{"id":24603,"date":"2025-05-14T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.plato-philosophy.org\/?p=24603"},"modified":"2025-05-13T07:04:42","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T14:04:42","slug":"advocacy-and-civic-renewal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plato-philosophy.org\/advocacy-and-civic-renewal\/","title":{"rendered":"Advocacy and Civic Renewal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr. Peter Levine is professor of philosophy and political science, and <\/em>Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Tufts University\u2019s <\/em>Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life.   <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter will join us at the PLATO conference as a member of the Saturday morning (June 28th<\/sup>) plenary panel.  The panel\u2019s theme \u2013 \u201cEmbracing Difficult Conversations:  The Intersection of Philosophy and Civics Education\u201d\u2013 summarizes Peter\u2019s professional life, his teaching, writing, and activism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter didn\u2019t so much \u201cdiscover\u201d philosophy as experience it early in his DNA.  Browsing his parents\u2019 bookshelves led him to Hegal and Nietzsche, eventually leading him to major in philosophy as an undergraduate.  After he received his doctorate, one of his first jobs was with Common Cause, an organization that had been founded in 1970 by a Republican member of Lyndon Johnson\u2019s Democratic cabinet.  The organization positioned itself as the \u201cpeople\u2019s lobby.\u201d  Membership in the Common Cause \u2013 with its tagline \u201cFighting for the Democracy We Deserve\u201d – rose dramatically during its early years and especially during the Watergate scandal.  But its numbers declined rapidly during the period when Peter worked there, as people stepped away from public life. Peter feels this phenomenon was well-explored in Robert D. Putman\u2019s best-seller Bowling Alone<\/em>:  The Collapse and Revival of American Community. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The forces at play that contribute to our disengagement in civic life are hard to tease out, but it\u2019s probably not because civics education has declined.  More than 40 states now mandate civics courses with rich, innovative curricula, Peter reports, and national test scores in the subject have held steady.  We can do better, of course.  Students need to learn not simply how government is organized, but also how to lobby to create a government that reflects who we are.  \u201cWhat Should We Do?\u201d \u2013 this is the question we need to ask ourselves, as well as the title of one of Peter\u2019s books.  In conversation, he\u2019s happy to answer the question he posed in a single word:  advocate.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ours is a republic, a word that crops up repeatedly when Peter talks about civic life.   Republics depend on an engaged citizenry; its engagement is implied.  The word \u201ccivics,\u201d he explains, comes from the Latin civicus, <\/em>originally denoting being a member of a city or town. To be a good citizen entails acting in orderly ways, exhibiting behavior that is neither hostile nor obsequious.  In fact, citizens were expected to be forthright and speak truth to power.  (The notion that political speech should be \u201cpolite\u201d didn\u2019t arise until much later, which puts an interesting spin on our concept of civil discourse.).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, our temperature naturally rises when we talk about politics. The issues at stake are meaningful, at times existential.  This doesn\u2019t doom us for the kind of contention and polarization rife today. Polarization is a metaphor that depends on the idea that we are located far apart on a spectrum or continuum. Changing this ubiquitous metaphor can make a significant difference.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People aren\u2019t dots on a line. Placing ourselves and others along a horizontal axis between left to right only drives home our sense of polarization. However, if you ask the same set of questions to people claiming to be hard-core conservatives and dyed-in-the-wool liberals and plot their replies on an issues map, you end up a web that resembles nothing so much as a sprawling galaxy, with large planetary nodes indicating agreement and thin strands of difference emanating in isolated threads.  Studying one of these eerie planetary representations of our current politics can\u2019t help but lead you to conclude that we agree more than we often acknowledge.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter\u2019s own political philosophy may be summed up best in the title of one of his earlier books:  We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America.  <\/em>\u201cWe need less \u2018I\u201d and more \u2018We\u2019 in our civic life,\u201d he elaborates, with its echo of Martin Buber\u2019s I and Thou:  Practicing Living Dialogue<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To hear more about how civics, philosophy, ethics, and education meet at the crossroads, join us at the PLATO conference at Tufts on June 27-28.  Peter will have recently returned from Kyiv where he taught weeklong course in civics to Ukrainian citizens. It\u2019s part of a program that began in 2009, but this is the first time Peter\u2019s been there as the brutal, full-scale war drags on.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prepare your questions for him and the other panelists.  It’s a safe bet that they will all have a great deal to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Books cited above:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n