Winter 2005
On Civil Discourse

After 19 years as a college president, I know and keep in touch with perhaps as many as 50 other presidents with whom I’ve worked over the years. When we talk, we inevitably find ourselves discussing what we perceive to be a decline in the civility of discourse on our campuses—especially that focused on politics, ethics and social issues.

We know, of course, that the term “civility” is contextual—that is, what is widely regarded to be civil discourse in one context or culture might be seen in another as quite uncivil. I’ll never forget reading and teaching an ethnography by the anthropologist Jean Briggs, Never in Anger, reporting on her lengthy field work among the Eskimo. In that culture, the most uncivil thing one could do was express anger of any kind at any level. Mastering her own cultural upbringing as an American, where in many situations we think it is good to “get things off our chests,” so that she could cease offending and complete her work, required powerful self-control and major re-learning of her “natural,” culturally learned responses to difficult situations.

In England and Canada , to take another example, Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons is a time for very tough questioning of the prime minister in ways that might seem quite uncivil here or in other countries where much greater public deference to political leaders is expected. So when we talk of civil discourse, we must remember how much the norms of civility differ across cultures and sub-cultures within societies.

We must also remember that people in positions of power in societies and organizations have a vested interest in a model of civil discourse that shuns and penalizes tough, awkward questioning of their words and actions. Leaders sometimes invoke rules of civil discourse to squelch legitimate dissent, and include norms of deference to them in what they mean by civil discourse. So it’s all quite messy.

That said, my presidential colleagues and I still note declines in the civility of discourse even when context is taken into account, and even after discounting for our natural desire for deference. How has that happened? What should a university do about it, if anything?

The first thing to say is that administrative leaders and faculty need to model appropriate and constructive civil discourse in their own behavior. It is hard to imagine that our students will engage in civil discourse if their role models do not. “Do as I say, not as I do” won’t get the job done—students will do as we do, not as we say. So if there is a need to clean up our own act—and I think there is—we must get about that business.

Similarly, it’s easy to imagine that today’s students have far fewer opportunities to observe constructive civil discourse, and participate in it, prior to coming to college. That is because in the last 30 years or so there has been a huge decline in the level of civic engagement in America of all kinds, only recently perhaps swinging back in the other direction. Members of our students’ parents’ generation have disconnected themselves from each other and from arenas of civic engagement where their children, now our students, could observe and see the constructive value of active listening, attacking arguments and not persons, putting oneself in the shoes of the other to try to understand from where they are coming. They come to us less skilled in civil discourse, and so then we have much more to teach.

Among the books I read this past summer is one of which you may have heard: Bowling Alone, by Robert D. Putnam. Putnam lays out in excruciating detail the data about how civic engagement has declined sharply in America since the early 1960s: political, civic, and religious participation have all declined; people make fewer connections with others in the workplace; and the number of informal social connections the average person maintains has also declined sharply (for example, having friends over for dinner); altruism, volunteering, and philanthropy have also declined on a per capita basis; felt obligations of reciprocity, the level of honesty, and the extent to which people trust each other have also declined. Overall, he paints a very discouraging picture of America today.

One major consequence of this decline, he argues, is less commitment to and success with democracy. Success with democracy, in my view, presupposes a citizenry that is at least moderately skilled in civil discourse—it assumes that citizens want to and can negotiate across differences to achieve just and appropriate political decisions.

This issue of the magazine explores a variety of dimensions to this problem, and gives examples of ways in which we are tackling civil discourse and civic engagement at St. Lawrence today. What we do will not change the world, but this is another way in which we must think globally and act locally—must do what we are able to do, and hope to be an inspiration to others to the extent that combined efforts scale up to a critical level. As always, we are interested in your views and responses to all of this. It is something we are taking very, very seriously.