By DCI Fellows Saeran Dewar ‘28 and Oliver Genovese ‘28

The “Middle Ground” Model

Jubilee’s Middle Ground series has garnered millions of views online. Jubilee is a digital media company that brings people from various backgrounds together to film content to post online, generally with the ethos of encouraging empathy in uncomfortable situations. Middle Ground, one of their most viral formats, has three people on two sides of a controversial issue step forward to a circle of chairs if they agree with a given statement, with the disagreers eventually joining the circle to discuss.

You may have seen this video they did on Trump supporters vs immigrants on the immigration issue. On their website, Jubilee writes, “Middle Ground explores whether two different groups of people, opposed in their beliefs, can come together empathetically and find middle ground.” However, we noticed that the structure of the conversation itself is not conducive to participants engaging empathetically or finding the middle ground featured in the title of the series.

We thought it would be a great idea to bring the same concept to Davidson to promote more robust deliberation within the Middle Ground model. In our case, we chose to have a deliberative dialogue on immigration. Some problems that we noticed, though, with typical Jubilee Middle Ground videos are that participants often do not engage with each other respectfully, instead making hasty generalizations and assuming ill intentions on the part of their opponents.

In order to create a more robust conversation that aligns with the DCI’s deliberative principles, we selected participants from across the political spectrum who are generally politically active on campus. By doing so, we were able to facilitate a better conversation that did not put any participants at a disadvantage. We will not reveal our deliberators’ identity in order to maintain their anonymity, only referring to them by their preferred ideological labels. 

What We Changed

To address the flaws we saw in the original Jubilee format, we implemented several changes to make the process more deliberative. First, we read DCI’s Conversation Agreements at the beginning of the discussion. While this was a minor change, clearly stating expectations at the outset so participants knew what kind of engagement was expected of them, and what they could expect from others, helped set the tone for the event. Agreements such as “assume the best – and not the worst – about the intentions and values of others” as well as “avoid speaking in absolutes” are often absent from Jubilee discussions.

Second, we implemented a beginning section with a chance for introductions and casual conversation. They got to share a bit of background about themselves and engage in small talk before the real substance of the discussion began. Entering a deliberation where you know you are going to encounter vastly different opinions than your own can be intimidating, but seeing non-politicized sides of people helped deliberators humanize each other beforehand.

Additionally, Davidson being a small environment, the deliberators had already mostly interacted with each other on some level and were not strangers. We thought putting strangers in a room together who know nothing about each other could hinder their inclinations to be charitable to one another.

Also, Saeran served as a facilitator throughout the discussion. Many Jubilee videos lack a facilitator, meaning that all participants have to engage in a dog fight for airtime. As facilitator, Saeran posed questions to the group, chose when to invite disagreers into the circle and invited those who had not spoken in a while into the conversation, keeping participation as even as possible and making sure everyone was heard.

Lastly, and perhaps most significantly, the discussion was held in a private space and was not filmed. Because participants were able to engage in the deliberation in a more low-stakes fashion, they were more likely to agree to participate as well as be candid with their contributions and fearlessly engage with others’ perspectives as well.

How It Went

Although he was not originally supposed to participate as a deliberator, due to unforeseen circumstances causing one participant being unable to attend, Oliver ended up joining the Jubilee discussion. The discussion from the start involved both sides crossing partisan lines, including a neo-conservative and a liberal student, both disagreeing with the statement that all Americans are immigrants.

While the six deliberators crossed party lines numerous times to agree with the other side on a statement, a key party-line disagreement came with the following statement: “Having a massive influx of immigrants into the United States erodes American culture.” The conservative students argued over the threat of non-Western cultures, such as non-Christian beliefs, eroding the culture of the United States. On the other hand, liberal students argued that the “melting pot” nature of American culture and the diversity within it is a key strength of the United States, and thus all cultures should be welcomed.

The conservatives emphasized specific rules associated with Islam that they believed could undermine American democracy, such as a woman’s testimony in court accounting for only half of a man’s. Some conservative students emphasized the Christian founding of the US and that an influx of other cultures would disrupt the nation. The liberal students argued that those choosing to come to the US do so because they want to improve their lived circumstances and thereby contribute positively to the US. The disagreement over the statement ended with both sides accepting that there were differences in opinion on the impact of welcoming non-Western cultures on American values and society.

