Special Events

DCI Fellows Host Discussions after Senators Klobuchar and Tillis Conversation

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

Following the inaugural Institute for Public Good October 13 event featuring a conversation between Senators Amy Klobachar, Thom Tillis, and Davidson College President Doug Hicks, Deliberative Citizenship Fellows hosted a discussion for those in attendance at the talk to debrief and continue pondering the nature of the “public good.” In their remarks, both President Hicks and Chris Marsicano, the Director of the Institute for Public Good, encouraged audience members to join the discussion after the event.

Fellows greeted and welcomed students to discuss the event over snacks in a classroom outside of the Duke Family Performance Hall, where the conversation took place, so that any interested attendees would have the opportunity to reflect and develop their own plans for promoting the public good in their own communities.

Two tables of deliberators with two facilitators standing

In a packed meeting room with extra chairs just outside the performance hall where some facilitators had to stand as they guided the discussions, a combination of reflections on the senators’ discussion and attempts to agree on their own definitions of the public good kept the students abuzz throughout their extended conversation.

The guiding questions for the discussion, provided by DCI Co-Convener Casey Scheiner and introduced to the participants by DCI Faculty Director Graham Bullock, focused the students on engaging with the Senators’ ideas and identifying their own perceived challenges to the public good and bipartisan action from government. Fueled by an assortment of desserts and beverages, they also discussed the ways government and citizens alike may all come together to promote the public good across a diverse array of sectors throughout society. Such questions enabled participants to focus their participation on defining and applying the public good to contexts that were relevant to their own lives so that they could take what they learned from their conversation with them into their own civic engagements in the future.

The enthusiasm of the students, passionately participating in a discussion of their own after listening to the Senators’ discussion shows the impact the work of the DCI has in providing an outlet for Davidson’s community to tackle our most pressing issues. It also shows how the DCI can complement the work of other organizations, like the Institute of Public Good (which the DCI is now a part), by creating structured yet informal contexts for participants at events they host to deliberate about ideas presented and apply them to Davidson’s own community.

See what the participants had to say for themselves after attending the event:

“[Our group] applied a lot of the things [the senators] talked about to real-world examples and talked about what we thought was a civil good […] and our duties as citizens. There was a wide array of opinions in our group; that was really interesting to get to hear people who had different opinions from myself.

“Every time we do a deliberation, I feel like I end up being able to [better] see the other side, which makes things become more complicated, which is a good thing because it helps all of us become more intentional but it’s also confusing because my opinions keep changing.”

Anna Kate Howell ’29

“I found [the discussion] very helpful to be able to process the information during the senators’ event; […] it was helpful to be able to reflect and to be asked questions that helped me put what they talked about in a proper context.”

“The facilitators were really helpful […] having guiding questions to push us to bring the conversation to different directions was super helpful, […] especially to see different perspectives and how you can apply [them] […] I now have a more nuanced answer for [what the Public Good means].”

Maggie Frampton ’29

deliberators around tables with two facilitators standing

A Community Conversation on “Talking about Race”

On September 8, 2025, the Davidson College Deliberative Citizenship Initiative (DCI) and the Theatre Department co-sponsored a Community Conversation on “Talking about Race: What Makes It Possible and Productive?” in the Barber Theatre’s lobby. The conversation was held a week after the production of Dissonance on Monday, September 1 in the Barber Theatre by actor-playwrights Marci J. Duncan and Kerry Sandell. The play, which is directed by Davidson College Assistant Professor of Theatre James Webb, explores what happens when a Black woman and a White woman who have been friends for 20 years have their first open, honest conversation about race, provides a helpful backdrop for this conversation.

Some of the participants in the Community Conversation had seen the play while others had not, but everyone there was committed to exploring the question of what makes conversations about race possible and productive. The conversation was designed by DCI Senior Fellow Alyssa Henke ’26 as part of her DCI fellows deliberation project, and one of Alyssa’s goals was to generate insights and suggestions for future efforts to host conversations about race, whether at Davidson College or elsewhere.

Approximately 20 Davidson students and faculty attended the event and participated in small group discussions facilitated by several DCI Fellows. Since the event, Alyssa has compiled the notes taken by the DCI Fellows from their group’s discussions in the document below. She also developed a two-page infographic (also available below) that summarizes some of the main tips that came up in these conversations, from how to prepare for these conversations to what to pay attention to during them. The infographic also provides suggestions for conversations with both close friends and new connections.

Race is one of the most challenging topics to discuss with family, friends, colleagues, and our fellow citizens. And yet it is also one of the most important topics to engage with, given our many divides that relate to the history of slavery, Jim Crow, and efforts to advance racial equity and justice. The hope is that these tips will be helpful as we have opportunities to have conversations about race, whether they are in the context of personal relationships, local histories, or national issues.

One such opportunity is Davidson College’s upcoming dedication of its “With these Hands” memorial to the enslaved and exploited on Thursday, October 22, 2025. The memorial is designed to recognize the contributions of African Americans to the College since its founding in 1837 either as enslaved people before the Civil War or exploited people during the Jim Crow era afterwards. It will likely provoke questions and conversations about Davidson’s history, legacy, and future with regard to race; the tips below can enable those conversations to deepen our understanding of different perspectives on these questions and strengthen our relationships and sense of connection in the process.

