Facilitating Political Discourse on Campus Over the past months, students have led the way in responding to the urgent crises the United States now faces. Students are volunteering at food banks, designing new medical technology, and advocating for a safe and equitable policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, they are organizing protests and advocacy campaigns to demand an end to police violence and systemic racism. This wave of civic engagement and participation by young people is an unprecedented phenomenon in recent history that presents an opportunity for institutions of higher education to help students more fully embrace their roles as individual actors in a democratic society. This Speech Spotlight will continue our exploration of different pathways for civic engagement on campus. We began this examination with our recent Engaging Student Voters and Supporting Student Activism issues, and continue with this installment on how colleges and universities can integrate opportunities for deliberate and meaningful political discussion into various aspects of campus life. “Political is not the Same as Partisan” Facilitating conversations that allow students to confront a diverse array of perspectives is an important component of developing a culture of civic participation on campus. At many of the most politically engaged colleges and universities around the country, students, faculty, and administrators actively engage in open discussion on pressing political issues—both inside and outside the classroom. In the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education’s Politics 365: Fostering Campus Climates for Student Political Learning & Engagement, IDHE Director Nancy Thomas and University of Chicago Professor of Political Science Margaret Brower find that “Political discussions were the most pervasive feature of the politically engaged institutions we visited.” They note that their case study of these engaged campuses revealed that “deliberation among socially diverse students has long-term impact—they are more engaged in the political process than their peers who did not experience deliberative practices.” Encouraging students to engage in political conversation and to debate relevant issues across diverse viewpoints is an important part of developing a culture of civic engagement on campus and helping students build lasting skills for and habits of democratic engagement. Creating a constructive environment for political conversation is not easy. As Professors Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy write in their book, The Political Classroom, “facilitating talks about controversial topics is full of pedagogical challenges,” including navigating students’ diverse backgrounds, the polarized political environment, and the fear of backlash. Colleges and universities, who have recently faced heavy criticism from those claiming they are too political or unwilling to accommodate conservative voices, may understandably be hesitant to encourage more political discussion. freespeechcenter.universityofcalifornia.edu
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Yet it is important to remember that even in these hyper-polarized political times, as Professor Jennifer Rich points out, political is not the same as partisan. While pushing partisan politics is “a huge overstretch of power,” she writes, “schools need to prepare students for political engagement in a nonpartisan way even though the real world of politics is increasingly partisan and polarized.” IDHE finds that the most effective political conversations are those facilitated with a commitment to free expression and inclusion of diverse perspectives. Such conversations, both in and outside of the classroom, have proven successful in encouraging students to vote and be active participants in American democracy. In the Classroom As Nancy Thomas noted at this year’s #SpeechMatters conference, every discipline has a policy application that can and should be discussed in class. A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future, the groundbreaking 2012 report of the National Taskforce on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, emphasizes the importance of including such discussions as a core element of higher education curriculum. “Putting civic learning at the core rather than the periphery of primary, secondary, and postsecondary education,” the report finds, “can have far-reaching positive consequences for the country and the economy.” In their survey of highly politically engaged campuses, IDHE finds that both students and faculty are consistent in crediting the role classroom discussion and in-class civic learning play in increasing political participation. On such campuses, they write, “teaching political issues and democratic engagement skills is not relegated to courses in political science or interdisciplinary programs. Every discipline recognizes and teaches its relevance to public life.” In the 2020 edition of IDHE’s Election Imperatives, Dr. Thomas and IDHE reiterate this idea and emphasize that faculty-facilitated political discussion is especially relevant this year in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing reckoning on racial justice. “Every discipline has a public relevance. And amidst both a global pandemic and a renewed attention to social injustices, there are seemingly endless ways to connect the dots between what students learn in the classroom and issues of power, policy, equity, and the public good.” In accordance with these findings, integrating civic learning and political dialogue into curricular, as well as co-curricular, offerings is now an important component of SLSV’s Democratic Engagement Action Plan Rubric and their Ask Every Student program. Using COVID-19 to Facilitate Discussion The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the public relevance of every academic discipline into the spotlight. Before COVID, the civic application of certain disciplines may have been less obvious, but academics of every field are now working overtime to find solutions to the public health and economic crises the world faces. Medical faculty are working to develop treatments and vaccines, engineers are developing new medical devices and personal protective equipment, and social scientists are studying effective policy for containing the spread of the virus and minimizing economic and social cost. freespeechcenter.universityofcalifornia.edu 2
As classes resume in the fall, faculty may find it particularly useful to draw on their COVID experiences to teach and discuss the public-facing and political dimensions of their work. These conversations can serve both to prepare students to make informed policy decisions in the 2020 election and to highlight the many forms, including policy research, advocacy, and community service, that civic engagement can take. Examples of such discussion are already popping up. Adrienne Fulco, associate professor of legal and policy studies and director of the Public Policy and Law Program at Trinity College, will be teaching a fall 2020 course on the “Real-Life Civics Lesson of COVID-19” and Wesleyan University has designated a slate of courses that teach “content relevant to the 2020 elections.” Similarly, UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement Co-Chair and Dean of UC Berkeley Law School Erwin Chemerinksy is teaching “Civil Liberties in a Pandemic,” a seminar on how civil liberties should be balanced against the need to protect public health. In-class political discussions and civic conversations may be effectively complemented by in-class voter registration efforts. A study by researchers at Indiana University entitled “I’ll Register to Vote if You Teach Me How” finds that “instructors or trained peers” educating students about how and why to register to vote in the classroom substantially increases the likelihood that students register to vote. Accordingly, in their “Institutionalizing Voter Engagement” guide, Campus Vote Project emphasizes that on many campuses the best way to reach students is through faculty. This is especially the case in fall 2020 when most campuses are conducting at least some courses online. IDHE points out that, under these circumstances, virtual courses may be a student’s strongest connection to campus culture and professors may be the only institutional actors able to reach a large, diverse array of students. To help guide students in the process of voter registration and participation, Campus Vote Project recommends faculty widely publicize and remind students of important election dates and registration deadlines, consider allowing 5-10 minutes of class time to have someone speak with their students about how to register and vote, distribute sample ballots in class, and ensure students have the time and flexibility to vote on election day. As the Ask Every Student program highlights, integrating voter engagement into certain classes “not only reaches every student, but also creates space for broader civic learning to occur.” Beyond the Classroom Colleges and universities are also working to facilitate political conversation outside of the classroom. The 2018 Voter Friendly Campus Program Report notes, “encouraging political dialogue makes the democratic process seem more accessible for college students and encourages them to think critically about issues in our country” (25). Integrating these conversations into student life gives students opportunities to develop and express opinions in a low-stakes manner as they seek to understand why their participation matters. As Michael Poliakoff, President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, writes in Forbes, the success of student organizations conducting these conversations—for example, UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement VOICE Award recipient BridgeUSA— freespeechcenter.universityofcalifornia.edu 3
demonstrates students’ “thirst for discourse.” As the 2020 election season ramps up, there is no shortage of pressing political issues for students to discuss. Through its “Election Connection” program, James Madison University intentionally facilitates student dialogue on a range of pressing political issues. Their student-led Dukes Vote program hosts “Tent Talks” on campus designed to “create a space where students, faculty, and staff can approach what may seem like a difficult conversation in a respectful, educational, and constructive manner.” These spaces serve both to engage campus community members in a student-led conversation and to assist them in registering to vote. In addition to Tent Talks, Dukes Vote hosted travelling town halls for students to hear from candidates and discuss issues important to them in 2019. Pervasive political dialogue can and should be effectively facilitated in a remote setting. In fact, a recent Gallup Poll finds that even before COVID-19, 58% of college students believed most campus political expression took place online. An Eduventures report published this May recognizes the importance of student dialogue and recommends campus organizations continue facilitating these conversations throughout fall even if students are unable to congregate in groups. The report suggests that “colleges can create electronic ‘buddy systems’ that start structured conversations from which more natural online discussion might grow, build opt-in discussion groups on certain topics or ‘socialize suggestions, templates and examples and then get out of the way.’” Student organizations are also finding ways to promote political dialogue in a virtual setting ahead of the 2020 election season. The College Democrats and Republicans at the University of Wisconsin Madison, for example, are teaming up to generate constructive and respectful virtual dialogue sessions around increasingly polarized issues ahead of the November election. Providing students with opportunities to express and debate their opinions, whether in person or virtually, is a critical step to developing a culture of civic participation on campus. Resources Many resources are available to help campuses facilitate effective political conversations both in and out of the classroom. Some helpful resources include the American Political Science Association’s Teaching Civic Engagement Across the Disciplines, IDHE’s Readiness for Discussing Democracy in Supercharged Political Times and Making Sense Of discussion guides, and Campus Election Engagement Project’s Nonpartisan Guide for Campus Civic Discussions. Additionally, for their fellowship project entitled “Let Freedom (and Respect) Ring: Fostering Civil Discourse and Free Speech in the Classroom and Beyond,” UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement Fellows Lara Schwartz and Andrea Malkin Brenner created a guide to academic discourse to provide faculty, students, administrators with the tools necessary to conduct effective political conversations. They describe their research as “a unit for faculty, teaching assistants, and peer leaders” looking to build “communities of trust where open and respectful communication flourishes; where students have multiple ways to engage in freespeechcenter.universityofcalifornia.edu 4
collaboration and listening; and where all members practice the fundamentals of engaging with new ideas as readers, listeners, speakers, and writers.” Guiding Questions In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the movement for racial justice, and the 2020 election cycle, there is no shortage of topics to discuss. To help students better understand many of the complex issues in current events and learn from their peers’ diverse viewpoints, colleges and universities should look for ways to effectively facilitate political conversation. The guiding questions below are designed to assist you in finding ways to bring these conversations to your campus and integrate them into a comprehensive culture of civic engagement: 1. Who should be tasked with facilitating political dialogue in and outside of the classroom? a. Does your campus have a civic or voter engagement coalition which might be able to lead these efforts? b. How will you incentivize professors and students of all academic disciplines to embrace this initiative? 2. What resources will you use or create to ensure these conversations are facilitated appropriately? a. How will you ensure individuals with diverse backgrounds and viewpoints are able to participate and feel welcome in the political dialogue on campus? b. What training will you provide to students, faculty, or staff members to help them both lead and participate in difficult political conversation? 3. How will political conversation tie into other components of the culture of civic engagement on your campus? a. Do you have a plan to assist interested instructors in providing in-class voter registration help as a part of their political conversations? b. Building on our Supporting Student Activism edition, how can your institution best support student activism as an important piece of the political conversation on campus?
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WHY IT MATTERS
Thoughts from Howard Gillman Co-Chair, UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement Chancellor, University of California, Irvine
“In the midst of a global pandemic, a national reckoning on racial equality, and a contentious presidential election season, institutions of higher education are looking for ways to reimagine and revamp their efforts to prepare students to be active participants in American democracy. As such, a central component of the mission of higher education is to create knowledge that serves the public interest and to empower individuals to be productive and engaged members of society. Doing so, as the Center’s Speech Spotlight series on civic engagement suggests, requires creating a robust culture of civic participation that extends to every corner of campus life. To build such a culture, campuses must do more than help students cast their vote—they must help them understand why their vote matters and encourage them to explore and debate a range of political ideas and opinions, both in and outside of the classroom. Rather than avoid difficult political conversations, colleges and universities should facilitate them and encourage students to seek them out. If we wish to educate the next generation of leaders, we must equip them with the tools to use their voices to advocate for their beliefs. As more students return to campus this unusual fall, I hope that my colleagues across the country will join me in working to realize higher education’s civic mission by building campus cultures of democratic inquiry, debate, engagement, and participation.”
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