Overall, the deliberation itself was more respectful and engaging than those in Jubilee Middle Ground videos online. At times in Jubilee videos, participants are more apprehensive and seem to only listen to get their point out and respond, but in our deliberation project, the participants seemed to listen thoughtfully and find points of agreement. Not only did the participants seem to actively listen, but due to their knowledge about current political events, the arguments were mostly fact-based, which helped foster a more robust dialogue that revolved around the argument itself rather than attacking other people’s character.

Reflection

If we were to run another mock Jubilee discussion, we would want to allow more time for the event. Realistically, it is difficult to ask student volunteers to devote more than an hour and a half of their time on any given day, but at least two hours would make a big difference for the depth of discussion deliberators are able to have and the disagreements they are able to dig into. Saeran had to cut off a fascinating conversation on the question of the erosion of American culture due to time constraints, but she would’ve loved to see that discussion go on longer.

Additionally, the diversity of viewpoints represented on the right-leaning side was not exactly mirrored on the left-leaning side, which was slightly more homogenous. We could not have precisely anticipated each participant’s precise political leanings beforehand, but more viewpoint diversity on the left might have made for a more enriching experience.

Overall, the process of planning our mock Jubilee “Middle Ground” was a great experience, and hearing the deliberators engage with each other head-on was fascinating and incredibly encouraging to see them deliberate so thoughtfully, respectfully, and boldly.

The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.

By Candice Thomas (2024-25 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)

As a natural scientist, deliberation wasn’t initially on my radar as something to integrate into my courses. I primarily teach Human Anatomy and Physiology (A&P) and Nutrition courses, and I tend to approach those topics as a platform to inform others about how the body works (A&P) and how to nourish it (Nutrition). I didn’t think that there was much room for discussion in these courses because, in my mind, I just present the facts.

It didn’t take long for me to discover that I might need to reconsider. In my Nutrition course, the idea of adding deliberation as a meaningful approach to difficult topics presented itself when we started to move into more controversial topics such as food deserts and sustainability. I initially approached these topics as I had any other, just present the facts, but then one brave student raised their hand and added their own lived experience into the discussion. Soon, others weighed in and a whole spectrum of unique lived experiences and perspectives presented themselves.

It became apparent very quickly that I would need to allow time for more meaningful discussions in my courses that do not fit neatly into the framework of what is presented in a textbook. I really enjoyed these initial discussions, but I wasn’t certain how to navigate them. I didn’t know how to ensure that every voice was heard, and the environment felt safe and productive for each student in the room. So, when I learned about the DeeP Collaborative, I finally saw a path forward in which I could introduce discourse into the classroom setting in a meaningful and productive way.

Equipped with a roadmap for how to incorporate deliberation into the classroom, I headed into a course that was new to me, Senior Seminar for Health Sciences, this past spring semester. This course serves as the capstone course for all our Health Science students and is a last stop summative experience before they graduate. I saw this as an opportunity to really help our students navigate difficult conversations in a productive way before they left the safety of the college to enter into the real world.

By its very nature, careers in healthcare require that providers interact with a diverse population of patients, caretakers, and others each with their own unique perspective based on lived experiences and background. It isn’t a far stretch to imagine that any of those interactions may be challenging to navigate. Sometimes, I feel that when students graduate, we are throwing them into the fire and hopeful that they will just figure things out without any real guardrails or tools in place to help them with these specific challenges around discourse.

I viewed this course as an opportunity to empower students to think creatively and listen empathetically and truly connect with their future cliental. Ultimately, I decided to introduce controversial topics into the Health Sciences Senior Seminar course and to use deliberation to allow students to express, defend, and consider diverse perspectives in a formal way. My goal was that students could take this experience with them into the next step on their journey and appreciate that they don’t have to agree with everything that everyone says or does, but it is important to be respectful of others and consider their stories. I believe this to be a very important piece of the puzzle in healthcare.

The capstone course had several requirements built in that were not possible to alter as these assignments are required for program assessment. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the ways that I could use the course objectives and projects that were already in place to integrate deliberation into the course. For example, students are required to use published literature in their field of study to write a paper. In preparation, students read several primary literature articles and come to class prepared to discuss them with the instructor and their peers. Students are also required to prepare a presentation based on primary literature, journal club style, walking their peers through the article and fielding questions about the paper.

I decided to use these activities and assignments to have students present a perspective and support it with evidence in the form of peer reviewed primary literature. This served as the expertise on the topic. In addition, I asked students to create a deliberation guide on the topic they presented. As a class, the students selected three controversial topics in healthcare that they were most interested in exploring further.  Students then ranked the topics in order of the topic they were most interested in presenting to the topic they were least interested in. 

There were 18 students in the course, and with three general topics, I was able to split the class up into three groups of six. For each topic, one group of six students was assigned to be the presenters and moderators on their deliberation day (“the organizers”); the other 12 students would serve as participants (“the deliberators”) in the deliberation. The six student “organizers” for a topic were randomly assigned a “side” to defend such that three students would present and defend one side, and the other three students would present and defend the other side.  One group presented one day and the next group presented the following day. These six students then created a comprehensive deliberation guide as a group project and distributed them to the 12 student deliberators for that topic.

On the deliberation day, the student organizers who presented and created the deliberation guides served as deliberation moderators in one way or another, either as the facilitator, devil’s advocate, or rule enforcer. By deliberation day, the deliberating students were to have read two papers, one in favor of a “side” and the other in favor of the other “side,” and the organizing students’ deliberation guide. At the deliberation they were randomly assigned to one of two groups as participants (just to limit the size of the deliberation). Each group needed to come up with a policy that they could all agree on by the end of the deliberation. Each student then completed a reflection. Then for the next topic, the next group of six (six different students) served as facilitators and the process repeated twice.

In the deliberations, the deliberating students came into the deliberation with their own lived experiences, beliefs and values; they were not assigned a position or side. The weeks that preceded this portion of the course were spent learning about deliberation, the creation of deliberation guides and deliberation day rules, and participation in a practice deliberation that I facilitated so that student facilitators were prepared to do it themselves. I did not participate in the deliberations myself and was therefore able to observe and take notes on what I heard and saw to provide insight before the next deliberation and adjust as necessary for future sections.

What I learned is that students really enjoyed participating in deliberations. They enjoyed the formal structure and the fact that there was some oversight by the facilitators that created a safe space to share. Students were able to realize the value of this activity and how it could help them approach difficult conversations in the future. I also enjoyed this aspect of my course; it was very different from what I am used to doing and caused me to step outside of my comfort zone and try something very different. As an educator it is important for me to challenge myself, not be afraid to try new things, and model that for my students.

There were a few areas for improvement as well. It is critical that students come to the deliberations prepared. I found that student participants weren’t reading the papers that were presented on each topic by the facilitators, so they weren’t able to expand much upon what the literature stated, making some of the discussion a bit generic. The unprepared students would often just agree with what someone else already contributed but didn’t add to the conversation. I also found that trying to integrate three deliberations into the course was a bit much. The students and I could benefit from taking a bit more time on the background of deliberation and the importance of it. 

I will continue to incorporate deliberation into my courses but with a few changes. The first change that I will make is to slow down and reduce the number of formal deliberations that we do. I will spend more time on the background of deliberations and work through a couple of example case studies. I have also decided to integrate controversial topics into their final capstone paper in a way that the students have a more vested interest in the deliberation process. Finally, to ensure that students read the literature and engage more with the subject matter, I will have all students reflect on each article and contribute to the creation of a collaborative deliberation guide.

 I am now teaching the second section of the Senior Seminar in which I will implement these changes for a more improved experience with deliberation for my students. I have learned from speaking with students in this new class that some of them have even chosen to sign up for this section of the course so that they can participate in the deliberative process. I find this to be a promising step in the right direction, and I am honored to be part of that process.

As we begin implementing our federal FIPSE grant to assist 100 higher education institutions in developing their own civil discourse programs, the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative (DCI) and Deliberative Citizenship Network (DCN) are delighted to welcome three new staff members to our growing team.

Anne-Marie Moehring joins us as Program Director for the DCI and DCN. She will serve as the programs’ chief operational leader, coordinate our work with DCN partner institutions and support the implementation of our interconnected training, deliberation, and outreach programs. Anne-Marie brings extensive experience in strategic communications, change management, and the administration of federally and state-funded initiatives.

David Callaway will serve as Assistant Director for Training Programs. David will lead the design and delivery of training experiences that equip faculty, staff, students, and community members to facilitate productive dialogue and deliberation. He brings more than a decade of experience working at the intersection of public policy, education, pluralism, religious freedom, and civic engagement.

Bob Ritchie is our new Assistant Director for Civil Discourse Programs. Bob will coordinate DCI programs hosted at Davidson that partner institutions in the Deliberative Citizenship Network will be able to join. These include the DCI Fellows Program, Deliberative Forums, D Teams, and guest speaker events. His background combines higher education teaching, civic engagement, public sector leadership, and extensive federal and local public service.

We are thrilled to have Anne-Marie, David, and Bob on board as we expand opportunities for productive engagement across differences at Davidson and throughout the growing Deliberative Citizenship Network. Please join us in welcoming them!

By Garratt Rothberg ’27

Garratt Rothberg ‘27, along with the Center for Political Engagement, hosted a speaker event and deliberation on media bias, misinformation, and media literacy. The event began with a presentation by Isaac Saul, the founder of Tangle News, who spoke about his experience founding a news organization dedicated to unbiased and balanced reporting in a media landscape rife with highly politicized news outlets. 

Following Isaac’s talk, the audience of students and community members took part in an interactive Menti poll on topics such as their personal media consumption habits and their confidence in navigating media bias. Through Menti, participants saw each other’s selections to each question in real time, allowing them to get a sense of how news consumption attitudes differed throughout the crowd. Many of the results from the Menti poll sparked surprise among the audience, leading them into a deliberation on the generational divides in views towards media polarization. 

While the group discussed their own news habits and encounters with misinformation, Isaac answered questions and provided additional background knowledge from his career as a news editor. After the event, Garratt compiled the results of the Menti poll to create an infographic displaying key findings from the poll, which will be posted on social media pages and distributed around campus.

The discussion emphasized the importance of nonpartisan news sources, as well as the challenges towards democracy that a highly politicized media presents. Deliberation allowed audience members of different generations to better understand each other’s views and habits, demonstrating that deliberation is a critical tool in building a sense of mutual understanding among diverse groups.

By Casey Scheiner ’28 (DCI Senior Fellow and Co-Convener)

In anticipation of the beginning of the Deliberative Citizenship Network, which will support over 100 universities in their development of deliberative programs on campus, the DCI took its show on the road this spring to UNC Charlotte. In Professor Jon Overton’s 60 student sociology course on Polarization and Social Conflict in America, Dr. Bullock, Co-Convener Stephen Walker, Fellow Aditya Pratap Singh Phogat, and I presented on what the DCI is, the kinds of conversations we host, and how students can apply our deliberative dispositions and conversation agreements in their own discussions. With deep background knowledge from the class they were taking, the students were well-equipped to understand the importance of conversations like the ones the DCI hosts for bridging divides in a deeply polarized society.

After we spoke to the class for about 20 minutes, we launched into the deliberation. Our topic was one that students with various degrees of political knowledge could all get invested in, given its universal importance to members of our generation: economic mobility and the American Dream. Professor Overton selected this guide from the early years of the DCI, and it held up remarkably well as an issue of consistent concern for the students in the class. With the four of us from the DCI as well as Professor Overton’s two graduate student TAs facilitating, students brought various perspectives to the table, agreeing on affordability and economic opportunity as major issues of our time, but disagreeing on how to solve or even diagnose the problems. For instance, when we discussed the housing crisis, some deliberators contended it was an issue of insufficient supply, while others felt it boiled down to excessive corporate ownership of a sufficient housing supply. This then informed how they approached solutions, with the former group advocating more for policies to incentivize greater housing development and the latter group pushing to deconsolidate large companies’ property ownership.

All in all, both the presentation and the deliberation were major successes. The students were engaged and interested in our presentation, seeming to crave a deliberative outlet where they could express their thoughts. In the deliberation, they made my job easy, participating eagerly and asking thoughtful follow-up questions of one another. As we prepare to share the DCI’s approach next year through the DCN, the experience at UNC Charlotte was a terrific reminder of the number of campuses around the country rich with enthusiasm to deliberate on our nation’s biggest issues.

