Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
Amendment, lesbian/gay rights, abortion, and religious issues,
among other things.
The resulting “culture wars”
“My hope is that
through historically informed
public reflection
on the proper relationship
between the public and its
colleges, we might be able
to hasten a reconnection
of higher education to
public life. Then perhaps
colleges and universities
can once again meet public
needs, this time through
facilitating the hard work
of public-building and by
fostering the practices of
deliberative democracy.”
(“The Public and Its
Colleges: Reflections on
the History of American
Higher Education,”
HEX, 1998.)
accelerated with the end of the
cold war, when conservatives and
others gained greater political
space to turn their attention more
fully toward perceived problems
inherent in American culture. In
1992, Pat Buchanan declared,
“There is a religious war going
on in our country for the soul of
America. It is a cultural war, as
critical to the kind of nation we
will one day be as was the Cold
War itself.” Media coverage of
the culture wars portrayed the
public as hopelessly divided into
two warring camps, and this highlighted
the need for people to come
together and find common ground.
Second, partially in response
to the culture wars that threatened
to pull America apart, many
citizens began calling for a more
deliberative approach to political
and social conflict. For example,
in 1981 National Issues Forums
(NIF)—first called the Domestic
Policy Association—was founded to foster deliberation and give
citizens a larger role in setting the normative direction for public
policy. Over the past 25 years, NIF, “a network of civic, educational,
and other organizations, and individuals, whose common interest is
to promote public deliberation in America,… has grown to include
thousands of civic clubs, religious organizations, libraries, schools,
and many other groups that meet to discuss critical public issues.”
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