Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
or “very important,” in 2000 only twenty-eight percent thought so
—”the lowest percentage” since the freshman-year survey began
and particularly striking in a presidential election year.
In response to these changes in public life, “democratic theory”
developed as an academic field within higher education that explicitly
seeks to strengthen American democracy. While Benjamin R.
Barber’s Strong Democracy (1984), Robert Bellah’s Habits of the Heart:
Individualism and Commitment in American Life (1985), and Jürgen
Habermas’ The Transformation of the Public Sphere (trans. 1989) constitute
foundational works in the field, it wasn’t until the 1990s that
democratic theory really took off. During that decade, Amatai
Etzioni was pivotal in developing and popularizing communitarianism,
which seeks to empower communities and revitalize public
life. Michael Sandel popularized the communitarian critique of
liberalism with his book Democracy’s Discontent (1996). That same
year, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson published Democracy
and Disagreement, making the case for public deliberation. Many
other authors also played an important role in developing the academic
field of democratic theory. These academic ideas both shaped
and mirrored changes in the public sphere and gave intellectual
support to efforts to revitalize higher education’s civic mission.
A Fork in the Road
Today we are in a period of tremendous flux, and we face
the proverbial fork in the road. Will American democracy continue
down the path of liberal individualism and partisan conflict, even
if that means important public problems that require collective
action will remain unaddressed? Or will we move in a more participatory
and deliberative direction? While higher education in
many ways mirrors the larger society, it also plays a role in shaping
society as well. If people want a more civically engaged democracy
that does a better job of addressing public problems, higher education
should once again explicitly embrace a strong civic mission
and play its historic role in helping democracy work as it should.
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