By Aditya Pratap Singh Phogat ’29 (DCI Fellow)

The idea of deliberative democracy is something that can be sustained only when there are people willing to commit themselves to the cause of responsible citizenship. To be courageous enough to speak, to listen to what one’s peers have to say, and critically engage with such “theses” and “antitheses” is the foundation of a sustainable community, and the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative appears to be in a continuous quest to cultivate such a culture of valour.

My time with the DCI has so far permitted me to explore the idea of deliberative discourse and apply it here at Davidson College through our D Teams that attempt to bring students, faculty, and community members from across the socio-political spectrum together at a single platform as equals to discuss some of the most polarizing issues the United States faces today. To be certain, the DCI’s work to foster a deliberative atmosphere in our community has certainly led to positive outcomes. Co-inhabitants of this ecosystem are less likely to engage in adversarial conflict with a zero-sum, “warrior” mindset, are more open to receiving ideas that differ vastly from their own, and most importantly, are willing to refuse to believe the worst of their fellow human beings. 

Seeing the persistence of such a mechanism here at Davidson is in startling contrast to the ugly political adversariality and ad hominemism that pervades the national system of governance here in the United States and on the global stage at large. One therefore might be forgiven for wondering if the DCI is able to prevail in a bubble of a small town where both the walls of its buildings and the polite Southern manners of its inhabitants haven’t changed all that much. Is the principle of deliberative citizenship able to operate exceptionally at Davidson because of the exceptional circumstances it is placed in? This is a question that stung me more times than I can count during my time with the DCI.

That is, until it stung less after our excursion at Duke University.

This past spring the DCI was invited to cover facilitation skills in Duke’s POLSCI 112L, Devil’s Advocate: Exploring Pluralism, Free Inquiry, and Belonging. Offering a crash course on deliberative citizenship to a hundred-odd students in an hour followed by a mock deliberation on social safety nets in a second hour certainly was a challenging task, but it also had a significant set of rewarding results. I saw students cycle through the roles of deliberator, disruptor, and facilitator as they discussed pressing problems with genuine commitment to the fundamental principle underlying deliberative discourse – critical engagement with diverse perspectives with an open mind and a set of alert ears. 

During the deliberative exercise that followed their training, I served as the facilitator for a dozen engineering students from different social and even national settings. The topic of social safety nets required them to enter into the politico-economic realm, and it was heartening to see them talk about sensitive issues without fear of judgement in an environment where their equality as individuals and the acceptance of their experiences was guaranteed in our deliberations. My discussions with individual members of my D Team allowed me to see their earnest hopefulness for the possibility of a deliberative environment on the Duke campus and in their own communities and affirmed my own trust in the principles of deliberative discourse. 

Yes, it will take effort. Yes, it will take determination. Yes, it will take a great deal of courage to get out of our own communities to bring about positive change in others. At the end of the day, however, all of it counts as we strengthen our belief that words are a better alternative to violence and attempt to institutionalize it in environments that desperately need it. For me, deliberative citizenship is not sourced from our exceptional circumstances, but rather from the will to get the job done. All we need is that will and the means to perpetuate it across communities. once we have the will and the way, we will start bringing change to the ugliness that currently plagues our public sphere.

By Bolling Lewis ’28 (DCI Fellow)

On February 12th, I, along with six fellow DCI members, packed into a rented Jeep Wagoneer and set out on a daunting goal of bringing deliberation to Duke University. We had been invited to introduce our approach to facilitating constructive deliberations on challenging topics to a university class exploring the challenges and opportunities of pluralism in modern society. Students in the class would be hosting small group discussions at Duke following an upcoming expert roundtable on justice and the rule of law, and we were tasked with putting on an interactive class workshop on how best to organize and facilitate their deliberations.    

Since the inception of the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative in 2020, the task of including as many people as possible in the conversation has centered around engaging a small two-thousand-person liberal arts campus. Word of mouth, deliberative forums, and inclusion of dialogue in course materials have all been successful ways to hear new perspectives and experiences from the Davidson community. Yet, such effective methods can be rendered useless in a different environment. Duke, in many ways, is the exact opposite of Davidson, with an almost 18,000-person student body, an emphasis on research, and little exposure to formal deliberation. All the signs pointed  to a big question: were the successes we’ve had at Davidson transferrable to other campuses and contexts? 

