Nov. 5 has come and gone, and now an extremely polarized citizenry has the difficult task of re-unifying the country around not a president, but the founding ideals that have bolstered the American democracy for more than 230 years. This election year was unprecedented: two assassination attempts on a party nominee and former president, the running of the two oldest men in presidential election history, the dropping out of the sitting president from his reelection campaign and the abrupt ascension of the first black female presidential candidate with 100-some-odd days to either introduce herself to the nation and/or differentiate herself from a wildly unpopular administration. The discourse and rhetoric espoused during this campaign cycle was often flagrant and polarizing and will make the reunification of the American citizenry incredibly arduous.
If you have seen some of my previously published commentaries or are familiar with my civic engagement work at Rose State College, you are aware that I am a fervent advocate of a strong civil society — a place outside the reach of institutional politics in which citizens are able to come together to solve shared problems and build social capital. The basis of a healthy civil society is discourse, or the ability of citizens from all walks of life, regions of the country and ideological persuasions to have productive conversations in good faith regarding the maintenance of the democracy. It has become not just intimidating to have conversation about modern political issues, but in some instances, a threat to an individual’s livelihood, relationships or personal safety. This is due to the degradation of the American civil society and the erosion of trust that the two major parties and the candidates that they run for office care more about the country than partisan affiliation.
While it would be easy and academically lazy to simply detail for you my joy or dismay regarding the outcome of the November 2024 election, instead, I want to focus this postmortem on the possibility of a fresh start and reawakening of the American civil society via civil discourse. Civil discourse, as defined by The Ohio State’s Center for Ethics and Human Values, is “the practice of deliberating about matters of public concern in a way that seeks to expand knowledge and promote understanding”; the emphasis is on the not necessarily being polite but engaging in intentional conversation in good faith regarding collective problems and shared solutions. Civil discourse is the foundation of a vigorous civil society, which is the foundation of a dynamic, healthy democracy. As a professor of political science, I have discovered a tool to engage my multitude of community college students in dedicated dialogue on political issues each semester. Unify America is a beacon of civil discourse and has been grand eliminator of the intimidation barrier that many American youth (and adults) experience in relation to having the hard conversations about democratic maintenance and policy. Unify America was born out of a mission to replace partisan bickering with constructive political discourse, an idea at the core of this country’s founding. The Unify America College Bowl was launched in 2021, coming out of the global pandemic, at a time where the country was alienated and splintered.
The College Bowl begins with students registering and completing a demographic survey that gauges their political interests and priorities and matches them with another college student from across the country whose ideological background might be vastly different from their own to engage in an hourlong conversation. I have my students write a reflection essay about their experience, and over the course of the two years that I have deployed the Unify Challenge, I have read reflections and personal statements that moved me to my core. The first step to political engagement and action is removing the scary misperceptions that one does not know enough to participate or that the other party cannot be reasoned with. The Unify Challenge allows students to share goals and hopes for America across differences to bolster the American democracy. The Unify America Challenge is a real awakening for my younger students who have not lived “old-school” politics, where ideological opposites could have productive debate and still have a beer afterward. The Challenge allows them to come to the realization that as Americans, we have so much more in common than we have dissimilar as partisans, which is so critical to their willingness and enthusiasm to engage in future discourse and politics more generally. The Challenge is a hugely advantageous tool for the continuity of the American democracy in enabling citizens to access their political voices and wield them in a fashion that fosters communal trust, builds lasting coalitions and mobilizes political action. It is critical to me as a professor to break down the barriers of access to political participation. To me, that begins with learning how to converse across and through ideological differences, which is why I will continue to utilize Unify America and its Civic Gym for the foreseeable future to stimulate increased democratic participation at the state and national level.
What happened last Tuesday is only the end of democracy if we, the citizens, the stewards of this American democracy, allow the continued division of ourselves into siloed subsections of the population in service of party politics. When a democracy is as fractured as America seems to be at this juncture of the 21st century, the only remedy is discourse. There needs to be a recommitment on the part of the American public education system to teaching the concepts of democracy and the ways in which we become civically and politically active citizens. Due to the hyperpolarized and partisan environment, particularly surrounding the last three election cycles, there has been a growing tendency for K-12 schools to shy away from crucial civics education curriculum as well as opportunities to directly engage students with their government. We must do better as educators to ensure that the next generation not only understands, but intrinsically and deeply values the ideals of democracy. That begins with the ability to have constructive, honest dialogue about the ills of the nation and how to cure them in a manner that benefits the common good. The anger or enthusiasm that you feel in relation to the results of Tuesday’s election — let that emotion guide your engagement; let that fire fuel your mobilization and future political action. But I implore you to let that political action be tempered through civil discourse.
This article appears in Queen of Oklahoma.