Webinar on the American Values Deliberative Forum Series

On September 2, the DCI hosted a webinar introducing The 250^th Anniversary American Values Deliberative Forum Series and how institutions and individuals can get involved. The series is designed to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and co-hosted by Davidson College, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the series will include Expert Roundtables and Community Conversations over the course of the 2025-26 academic year.

These Roundtables will include scholars with a diverse range of perspectives and academic backgrounds who will deliberate about the role of different values in American history and policy debates. The first Roundtable, for example, will be held on September 30 and will explore the tensions and complementarities between our commitments to national unity and political equality, both generally and in the specific context of immigration and citizenship.

The week following each Roundtable, Davidson, Duke, and UNC-Chapel Hill will be hosting Community Conversations that will enable members of their communities to engage with the same questions that the experts discussed. Each institution will design their conversations so that they best match particular contexts. The conversations organized at Davidson, for example, will follow the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative’s D Team model, which are two-hour small group discussions guided by a trained facilitator, but many other models will work as well.

We welcome other institutions and organizations – as well as individual citizens – to organize similar conversations for their communities that utilize the Expert Roundtables as a catalyst for deeper engagement with the values that have animated our history and continue to permeate our political debates. Hosting such conversations is a great way to help bridge the political divides in our country, improve our ability to deliberate with one another as citizens (broadly defined), and start celebrating the upcoming 250^th birthday of the United States.

To that end, in the webinar DCI Faculty Director and Associate Professor of Political Science Graham Bullock provided more information about the series itself as well as some ideas for how you might organize something for your community. The DCI has developed a series of Deliberation Guides and Pathways Guides that it will be using for the Community Conversations it will be hosting, and Dr. Bullock shared how you might adapt these guides to your purposes. He also outlined a range of different deliberative formats and designs you might use so that you can select the one that makes the most sense for your specific situation, whether it is a small group of friends gathered for dinner or a large forum with 50-100 people (or more!).

You can check out a recording of the webinar below:

The slides from the webinar are included below as well:

American-Values-Series-Webinar-Slides

Campus Conversation on the Honor Code

Honor and academic integrity were the focus of a campus conversation co-hosted by the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative (DCI), Honor Council, Student Government Association (SGA), and the Office of the Vice President of Student Life. Over 50 students, faculty, and staff gathered to deliberate about how a more robust culture of academic integrity can be created at Davidson. Held on Thursday, March 27 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM in the Lilly Gallery, the event complemented the Celebration of Honor held earlier in the month.

As participants got their plates of food provided by Much Ado Catering, the forum began with a presentation about the honor code from the Chair and Vice Chair of the Honor Council. Participants were quickly invited to dive into roundtable discussions guided by the DCI’s fellows and a deliberation guide written by the event’s student organizers, DCI Senior Fellow and Co-Convener LJ Phillips ’25 and DCI Fellows Isabella Neri ’27 and Cavan Klein ’27 (shown left).

You can check out the deliberation guide below, which provides some useful background about the nature of academic integrity, Davidson’s Honor Code, current perceptions of campus academic culture, and ideas for improving that culture in the future.

Honor-Code-Deliberation-Guide

The organizers of the event – LJ Phillips ’25, Isabella Neri ’27, Cavan Klein ’27, and DCI Faculty Director Graham Bullock – have collated, analyzed, and discussed the input that participants provided via the survey we distributed after the event. They endeavored to capture the participants’ thoughts and suggestions in the document below, “Campus Conversation Report: Resources for Continued Engagement on the Honor Code.”

Like the DCI’s pathways guides that the DCI distributes after each of its deliberative forums, the report includes ideas for moving forward on the topic of the event. Options for learning more and getting more connected and involved with regard to the honor code are included for your consideration.

This document has been shared with the Honor Council, Student Government Association, the Dean of the Faculty’s Office, the President’s Office, and the Dean of Student’s Office as they consider different ways to build a more robust culture of academic integrity at Davidson. It has also been shared with attendees of the honor code forum. Our hope is that it stimulates further discussions and well-considered actions that address the concerns and questions that have been raised about academic integrity within the Davidson community.

Check out the report below!

Campus-Conversation-Report_The-Honor-Code

DCI x WALT Collaboration!

Earlier this spring, a representative from Davidson’s student radio station, WALT, reached out to the DCI about hosting an hour-long show on the station. It could highlight the work of the DCI, discuss the challenges and opportunities of deliberation — whatever we thought might be interesting to WALT audiences. If it went well and people were interested, it could serve as a pilot for a regular show in the coming academic year. Several DCI Fellows were interested in trying it out, and so they quickly pulled together a plan at the end of the semester — actually, for a show that was broadcast on the last day of the semester, and it went really well. Especially for the first time the DCI hit the radiowaves!

DCI Fellows Grace Zagoria ’27 and Zak Abdulahi ’27 served as hosts of the show. They talked about their own experiences facilitating conversations as part of the DCI’s Forums and D Teams, and they interviewed several other fellows about their experiences. Fatima Mukasa ’28 talked about how much she enjoyed serving as a fellow as a first-year student and as an international student from Uganda. And Valeriia Kruzhkova ’26, a junior from Ukraine, also talked about her experience as both a fellow and senior fellow with the DCI.

The hosts also interspersed some of their favorite music throughout the show, along with some fun banter among themselves along the way. Check out the full episode below, and let us know if you think we should do a regular show at dci@davidson.edu: