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Academic Freedom is Alive and Well at Boalt Hall

2008-04-12T16:17:40Z

The dean of Boalt Hall (UC Berkeley's School of Law), Christopher Edley, has published an open letter on the school's website in response to a number of appeals to fire John Yoo, a tenured professor, and the principal author of the now infamous "torture memos" (PDF). These memos seemed designed to give legal cover to the Bush Administration to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" on suspected terrorists. A number of organizations and individuals, including The National Lawyers Guild, a human rights group, have criticized the university for keeping Professor Yoo as a faculty member.

The letter is a valuable read for a number of reasons, not the least of which being as a reminder of the purpose of tenure at a university. All too often tenure has come to mean a kind of guarantee for permanent employment. The dean reminds us otherwise.

Without tenure, professors in universities might tend to shy away from controversial issues. They might "play it safe" and in so doing short change their students by denying them a rigorous airing of various issues that emerge from any meaningful dialogue in the classroom, or in the world for that matter. And they may become reticent to research "controversial issues".

Here is a snippet:

It seems we do need regular reminders: These protections, while not absolute, are nearly so because they areessential to the excellence of American universities and the progress of ideas. Indeed, in Berkeley's classrooms and courtyards our community argues about the legal and moral issues with the intensity and discipline these crucial issues deserve. Those who prefer to avoid these arguments--be they left or right or lazy--will not find Berkeley or any other truly great law school a wholly congenial place to study. For that we make no apology.

The dean for his part is not at all reticent to take issue with, or at least raise serious questions about, Yoo's tortured legal wrangling that sought to place the President beyond the law in his role as Commander-in-Chief, even to the point of ignoring treaties and other international agreements that according to the Constitution are the supreme law of the land. He writes:

There are important questions about the content of the Yoo memoranda, about tortured definitions of "torture," about how he and his colleagues conceived their role as lawyers, and about whether and when the Commander in Chief is subject to domestic statutes and international law.

The dean is reluctant, no adamant against, initiating any proceedings to strip Yoo of his tenured faculty position. In doing so, Dean Edley has demonstrated the clear thinking, and determined leadership that apparently was so lacking in Yoo's memos.

Academic freedom is still alive and well...and we suspect not just at Berkeley. Oh, and "Go Bears!"

Again here is a link to the letter.

Fear and Anger Lead to Different Perceptions About Risk

2008-03-26T04:47:47Z

Several of us at TWI been looking at how the interplay between thinking and feeling leads to effective (or ineffective) action. For the most part we have looked at this anecdotally.

Here is an interview with Harvard Kennedy School Professor, Jennifer Lerner. She is the director of the school's new Laboratory for Decision Science. Professor Lerner studied this phenomenon in the lab, and then nationally after 9/11.

Some snippets:

In our early laboratory studies, we found that experimentally induced fear and anger did indeed have these opposite effects on risk perception. However, this lab research was not a sufficient test of our hypothesis...

In the aftermath of September 11th, we realized that, tragically, we were presented with an opportunity to find out whether our lab research could predict how the country as a whole would react to the attacks and how U.S. citizens would perceive future risks of terrorism. We did a nationwide field experiment, the first of its kind....

The results mirrored those of our lab studies. Specifically, people who saw the anger-inducing video clip were subsequently more optimistic on a whole series of judgments about the future--their own future, the country's future, and the future of the world. In contrast, the people who saw the fear-inducing video clip were less optimistic about their own future, the country's future, and the world's future....

Again, the entire interview is HERE.

Be Afraid...Be Very, Very Afraid...

2008-03-06T18:58:35Z

So, you are at the beach. Which is more dangerous: the sand or the water? Or you have to decide which is safer for your child: riding in the school bus (without seat belts), or in the passenger seat next to you (with a seat belt and shoulder strap).

This recent article on risk assessment graphically illustrates how our emotions often cloud our reasoning when we are trying to make decisions about risk. And what is the impact of all these disclosures about lead paint in toys, and cough medicine for children on our capacity to make effective decisions?

The author notes:

Perhaps the most insidious change is with the rare but spectacular risks. The sensational tales of brain-eaters and sand killers. Such stories have always existed, of course, but something is different now, and that's the Internet. Ubiquitous access combined with the bazaar potential publishers means the freakiest event can be shared by millions of people. Anyone can read about it, blog about it, link to it, forward it in e-mail, and post it as a Flash video, but there's no impetus for them to disclose the risk responsibly or reasonably. Their agenda may even call for them to twist the truth, make the risk seem more or less serious than it is.

