overwhelming to me, especially since I would be the only Black person who would be participating in these cohort discussions.

I decided to talk to my DCI co-facilitator about this issue and she was so understanding and validating of my experience. She always reached out to see how I was feeling throughout the semester, especially when the week’s social issue was heavily influenced by racism. We were able to work out a solution where I would not serve as a facilitator during those weeks but would play a more active role in other weeks. As our DCI facilitator training emphasized, we may not always be able or ready to facilitate conversations on any and every topic, and that is okay.

In any case, as the weeks went by, the relationship between my co-facilitator and I made me feel that I was not so alone. And from our time together as DCI co-facilitators, we not only worked together, but also became friends.

From my experience, I have learned how important it is to truly listen to others, regardless of whether or not you share similar social identities and perspectives. Whether one is listening to a friend in need or is having a discussion about the current social and political realities of America, good communication is key. I have learned that the first step to good communication isn’t to make sure you are the loudest one in the room or that you use a great deal of jargon, but to instead listen to others, validate their lived experiences, and try to emphasize the ways that you can relate to one another, rather than highlighting all the ways that you don’t.

Three Key Skills: Organizing, Hosting, Facilitating

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Several weeks ago we wrote about the importance of facilitation for productive deliberations. Indeed, the literature and practice of deliberation emphasize the catalytic roles that facilitators often play in guiding communication towards its most effective ends. Thus, as the introductory and foundational activity for our new DCI Fellows, it seemed critical to center our orientation around the skills and techniques required of effective deliberative facilitators: organizing, hosting, and facilitating.

On September 5th and 12th we organized two virtual orientation sessions for our twelve DCI Fellows and two student Co-Conveners. While we certainly would have preferred gathering in person to get to know this outstanding cohort of individuals, we utilized the circumstances to demonstrate the importance of thoughtfully organizing a deliberation in both virtual and in-person spaces. The Fellows discussed such organizing techniques as selecting topics that are “ripe” for a group, using creative strategies to make a deliberation engaging, orienting participants towards taking action – broadly defined – on a topic, and taking the important steps required to actually get people “in the room” for a deliberation.

The second area of emphasis was hosting a deliberation. Fellows learned about the different roles of co-conveners, facilitators, and participants, as well as the necessity of articulating guiding principles and ground rules for a deliberation. Several participants connected with the idea that the way in which a facilitator hosts a deliberation has a profound impact on the conversation itself. As one Fellow stated, “It was helpful to discuss the process of bringing together people for deliberation and learning more about the roles of facilitators. It was useful to know that deliberations are not supposed to run through facilitators but rather through the deliberators. To this point, I think I will appreciate the role of facilitator and the opportunity to listen.”

The final focus was on the actual skills and techniques available to facilitators in a deliberation. After group discussions on deliberative moves such as reflecting, guiding, connecting, and intervening, Fellows witnessed these facilitation techniques in action by taking on the participant roles in two deliberative activities.  The first used the Living Room Conversations’ model and its conversation guide, “Politics: Can We Talk,” while the second utilized the National Issues Forum model to discuss the costs and quality of healthcare in America.

Fellows cited these conversations as particularly informative in understanding what makes a facilitated deliberation unique from other modes of discourse. As one Fellow put it, “During our deliberations, I was struck by how unusual the conversation felt. This is not to say that I have never been part of deliberative discussions, but the discussion was far from a debate….The deliberations had intentional flow to them; everyone had the opportunity to speak. I not only felt listened to but was also given ample opportunity to listen.”

DCI Fellows will continue learning and honing their deliberative and facilitating skills throughout the year.  They will begin utilizing these skills by facilitating Deliberative “D” Teams in the coming weeks. The Fellows will also begin sharing their experiences with deliberation on the blog, beginning with Davidson junior Tyler McLaren next week!

A Nationally-Oriented and Locally Grounded Approach to Deliberative Engagement

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Political polarization, legislative stalemates, non-constructive cross talk, divisive rhetoric – the list of motivators behind public discourse and civic engagement initiatives across the country goes on and on. While many contemporary initiatives were inspired by the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the fault lines it intensified across our nation, universities, nonprofits, and foundations have long been invested in the work of bridging political and civic divides through discourse and deliberation.

One such organization is the Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship in Lexington, Kentucky, a nonprofit where I spent the past three and a half years as Director of Academic Programs and Executive Director. Founded in 2007, the Center’s approach to providing constructive opportunities for engagement focuses on equipping high school and college students with leadership and interpersonal skills inspired by a political ideal of statesmanship – civil discourse, deliberation, collaboration, and compromise.

These ideas often elicit questions that reveal individuals’ discomfort with or distrust of this kind of initiative – “How can I be civil to someone whose views I find abhorrent or hateful? Doesn’t working with ‘the other side’ or attempting to compromise undermine my values and convictions? What’s the point in talking to someone with whom I disagree about an issue when we’ll never see eye-to-eye and action is required now?” Through its national Student Congresses and public programming, the Center seeks to offer an alternative to the either-or nature of these questions and suggest a different path of political engagement.

The College Student Congress brings together fifty motivated, diverse college juniors representing each state in the U.S. for a two-week program in Kentucky and Washington, D.C. The goal? Work in groups to develop bipartisan public policy memos for four national issues in a week’s time and present those memos to stakeholders in the nation’s capital. While this may sound like a daunting and seemingly impossible exercise, innovative, well-researched, and practical policy solutions emerge every single year.

The crucible of the College Student Congress creates an environment where participants are required to quickly build trust-based relationships, verbalize and evaluate their opinions, and come together to identify areas of mutual agreement and values overlap. This process forges deep friendships and respect among students who are often intentionally socially interacting with “the other side” for the first time.  Students learn to separate someone’s innate humanity and personality from their preferred political policies – seeing one another as roommates with the same taste in music, teammates who value the concept of fairness, and leaders who share a desire to impact their communities.