Huddled in the car for our two-hour journey to Durham, we reviewed our plan for the visit. We collectively stressed the importance of emphasizing deliberative dispositions and the realistic challenges of facilitating conversations at another campus. With Professor Bullock, head of the DCI program and our faculty leader for the trip, at the wheel, we discussed the size disparity between the average Davidson and Duke classroom. We realized that we should be prepared for students who may not be as well versed in small-group conversations, given their significantly larger class sizes. With this in mind, we mapped out how we would introduce the principles and practices of deliberative dialogue in a context very different from our own. 

Upon arrival, we quickly headed towards the academic buildings and were guided through a maze of hallways to finally arrive at our lecture hall. Once again, the stark contrast between Davidson and Duke was glaring when we arrived in our room. The class seated roughly a hundred students, tightly packed together, in a room roughly three times the size of any Chambers classroom. Still, despite the differences, the Duke students seemed quite receptive to the idea of deliberation. They asked questions and engaged with the practice prompts. Furthermore, they listened attentively to the dispositions we presented in the lecture hall, and after about sixty minutes of presentations (we each presented a different dimension of effective facilitation), we split into breakout groups based on career aspirations to put the ideas into practice.

My breakout session featured mainly pre-law students. The discussion, which centered around welfare, social security, and liberty, went exceptionally well. Despite the fact that no one in the conversation had participated in a structured deliberation before, they all jumped in to provide insights and perspectives about the topics. Some students integrated law-based arguments, while others focused on personal anecdotes. To me, it appeared as if the Duke students were naturals who had simply not had the opportunity to engage in an organized deliberative dialogue. They often wrestled with difficult ideas, including social security reform and efficient government spending, acknowledging that they could not solve everything today, but that the discussion of the issue was an important step forward. There were undoubtedly awkward moments, or periods of silence that created discomfort, but by the end, the conversation felt both casual and purposeful.

When the conversation wrapped up, I joined the reception dinner and discovered that many other DCI Fellows had similar experiences. In spite of the surface-level differences, the Duke students quickly picked up deliberation. Every conversation had its ups and downs, but the core concept of sharing viewpoints in a safe space to listen and learn from others was successfully passed along. On the car ride back to Davidson, we all took turns reflecting on the afternoon at Duke; one of my main takeaways I expressed was how easily a different community picked up the unique skill of deliberation. Personally, it gave me another reason to believe in the DCI mission. In just two hours, another institution fully embraced some of the hardest skills in modern society: listening to others, expressing one’s own beliefs, and disagreeing respectfully.

By Mohamed Mostafa ’26 (DCI Fellow)

As a senior, I have found that some of the most meaningful conversations I’ve had about the future did not happen in classrooms or career workshops but with friends trying together to make sense of what comes next.

In one of those conversations, a friend told me plainly that he did not see a social responsibility tied to his career choice. For him, the goal was stability: a well-paying job to support his family. He wasn’t dismissive of social impact or contribution but rather that those considerations came second, if at all. What struck me was not the position itself, but how often I had heard it before.

Across conversations with classmates, a pattern began to be obvious. Many of us had entered college with language about making a difference, contributing to society, or pursuing meaningful careers. Yet as senior year approached, those ideas often became harder to prioritize. Conversations shifted toward job security, salaries, and the pressure to “figure it out.” The question was no longer just what we cared about, but what felt safe and financially rewarding.

In many ways, this shift is understandable. College is often framed as an investment and something we pursue to secure our futures, justify its cost, and create stability for ourselves and our families. For some students, especially those navigating financial pressures or immigration constraints, choosing a stable and predictable path is not simply a preference but a responsibility. In this light, prioritizing individual success can reflect responsibility and obligation rather than self-interest alone.

Yet, this framing feels incomplete.

At Davidson, we are reminded that education is not only about personal advancement, but about preparing students “for lives of leadership and service.” Implicit in that vision is the idea that our choices, especially those related to our careers, are not neutral. They shape not only our own lives, but also the communities and systems we become part of.