Here's the paradox that rises from all of this: As an individual and consumer, I like disclosure. I want every corporate and civic entity I place trust in to be accountable. I want journalists and scientists to unearth the risks I'm not being told about. At the same time, while any one disclosure of a threat may be tolerable, or even desirable, the cumulative effect of so much disclosure is, frankly, freaking me out.

Interesting article that dovetails nicely with some of the work by Whitman grantee, Decision Education Foundation.

Taos Institute to Present Dialogue Conference

2008-01-20T00:25:42Z

The Taos Institute, an organization at the forefront of Dialogue and Appreciative Inquiry, will convene a conference in Sarasota, Florida in September entitled: Dialogues that Deliver: Collaboration, Conflict and Community. An added special feature will be a panel discussion among the founders of the institute - that hasn't occurred in a long time. Details here at their website.

The Public Sphere

2007-11-29T21:12:32Z

The philosopher Jurgen Habermas, in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1991), asserted that deliberation itself must be the foundation for a consummately open and participatory society. Habermas said citizens must continually and voluntarily come together to exchange perspectives on matters of mutual political interest. Habermas points to the flourishing public life during a segment of 17th- and 18th-century Europe as the ideal paradigm for such gatherings, and believes we must replicate it. He further maintains that the exchanges that take place must have rules of engagement: that there must be civil discourse coupled with discursive reasoning, and that this should be devoid of emotion and spectacle. ]]> Habermas refers to this as the "bourgeois public sphere" to connote not only the place where "private people come together as a public" (p.27) and then go on to "make public use of their reason" (p.27), but further, the type of participants who come together. To Habermas, such a sphere is one, must be one, in which participants share assumptions about what the process of deliberation should entail; are equally informed about matters of public importance; and are in agreement about what those matters are. This must be so, he suggests, because they share the same societal and cultural values and norms, the same formal educational background and resultant capacities. Habermas further maintains that for a public sphere to operate optimally, these private individuals who gather together must not have been tainted by outside influence, lest their views not be purely their own.

Habermas's coffeehouse example overlooks the fact that in the days of the west's earliest deliberative inquiries (in public places in ancient Athens) there was no distinction between public and private persons. While to Habermas, the public emerges from the private, to the Greeks, they are entwined at every turn - there is no public without private, and vice versa, each is cultivating and driving and informing the other. Moreover, to the Greeks, the process of reasoning should never be divorced from our emotions, and indeed the attempt to do so is doomed to fail, because they are so interlaced. Rather, they recognized that a central function of reasoning together is to cultivate our more humane, constructive emotions.

Consequently, if one subscribes to the Greek model, reasoning entails sympathetic immersion in a variety of perspectives, which in turn nurtures a greater sense of love, empathy, and human connectedness. The ancient Athenians also recognized that the element of spectacle, of show - of dramatic gesturing and pointed emphasis, of cultivated and nuanced inflection of our voices, of modulation of tone and tenor in speech, as we offer our views and examine those considered perspectives of others - is an integral part of the process of the social gathering, and so, contrary to Habermas' view, is nothing pejorative at all. Indeed, to them, the public sphere itself is a form of spectacle, and as such is a vital institution for participatory democracy.

Habermas virtually suggests that participants be vetted to ensure they have shared educational backgrounds, cultural codes and sociopolitical perspectives before gathering together, in effect diminishing what the enterprise of the public sphere can be. This normative roadmap is likely to ensure there is little diversity, and so little possibility for the surprise of the novel and unfamiliar. Exposure to new perspectives is a vital ingredient for evolving democracy, for maintaining an essential element of experimentalism that can lead to paradigm shifts in our outlook on what constitutes democratic ideals and what foundational criteria they are comprised of; what constitutes matters of genuinely pervasive public concern; and what pathways best lead to achieving ever greater openness and inclusiveness.

While I embrace Habermas' essential notion that the hallmark of an evolving democracy is participation itself, on the grounds of my decade of experience of conducting Socratic discussions I reject his criteria for what makes a public sphere most effective an instrument for democratic advancement. Instead, following Socrates, that many types of education are valid and legitimate and requisite; that those with little or no formal education may nonetheless have vital experiential education of other sorts that will lend new and otherwise unknowable or unknown insights to the deliberative equation. Moreover, in counterpoint to the ideal described and prescribed by Habermas, the public sphere in a democracy must welcome into its fold groups that are in the minority and at the margins, not just in order to be genuinely inclusive, but to expand participants' intellectual and imaginative inputs in ways that lead over time to paradigm shifts in our thinking of (and experimenting with) ways to evolve democracy itself.

Alan McKee asserts in The Public Sphere: An Introduction (2005) that Habermas' conception of the public sphere, despite its pretensions to transcend epoch or culture, fails to do so; its inherent limitations abundantly evident. Rather, Habermas' model, argues McKee, clearly stems from "one particular - masculine - perspective" (p.63), and so would be most appealing to those who share this particular perspective, imbued with elements of chauvinism, elitism, and classicism. Such limitations in perception and outlook risk remaining undetected unless and until such a narrowly prescribed sphere actively encompasses diverse others who have the objectivity to point this out in an empathetic manner which those threatened by the observation can nonetheless accept.

Ultimately, in order to attain a genuinely inclusive and democratic public sphere, the more types of experiential, cultural, educational and sociopolitical perspectives included in the public sphere, the better. This does not entail, as McKee asserts, any need to choose between a so-called modern or post-modern approach - namely, either choosing a set of beliefs and values that one considers immutable and fixed, or one that is relative. Rather, it involves a continual process of discovering via ongoing deliberative inquiry among participants with diverse perspectives, within particular situations or contexts, societies or epochs, those values and beliefs that are shared among them, and thus are in a sense 'universal.' But it also entails parameters that are never too rigid or fixed, but are open to continual refinement, adjustment and even overhaul, so that over time paradigm shifts are enabled of a kind that can alter our conception of what the most ideal universally-shared democratic ideals should be. This in turn requires a shared method of inquiry in which views proffered are subject to ongoing scrutiny and testing by members of the sphere.

An inclusive, 'universal' conceptualization of a public sphere also obviates the dichotomy set forth by McKee in which a sphere is either not inclusive enough, or is so inclusively egalitarian (and so filled with a multiplicity of standpoints) that it becomes hopelessly fragmented. Rather, we need models of dialogue that set forth an altogether different notion of egalitarianism -- that entail an egalitarian ethos which does indeed continually strive for ever increasing inclusiveness, yet does not hold that all views ipso facto are equally valid. While all models and spheres for encounter and dialogue are equally deserving of being rigorously and methodically scrutinized, of thorough examination via sympathetic immersion, this process of Socratic inquiry has the capacity to determine which views are most compelling, and which are so fraught with logical lapses and loopholes and inconsistencies that they should be discarded. The determination of sound from unsound positions is one of the most vital charges of a public sphere in a deliberative democracy, and this is the objective of the original Socratic paradigm, and it results in a sharing of identity that can only be forged out of plumbing a multiplicity of perspectives.

Ultimately, the central type of values-based "homogeneity" in the Socratic model for deliberative democracy is one in which all members open themselves up to entertaining a vast range of perspectives, to scrutinizing them carefully and dispassionately, out of their shared passion for achieving the most open and inclusive society possible on local and increasingly global scales.

OTM's Reach Institute in the News...

2007-11-04T22:27:50Z

In her spare time Denise Caruso, a member of the Whitman community and executive director of the Hybrid Vigor Institute in San Francisco, is also a writer for the New York Times. Her latest piece in today's (11-4-07) edition highlighted the work done by Page Tomkins and his colleagues at the Reach Institute also in the Bay Area.

Reach is an innovative teacher training and credentialing program that grew out of the work of On The Move (also a Whitman grantee). This new teacher development process turns the whole notion of teacher training on its head. Instead of traditional training where new teachers spend most of the year studying about teaching and then practice a few weeks at the end of the year, Reach teachers spend the majority of their time in their classrooms actually teaching supported by mentors and other subject matter experts (SMEs). What makes this process so unique? Well for one thing these new teachers designed it themselves.

Read all about it here.

Process?

2007-10-29T16:38:41Z

The New York Times continues to run a series of in-depth articles on Hillary Clinton, not just because she is a U.S. Senator from its fair state, but clearly because it is has an inkling she may well be our next president. The most recent, an October 26, 2007 Times article on Hillary Clinton's management practices, referred frequently to her attachment to "process" (and for some reason, the reporter typically puts this word in quotes when referring to it - as if it is so foreign, so unfamiliar, that we can only become attuned to it if he does so.) Here are the mentions of process (or should I say, "process"):

1) It is indeed likely that a Hillary Clinton White House would be more punctual, precise and process-oriented than her husband's.