Similarly, the High School Student Congress unites fifty high school students from across the region and country to evaluate national issues from a local and state perspective. Rather than developing public policy, the goal of the high school program is to inspire civic and political engagement at the local level by highlighting the relevance and relationships of national headlines to community issues.

Many of these high school students have spent the majority of their lives in one community or region and thus view national issues through the specific lenses of their parents’ perspectives or surrounding community culture. Through introduction to peers from other parts of the country with completely different lenses and lived experiences, students are better able to understand the multitude of perspectives and factors that contribute to our divisions on national issues. Often, they leave with new ideas for advocating change in their communities by learning what’s happening in the communities of their peers.

The Center’s model and the Student Congresses are not perfect, nor are the conversations and policy development that occur always easy. In fact, they are more often difficult and contentious. But year after year, students affirm the value of interacting with and deliberating with others. The hard work of listening with humility and respect, advocating for and respecting others’ advocacy for strongly-held values, and collaborating across differences towards an actionable goal is deeply rewarding at a personal and professional level. Students emerge equipped with a new set of skills, a network of diverse peers, and a blueprint for how politics and public policy formation can occur if individuals are willing to step forward and work together.

I’m looking forward to working with the DCI’s co-conveners, fellows, and participants to developing Davidson’s own distinctive approach to deliberative discourse that builds and expands on the experiences of organizations like the Henry Clay Center.

Facilitation – A Key Ingredient to Productive Deliberation

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Creating spaces for constructive conversations about contentious topics seems like an overwhelming task.  Where should initiatives like the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative begin?  Deliberation scholars and practitioners generally agree that one of the most important ingredients for productive public discourse is strong facilitation by someone who is trained in bringing people together and being fair to all participants at the table.

For example, Laurie Mulvey, Executive Director of Penn State’s World in Conversation program, which has hosted more than 30,000 dialogues, asserts that just as we need referees when we play a game, “in dialogue we need conversation referees to be able to make the calls for us to help us through the process.”[i] And the literature on deliberation emphasizes the role that facilitators can play in introducing unmentioned topics, challenging consensus, and structuring communication in a way that empowers disadvantaged participants.”[ii]

For these reasons, the DCI started with an intensive four-session deliberation facilitation training program this past spring.  Each session lasted two hours and were facilitated by practitioners and professors familiar with different models of public discourse.  The training program revealed several important insights about creating opportunities for discourse among those disagree on difficult issues:

  • It’s a mindset: Both participants and facilitators need to adopt a set of dispositions that make productive deliberation possible. These include commitments to modeling egalitarianism, demonstrating openmindedness, and providing either experiential or factual evidence to support one’s claims.  To explore these mindsets, participants were asked to complete the OpenMinds modules, which discuss the value of engaging with those we disagree, the importance of intellectual humility, and the effects of the irrational mind and our “moral matrices.”  Using this framework, facilitators can help participants embrace a “deliberative mindset” that will enable them to work together to better understand a problem and generate transcendent solutions to it.
  • It’s a process: Our first two training sessions were led by an experienced facilitator from the Lee Institute, Chryrstal Joy, who emphasized the multifaceted nature of the facilitation process. It requires thoughtful preparation beforehand that clearly identifies roles, clarifies goals, and develops mutually accepted ground rules.  It also demands proactive moderation that guides, connects, motivates, questions, intervenes, and keeps participants on track during the deliberation itself.  We discussed the nuances of each of these steps, each of which have their challenges.  But by following a clear process, it becomes easier to practice the “passionate impartiality” that is necessary to bring everyone into the conversation.
  • It’s a model: Dialogue and deliberation initiatives have proliferated dramatically in the past three decades, and with them the number of models being used to facilitate public discourse have increased as well. In our third and fourth sessions, we learned and practiced two particular approaches that have been used in a wide range of contexts.  The first was the National Issues Forum model, which provides Issue Briefs for participants to read in advance and focuses on three distinct responses to the issue in focus.  The second was the Living Room Conversations model, which is more informal and involves three rounds of discussion – getting to know each other, exploring a topic, and reflecting on the conversation.

Through these sessions, we learned several important insights about deliberation facilitation.  By encouraging a deliberative mindset, following a clear process, and using a particular model, facilitators can increase the likelihood that a conversation will be engaging, productive, and rewarding.  At the same time, we also realized there is no perfect process or model or mindset, and flexibility and adaptability are important attributes for facilitators and deliberators alike.  Along these lines, we came to recognize that facilitation training is never fully complete, but is a lifelong process that occurs through practice, reading, and exposure to new approaches.

The 25 Davidson staff members, tenured and visiting faculty, and first year, sophomore, junior, and senior students who completed the DCI’s inaugural training program have completed a key first step in this journey.  They are now ready to help guide conversations on difficult topics, whether they are part of a Deliberative Forum or just between friends or family.  If you are interested in learning these skills yourself, sign up for updates below about upcoming DCI training opportunities.

Next week we’ll hear from Davidson’s new DCI Coordinator, Clare Magee, about her experience bringing together students with diverse perspectives when she served as the Executive Director of the Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship.  Stay tuned…!

Notes

[i] Democracy Works, “A Conversation about Conversation,” May 21, 2018, https://www.democracyworkspodcast.com/a-conversation-about-conversation/.

[ii] Archon Fung, “Deliberation’s Darker Side: Six Questions for Iris Marion Young and Jane Mansbridge,” National Civic Review, December 25, 2004; Todd Trenel and Seeta Peña Matthias, “Facilitation and Inclusive Deliberation,” in Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice (Chicago, IL: CSLI Publications/University of Chicago Press, 2009), https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.4040.0883.

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