This is where the tension becomes more difficult to ignore. If college is both a private good and a public one, therefore the decisions we make are not simply about what we can achieve, but about how we choose to contribute. Yet in practice, the structures surrounding us (recruiting cycles, prestige hierarchies, and cultural expectations) often reward paths that are relatively safe, stable, and individually beneficial. In that environment, it becomes easier to measure success by outcomes we can point to, rather than impact that is harder to quantify.

Still, the conversations I’ve had suggest that this is an unresolved question. When friends speak about choosing more secure paths, they often do so with a quiet awareness of what may be left out of the conversation. And when others pursue work more explicitly oriented toward service or impact, they usually do so with an understanding of the risks involved. Neither path is arbitrary. Both are shaped by values, constraints, and competing responsibilities.

What feels missing is not clarity, but space to deliberate about these tradeoffs more openly. Too often, decisions are made under pressure, guided by urgency rather than reflection. We compare outcomes without fully understanding the motivations behind them. We assume that certain paths are more responsible than others, without asking responsible to whom?

Deliberation offers a way to approach these questions differently. It does not resolve the tension between personal success and social impact, but it allows us to examine it more honestly and understand where each position is coming from. It asks us to consider not only what we want, but what we owe to our families, to our communities, and to the society we are part of.

One concrete example of creating such space at Davidson was the Values and Vocations Forum, a dialogue program Coralyn Cairns ’29 and I helped organize in partnership with the Matthews Center for Career Development, Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion. This 90-minute interactive session brought together students, staff, and faculty to reflect on how personal values like impact, integrity, and non-compromise areas intersect with career choices amid real-world tradeoffs, such as organizational missions, business practices, and ethical complexities. Through structured activities including individual reflections, pair-shares, and small-group case studies on scenarios like working for education tech firms or defense companies with mixed impacts, participants engaged in honest, non-prescriptive deliberation that revealed shared tensions between stability, personal beliefs, and societal contribution. This event fostered the exploration of “for me or for us” that has felt missing in other similar conversations.

As I prepare to leave Davidson College, I find myself thinking less about finding The Answer and more about asking better questions. What does it mean to live a life of service in practical terms? How do we balance stability with contribution? And perhaps most importantly, what are we willing to prioritize when those goals come into conflict?

While I have come to better understand how attractive stability and individual success are, I am also left with the sense that an education like this asks something more of us. Not necessarily that we reject personal ambition, but that we position it within a broader sense of responsibility. That we remain attentive to the impact of our choices, even when they are difficult to measure or pursue.

If college has prepared us for anything, it may not be certainty about what comes next, but a deeper awareness of the stakes involved in our decisions. In that sense, the question is not simply whether college is for ourselves or for something larger. It is whether we are willing to carry both and to act with intention when they pull us in different directions.

On March 24th, The Deliberative Citizenship Initiative wrapped up its American Values Deliberative Forum series with its final installment, Justice and the Rule of Law: The Case of Constitutional Rights and Judicial Interpretation.

Our watch party brought together more than 50 students, faculty, staff, and community members to watch a livestream of the panel that was being held live at Duke University. Attendees gathered in Hance Auditorium and enjoyed refreshments and a popcorn bar during the event.

The roundtable explored questions surrounding constitutional rights, judicial interpretation, and the role of the courts in shaping how justice is understood and applied. As the final event in the series, it offered participants one last opportunity to hear directly from experts grappling with complex and timely issues in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

While the watch party itself centered on viewing the discussion, it also served as an important entry point into deeper engagement. Participants will continue these conversations in upcoming D Team sessions, where they will have the opportunity to reflect, deliberate, and share their own perspectives in a more interactive setting.

With strong attendance throughout the series, DCI’s live forums and watch parties have created space for the community to come together, engage with expert insights, and prepare for meaningful dialogue beyond the event itself.

Missed the event or want to watch it again? Click Here to view the recording! You can also check out our flyer and deliberation guide for the event below.

Thank you to those of you who shared topics ideas for our Deliberative Forums and D Teams next year. We have organized the 60(!) topics that were submitted into 15 broad themes and questions, and we would love your feedback on which ones you find most interesting and compelling for our 2026-27 programs. If you complete this short survey by next Wednesday (May 20), we’ll take your responses into account as we decide on what topics to cover in the coming academic year.

2026-27 DCI Topics Survey

Thanks in advance for your input!