2) In the White House, Mrs. Clinton often sat silently for long stretches during strategy sessions that could spiral into long-winded free-for-alls. She would grind her elbows into the table, then let fly.
"If she felt a discussion was being organized in a haphazard way, she would not hesitate to challenge the process and say, 'What are we doing here?'" Mr. Panetta said.

]]> 3) When Mrs. Clinton was first lady, her ill-fated effort to overhaul the nation's health care system was clearly a political defeat, but it also involved management missteps for which she drew wide criticism. "There was a level of perfectionism there," said John B. Breaux, a former senator from Louisiana. Determined to create a comprehensive "process," Mrs. Clinton allowed the project to become unwieldy -- convening a "task force" that included 412 government employees, 82 "special" or temporary staff members and 17 consultants who helped produce a 1,342-page document.

Mrs. Clinton concedes she made numerous mistakes in the effort. "I'm very interested in how you reach and implement decisions in a very efficient way," she said. "Certainly, there was a lot of pressure on us to do things that, now in retrospect, I don't think were in the best interests of the overall plan."

4) The people who thrive within Mrs. Clinton's "process" are those who best provide the currency of choices. "She wants to know, 'O.K., what are my options here?'" Ms. Solis Doyle said. "She wants a Plan A, a Plan B and a Plan C. She wants recommendations. Then she'll make a decision."

I have a sneaking suspicion that if Senator Clinton becomes our next president, the word "process" is going to become a new catchword in the American lexicon - much as "organic" became so popular in the last decade, when big corporations realized its moniker would sell billions of dollars more in products, and so was no longer a lonely, marginalized concept, the use of which was confined mostly to longtime progressive farmers and their customers. As the concept of process becomes more popular, I fret that it will become diluted of its value - that it will come to stand for so much, it in fact will connote very little.

Because the time may loom when the concept of process may come to mean so many things that it means next to nothing, the time may be nigh to explore not only what we are explicitly referring to when we are talking about process, and particularly as it relates to deliberative discourse and decision-making - but to explore types and degrees of process, the values that must undergird process inquiry if it is to be of worth, the ends and ethos, method and means with which it should be imbued.

In reading the Times article ballyhooing Hillary Clinton's managerial style, I kept asking myself, what in the world does the reporter mean by "process-oriented"? Just because Senator Clinton and her staff describe it as such, does that make it such? I was further befuddled by what he meant when he said that during her failed attempt as first lady to pass sweeping health care reform, her principal shortcoming in doing so was her insistence on creating, come what may, "a comprehensive 'process.'" I fail to see what was comprehensive about it. I remember that it was chaotic, that it was largely put together behind closed doors, that it did include a lot of federal bureaucrats and consulting groups (who made a lot of money in putting it together), but I don't recall that it ever comprised many, if any, everyday people. To be sure, it may have claimed to be the result of the nightmarish experiences of ordinary people who could no longer afford healthcare, but the "experts" who planned and plotted it did not seem to encompass them as equals in the decision-making "process" - and if this is so, I wonder whether a Clinton presidency will be much different from preceding ones.

In announcing her candidacy, Clinton said that in an ideal world she would like to enter the living rooms of each American family and pick their brains before making any decision. But it would appear that she covets the role of being the ultimate "decider" (as our current president coined it) as much as any of her predecessors. It doesn't appear that she wants us to come out of our respective living rooms and take part as equals in deciding policies that affect us all. Rather, as sympathetic as I might be with her politically in some respects, all evidence so far would seem to indicate that she would leave the decision-making institutions and apparatus within the government intact, and yearns to attain the highest office in the land in order to decide for us what is best for us. The mere fact that she engages in a process that at least provides her with some variety of options may make her (or most other contenders, for that matter) a welcome relief over her predecessor. Yet I can't help but feel we are still selling short ourselves and our capacities to steer and be equal contributors to the process.

The Times article notes that those who best thrive in Clinton's particular decision-making process are those who provide her with a "currency of choices" - and "then she'll make a decision." What if - and I know this is pie in the sky right now - there were no sole decider? What if, the more critical the decision and the more citizens it potentially impacted, it was incumbent that the process include a vast array of citizens of diverse experiential, educational, and socioeconomic and political backgrounds?

Even if one considered this possibility, one might well say I'm putting the cart before the horse. One might ask: What in the world do we mean by process? What is its function? What should be its overriding ethos? What should be its ideals and ends? Should it have fixed ideals and ends, a fixed method of deliberation, or should it be evolutionary in bent, changing continually over time? What constitutes "sound process" in any sphere of discourse - social, spiritual, professional, political, aesthetic, what have you? Are there "universals" to process that transcend any particular human sphere, or does sound process change from context to context, situation to situation, culture to culture, sphere to sphere? Is all process-oriented dialogue good, redemptive? Or can there be bad or not-so-good types? If so, how so?

What IS process?

Here's a Merriam-Webster definition: 1 a: progress, advance b: something going on : proceeding (1): a) natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular result (2): a): continuing natural or biological activity or function b) : a series of actions or operations conducing to an end.

One process, or set of overlapping processes, we need invest much energy and passion in now, in my view, is one that rescues our attenuated democracy. To do this, the process must ever widen the circle of inclusivity when it comes to the public citizenry, problem solving, and decision making. It is one that should not just lead to a concrete end in any specific context, but should be a dynamic entity whose overall end should be to engage all Americans, to bring them together to discourse and experiment in ways in which we can evolve our ideals over time, even revolutionize our functional notions of what democracy might be. Process may well be a natural, organic phenomenom, but this is not to say it will ipso facto grow in healthy ways; indeed, depending on the process used, it may lead to a further withering on the vine of our beloved democracy.

In coming years, those of us involved in bringing about more participation in the public sphere need give great thought to the processes we hope to cultivate as ingrained habits among citizens and mainstays of the democratic fabric. Moreover, it behooves us to consider that, contrary to dictionary definitions, process -- in the context of deliberative discourse for the ends of evolving a creative participatory democracy -- may not, in some contexts, lead to gradual changes, but, as with the processes inherent in physical evolution, may at times lead to sudden and dramatic changes, and we need to be expectant of and open to that exhilarating (and, perhaps at times, alarming) possibility and prospect.

Most of all, dictionary definitions typically are devoid of making mention of the fact that our concepts are human inventions laden with values, with philosophies, with functions - and depending on the values and philosophies we bring to the table when engaged in process, we may well wind up evolving our society (and the concept of process itself) or devolving it. At least, it's something to think about - just as we may want to incorporate types of process that do not always lead to particular results, but that lend themselves to leading us continually to the surprise of the novel and unfamiliar, to what Emerson called "newness," to new discoveries about ourselves, our capacities, and those of the universe itself. Dewey for one believed that all processes, not just physical ones, were natural and organic, and that only if we grasp how wedded our political processes are to the larger physical sphere could we then be inspired to harness it in ways that made the universe itself more emancipative.

Here We Are. And Here We Go.

2007-10-26T23:25:25Z

A week ago, TWI began a weekend retreat that brought together board members, staff, grantees, and one of our funders' reflection partners. Our idea was to create a space for a great group of people to come together and cross-fertilize questions, ideas and experiences. We hoped that providing this opportunity might lead to new connections, deepened relationships, and dialogue that would inform our respective work going forward. We also wanted people to have fun and leave feeling both refreshed and energized.

Speaking for myself, those aims seemed to be realized in a big way. It was wonderful to witness all the different connections being made and to experience "the whole" of the Institute in such an engaging, informal way. We had some structured time, of course, but as Edd Conboy described it afterwards (I hope I'm paraphrasing correctly!) the weekend resembled a series of self-organized world cafes. I was reminded once again of the value of not over-scheduling; of having an expansive pace that allows people time to breathe and just be - either by themselves or with others. In those times some of the richest and meaningful discussions bubbled up.

]]> I have found many conversations from the weekend percolating throughout this past week, either talking with other people or reflecting by myself. Conversations that touched on advocacy and assessment, relationships and responsibility, language and learning. Conversations that explored the use of media to spark dialogue and widen perspectives; the nature of what we mean by "leadership" when the term is used so ubiquitously; and the challenges inherent in collaborating across organizations, disciplines, and sectors when our incentive systems reward staying in our silos. And just as importantly conversations filled with humor and laughter.

So, yes, there was a lot of talking going on. But for an Institute passionate about promoting cross-perspective dialogue, that's to be expected! Where we go, what we learned, what comes from the new and deepened connections made will play itself out over time. What rings true for me at this moment is that the weekend felt in many ways like the beginning of a new story of what TWI might become: a "member network" with a shared commitment to, and passion for, process-oriented work.

Such a vision brings with it immediate questions of what "membership" in such a network might mean, particularly what happens to a grantee's sense of membership if they are no longer funded. We weren't going to answer those questions this weekend, but I think the retreat did give us a solid platform for further and deeper inquiry.

A story is emerging of how TWI can become more than the sum of its parts; how it can serve as a wellspring of support and resources not limited to money. A week out from the retreat I feel both excited and grateful to have so many inspiring, dedicated, smart, compassionate, generous (you get the picture) co-authors involved.

Community of Process

2007-10-26T16:34:44Z

I'm still jazzed from the Whitman Institute's first ever retreat comprising all the organizations it funds. It was great to meet the inspiring people who founded these seemingly disparate groups. It didn't take long for me to come to the notion that we all were part of what I'd call a greater "community of process". ]]> For a good while, I'd felt that SPI's mission was more kindred spirit to organizations/endeavors that don't necessarily have dialogue as their centerpiece. I came away from the TWI gathering with a more articulate understanding of why that is so. One can engage (or claim to engage) in various forms of dialogue without necessarily having process as its underpinning. Indeed, it may be the case that some forms of dialogue can impede process. On the other hand, as I came to learn about the organizations that TWI funds, there's an array of undertakings in which dialogue per se is not the principal driving force. I remember one participant saying that John Esterle enabled him to realize that his project was process oriented -- that his undertaking was more about the journey than a fixed or finite destination, which might well change over time as he continues with it and engages in the experimental-creative process.

But what all taking part in the retreat clearly seemed to share were similar processes and shared ends -- namely, working towards doing their part to achieving a more inclusive, open society, and directing their singular energies and efforts and talents to breaking down divides that make the world less connected than it ideally can be.

I know I wasn't the only participant who professed at times feeling a sense of going-it-aloneness. It isn't that we didn't know there were many other kindred endeavors out there, only we hadn't had an opportunity to meet with them in an intimate setting and come to a keener realization of how connected we are.

I left the retreat with keen sense that most of us on hand were, in spite of ostensible differences, involved at our core with virtually precisely the same effort and ends and ideals. It left me more inspired than ever to do what I can, in my modest way, to keep fighting the good fight.

Everyone from the retreat is still "present" with me. I want to praise John Esterle for going out there and discovering so many involved in seminal ways in this community of process, and bringing us all together. As we move forward, it will be intriguing to see how this circle ever widens, changes, morphs (probably because of its inherently creative and unpredictable bent it will become less of a circle than a sort of fractal which takes off in all kinds of unexpected directions and ways). Onward and upward and outward.

OTM-Reach Institute's Teacher Program Credentialed

2007-10-26T16:20:42Z

Credentialing Committee "enthusiastic"

The Reach Institute, part of Whitman grantee organization, On The Move, was granted accreditation for its teacher credentialing program. One of the hallmarks of this program is that 15 new teachers from throughout the Bay Area created the design and implementation process themselves.

Read what Reach's director, Page Tomkins, wrote in a letter of thanks to their many supporters and sponsors after the jump...

]]> As many of you know a dedicated group of 15 young teachers worked tirelessly last year with a number of staff from On the Move to build Reach, the first teacher designed credential program in California. We opened in August with our founding class of 30 students from schools in San Jose and the East Bay. Over the past three months we have worked closely with the staff of the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to get final accreditation for our program. And today we are thrilled to announce that we have been fully approved and accredited with a unanimous vote!!!!

I was asked a lot of questions as you can imagine since our approach is highly innovative and unique. But with all of that the responses from the Commission members were incredibly enthusiastic! One committee member said, "As a working teacher, I know how much we need programs like this. I hope you will share what you learn with the field." My response, predictably, was to invite her to come visit the program and our schools.

After the meeting I felt a bit overwhelmed by what we have collectively accomplished. I thought to myself, "Who does this? What kind of a crazy group of believers thinks, "let's really change things, let's start a better teacher education program?'" And I was also filled with gratitude. I want to thank each of you for believing in this project, and believing in us.

Congratulations to everyone involved in this wonderful effort.

Innovative Use of Media

2007-10-26T16:01:36Z

A teacher in a suburban Philadelphia elementary school has developed an innovative yearlong program for young people with Asperger's syndrome. The teacher, Randi Rentz, works with her students to produce an Action 7 newscast that is shown to the entire school community at the end of the year. Using the news cast as a focal point, she can help these children practice various social skills that are often such a challenge. Appropriate social space, eye contact, listening postures, all these social and communication skills come together as these kids take on all the various roles on the newsroom.

Another creative use of video and other media similar to the interesting work by the Whitman grantees at JustThink.org

Details about the Action 7 Newsroom here.

Playing the Learning Game

2007-10-05T18:23:26Z

Last year Lucy Bernholz from Blueprint Research & Design in San Francisco published a paper, Pedagogy, Playstations and the Public Interest, as part of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning initiative.

In the paper she addresses these three important questions:

1. How do digital media influence what and how youth learn, and what they should learn?
2. What, if any, public responsibility do we have to provide these media as tools for learning?

3. If there is such a public purpose, how can it best be met?

What may be most interesting is that she focused her research specifically on one aspect of digital media - video games and gamers. Here is a peak at some of her conclusions.

What skills games teach, how they might be used to build content expertise, and how to use them effectively in both formal and informal learning and work environments is a series of questions to which researchers are approaching answers. How games matter - framed as a more complex issue than merely their relationship (or not) to violence - is a conversation that we can move toward, both in the general public and among policymakers. Games that are both fun and educational - either in the creation of them and/or while playing them - may be successfully introduced into the marketplace, if certain deliberate investments are made.
There are both public and private interests at stake in this work...

A good read. Download the PDF from Blueprint's site.

New Video Site on the Web Shows Great Promise

2007-09-24T20:27:09Z

What if videos were available on your desktop that captured some of the best minds and most creative thinking in the culture today? Speeches, presentations and seminars on politics, religion, and the arts, business, education, government, science and technology - the whole enchilada. Or perhaps on a topic of particular interest to The Whitman Institute - philanthropy - on their Giving Channel.

How about interviews from think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, or Brookings, the Commonwealth Clubs and the Carnegie Endowment? And then how about tapes of leading authors on book tours around the country would also be great to have? And then maybe transcripts of the videos with word search capability so you don't have to watch the whole presentation to get to the most interesting bits.

Well of course after that pitch such a site is already up and running on a desktop near you. Just go to fora.tv and browse around for a bit. But be careful, before you know it an hour will have gone by as you become engrossed in watching a conversation unfold that you wish you had been to in person.

TWI Grantee: Youth Dialogue Project Video

2007-09-06T16:44:58Z

The video, Conversations for Change, shows how theYouth Dialogue Project was a vital part of the RockRose Institute's World Forum 2007 held in San Francisco earlier this year. The youth dialogue component, partially underwritten by TWI, made it possible for youth from five different parts of the world - South Africa, New Zealand, Cyprus, Denmark and the US - to stay in dialogue with each other throughout the year in some very innovative ways. Then they came together in San Francisco to learn more in-depth dialogue skills and techniques, and to share their learning with other participants of the forum.

The video very effectively captures a model for intergenerational sustainability. It is 16 minutes in length, and well worth the time investment. Here's the link.

The Socratic Tradition - Christopher Phillips

2007-08-29T21:45:04Z

An array of academic courses today center on Socratic inquiry, and a number of them include in their syllabi one or both of my first two books, Socrates Café: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy, and Six Questions of Socrates: A Modern-Day Journey of Discovery through World Philosophy, which relate my experiences of bringing Socratic discourse to cultures around the globe in venues ranging from prisons to plazas, libraries to schools, nursing homes to churches.

Such courses are offered by philosophy, education, humanities and communications departments. They aim to develop transferable skills such as critical investigation, and focus on the role of Socratic questioning in thinking, teaching and learning as a means for students to become more autonomous thinkers and doers. Such syllabi generally fail, however, adequately to make the critical connection with the ultimate and original end of Socratic inquiry, namely fomenting an evolving deliberative democracy.

]]> One humanities course with Socrates as a centerpiece, has the theme of "character, ethics and wisdom" as a primary pathway for achieving greater individual excellence and virtue, neglects to underscore that the type of wisdom Socratic inquiry seeks to generate is of a sort that necessarily helps us realize a more inclusive world, and so is decidedly as collective in bent as it is individual. A philosophy department course with a Socratic unit on "philosophy and human nature," (and another on "uncertainty, inquiry and commitment,") fails to link Socrates' overarching aim of linking the cultivation of individual autonomy at every turn with the sculpting of a keener social conscience - always via a certain pathway of deliberative inquiry - thus promoting the objective of achieving more meaningful democratic citizenship.

A humanities course with a thematic unit on Socrates and "the art of changing the brain," would equate Socratic practice with individual development, altogether divorcing this from the Socratic art and science of changing democracy via deliberative discourse.
Meanwhile, a comprehensive Socrates anthology by classics and philosophy scholar Paul A. Vander Waerdt, The Socratic Movement, featuring essays by many leading Socrates scholars, makes no mention of the political dimension embedded within all Socratic inquiry. Instead, Socrates' work has often been refashioned to fit the framework of courses of the west, with a nontraditional emphasis on the individual's own development.
Such an approach sells short the benefits of Socratic inquiry. The pursuit of the noble, the good, of all-around excellence - of arête, as the Greeks called it - can only be accomplished within a society with a type of openness that seeks ever to widen the circle of inclusiveness.

The ultimate end of Socratic inquiry is to engage in a type of rigorous, methodical, deliberative dialogue that lends itself to continual social evolution in ways that necessarily contribute to democratic renewal and even upheaval. It is based on a revolutionary notion of self in which the individual and society are not at opposite ends of a continuum, but are interlaced, requiring a dual nurturing of both if greater individual autonomy is to be coupled with a developing social conscience for the realization of democratic ends. Moreover, such ends can only be realized via a type of deliberative dialogue that is as methodical as it is open, that hinges on rigorous experimentation and upon creativity and degrees of randomness, and that is conducive to combining and recombining with other cultural traditions that nonetheless share remarkably similar values and ends.

Martha Nussbaum is an exception to this Socrates-as-a-vehicle-for-individual-development norm in that she recognizes the integral Socratic impetus towards democratic evolution and revolution. Indeed, Nussbaum asserts, in Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, that the vibrancy of a democratic society hinges on its pervasive capacity to reason Socratically. "In order to foster a democracy that is reflective and deliberative...that genuinely takes thought for the common good", argues Nussbaum, "we must produce citizens who have the Socratic capacity to reason about their beliefs." She goes on to suggest that: "It is not good for democracy when people vote on the basis of sentiments they have absorbed from talk-radio and have never questioned. This failure to think critically produces a democracy in which people talk at one another but never have a genuine dialogue." (1997, p. 19). To Nussbaum, the concomitant nurturing of individual autonomy and social conscience foments a more participatory and democratic society that "can genuinely reason together about a problem, not simply trade claims and counterclaims." (1997, p. 19)

Nussbaum believes the responsibility for such Socratic cultivation today lies squarely with formal academia embodied in institutions of higher education; this perspective ignores the fact that Socrates shunned the cloister, preferring to engage with people of all walks of life - from slaves, to women (even in the chauvinistic world of Athenian society), to the well-educated, to children: holding his gatherings in the public agora or plaza, where a decided element of randomness and openness ensured there was genuinely pluralistic exchange in the marketplace of ideas among the most diverse groups possible.

Those following the original Socratic model operate from the premise that one must open oneself up to as vast a range of human experience as possible. While formal education can be one such experience, the informally educated also have great stores of wisdom - and voluntarily coming together on a regular basis to share knowledge in ways that hold the potential of advancing both individual and societal goals is one way of fostering democracy in action.

If one divorces Socratic ideals and their integral political dimension from the ideal Socratic setting for deliberative discourse, one diminishes the capacity of Socratic inquiry to advance deliberative democracy. His were self-moderated groups, with an egalitarian ethos in which all taking part implicitly recognized their responsibility (and even duty to) participate. Discussants posit their own perspectives and support them with cogent evidence and discursive reasoning, and then entertain objections to these perspectives followed by the offering of alternative viewpoints from others. Socrates did not aim for a representative democracy, but for a deliberative one in which everyone had a right and responsibility to take part in the processes of deliberating and governing - one in which the habit of deliberation itself, both within and without formal institutions, was the centerpiece of democracy.

Socratic inquiry at its essence implies that universal or common goods are not acquired by conducting one's investigations in a vacuum, with those who are already politically and philosophically like-minded, but in inquiring far and wide in a non-hierarchical way in particular cultures, the more the better, with people who embrace an array of ways of world-viewing and world-making. Moreover, in engaging in this deliberative process, adopting a rigorous experimental method coupled with an open deliberative bent, it is inevitable that the method itself - as well as those using it - will be irrevocably altered.

Participants are likely to find themselves changing and growing their ideals in tandem with evolving the method of deliberative discourse itself, generally with the aim of making the world a more participatory one that celebrates diversity (in people, aims, and ideals) that contribute to this inclusiveness.

-- Christopher Phillips

Editor's note: Christopher Phillips is the co-founder of the Society for Philosophical Inquiry (SPI), a grassroots nonprofit organization devoted to supporting philosophical inquirers of all ages and walks of life as they become more empathetic and autonomous thinkers who take active part in creating a more deliberative democracy. Its members strive to form and facilitate "democratic communities of philosophical inquiry"... SPI has over 300 ongoing gatherings around the globe coordinated by hundreds of dedicated volunteers who are deeply committed to making ours a more participatory and inclusive world.