Demetri L. Morgan
And so I think there’s opportunities all that to say, well, we can play a role right next higher ed can’t do all of the socialization around politics. But I think we have a really unique and important role and the opportunities that we have to have those conversations to think about, wow, you know, what happened on Tuesday at the Iowa or Monday on the at the Iowa caucuses? What did you see? What did you hear? What was interesting? How does that relate to where you grew up? How was it different? And those probing questions, get students to think right, and help them think about their own values around the experiences.

Heather Shea
Welcome to Student Affairs NOW the online learning community for Student Affairs educators. I’m your host, Heather Shea. Today on the podcast, I’m welcoming back to folks who have participated in previous episodes, to talk a bit about their joint work on a project that came from the Institute for Democracy in higher education, called Democracy Re-Designed, which I learned about in November ash last year. And as I thinking about this, we’re nearing the 2024 election. In fact, we’re recording this episode just a couple of days after the Iowa caucuses. And there seems to be a fair amount of conversation about the risks to democracy in the US. And as a student affairs educator, as we collectively seek to engage students in discussing dissecting, reinventing, you know, identifying their own democratic values that we need to have in 2024 and beyond. I was really excited to welcome Demetri and Adam, to the show today. So their offices as well as the IDE he or the Institute for Democracy in higher ed, our resources to look to, and this new model that we’ll be talking about today about to be unveiled is an incredible tool. So thank you both for being here today. It’s great to have you. Before we open Yeah, before I welcome both of them on I’m going to just say a little bit about the podcast and about our sponsors for today. So Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you find these conversations make a contribution to the field and our restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays, and you can find us at studentaffairsnow.com on YouTube or anywhere you listen to podcasts. This episode would not be possible without the support of one of our new sponsors Routledge Taylor Francis, you can view their complete catalogue of authoritative education titles at www.routledge.com/education. And this episode is also sponsored by LeaderShape go to leader shape.org To learn how they can work with you to create a just caring and thriving world. As I mentioned, I’m the host for today’s episode, Heather Shea, my pronouns are she, her and her. And I am broadcasting from the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the Anishinabeg, three fires confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi peoples, otherwise known as East Lansing, Michigan, home of Michigan State University where I work. So let’s get on to the conversation. Welcome back to both of you. So excited to have this conversation today. Maybe we can begin with each of you. Providing a brief introduction, talk a little bit about your role, your work as part of it and and solve I know there’s That’s an acronym that one of you will tell us about. And then generally how you got involved in this project, and maybe a little bit more about your work on your respective campuses as well. And how you’re entering today’s conversation. I’m hopeful, but I I am curious what you both think. So Adam, we’ll start with you. Welcome back.

Adam Gismondi
Thanks for having me to meet you today. It’s exciting to be back and talking about one of my favorite topics. I would say I’m entering the conversation today determined so I wouldn’t say either optimistic or pessimistic or anything but determined to identify and help solve problems, I guess. So I direct and solve, which is the national study of learning voting and engagement. It’s the largest study of student voting in the country at Tufts University. And prior to that, I was director of impact at the Institute for Democracy and higher education. Until recently, it he was sort of the umbrella organization that has unsolved and was also located at IDG. It and our founder, Nancy Thomas is now at AACU and yeah, I’m sure we’ll talk more about that today. She was one of the partners in this work. And yeah, it’s been exciting to work with Demitri on this project. So I’ll I’ll turn it over to you now.

Heather Shea
Great. Welcome, Demitri.

Demetri L. Morgan
Thanks so much. Really excited to be here with you, Heather and Adam. I’ll see ya. So I’m Demitri. You see him pronouns. I’m a faculty member. For Loyola University Chicago, I have been connected to Tufts and IDG. And Adam and Nancy for a few years now. But the way I got into this work, like most kind of really involved undergraduate student leaders, a lot of my sort of political sensemaking, and understandings happened, as I was involved in fraternity sorority life or participating in, you know, student clubs and activities. And so as I moved through graduate school and continued to have opportunities to work with students, I kind of saw that this idea of how people were engaging in politics was becoming an increasing feature of how people not only identified but also how it impacted, enveloped so many other components of campus life. And so did my dissertation work on the student identity or political identity development of students and kind of bridge some of our kind of Og Student Development theories and try and merge them with sort of organizational thinking. So what happens and so I was thinking in very similar ways, so the ways that Adam and Nancy Thomas and others were thinking about this kind of how complex this kind of political landscape is. And so we’ve, you know, been partners over the last few years working on trying to continue to kind of think through provide resources and tools for different members of the community. And so really excited to talk about some of those today.

Heather Shea
Well, it’s really exciting. It was such an awesome session at ash. And I learned a lot. And it’s exciting to be able to talk about this right in this kind of moment in time, too. So this is a really timely conversation. But Demetri, let’s stay with you for a moment because I want to, like, just for basic definition purposes, let’s begin with what is democracy? How do you define democracy? What are the fundamental principles and practices of democratic participation? And policymaking? And, and we’ll kind of go from there. So let’s give some like basics for our audience.

Demetri L. Morgan
I love this question as a former political science major, and, you know, as somebody who kind of, you know, lives in drinks and sleeps, the sort of political theater of it all. And on the one hand, it’s a super hard question, because it’s all of those things you just mentioned. And depending on who you’re talking to, and what context you’re talking about, it means different things to different people. So one of the things that I’ve appreciated about how tufts in it, he has even helped me to kind of simplify but still be rigorous in how we understand democracy is we talk about kind of two concepts. It’s one of those is that is this idea that democracy is a form of governance, meaning that it’s made up of systems and structures and policies. So think about things like the Constitution, you know, the Bill of Rights, the way that our justice system is set up the separation of powers, the states, and you know, the federal government, these are all systems and structures that give us some structure to how we operate in the form of governance govern governance. And so that’s important because, you know, societies need governance, democracy is a version of that. And if you want to be really technical, as we know, we’re a democratic republic, because we elect our officials. So it’s not a direct democracy. But that that structure piece is important, the way that I kind of talk about it with students as well as, you know, think about a skeleton or think about the human body, and you need the skeleton to give you some structure. And so the governance part of democracy is kind of like your, our bones, right? It gives us a structure and just like bones can decay and, and need to be maintained and healthy, we need to, you know, have structures and systems and policies and laws that are continuously update. So we’ll get into that. And then the other part we talked about is that democracy is also a culture, meaning that it shapes the way that people interact with each other and interact with society interact with those systems and governance structures. So it creates norms, there are symbols that go the American flag and go the eagle, as you know, kind of the national component, think about the different state flags that are often you know, so there are symbols as part of the culture and then there’s also just the norms when we talk about voting when we talk about participating, there are expectations, both explicit and implicit about what it means to do democracy and those are kind of cultural pieces. And so, that’s important because, you know, again, just like a body has, you know, skin and kind of gives it its flavor and personality, how we do democracy adds, you know, different dimensions and different ways of experiencing the structures and system. And so even though we technically all have similar systems and structures, how we experience those things are going to be lived in experience very differently depending on identities and where we’re from, and our background and all of those things. So we try to break it down. All that being said, into this governance and into culture to kind of as best as possible help us understand how dynamic democracy is, and how we got to be really specific about what we’re talking about, because we could be talking about democracy in general. But really, I’m talking about the cultural piece of it, and you’re talking about the structure and policy piece of it, and we might be missing each other. And so those two buckets give us a little bit of nuance Well, without being super technical and jargony, that, you know, sometimes the, the political scientists of us all like to get into.

Heather Shea
That’s, that’s great, that’s really a helpful way of thinking about it. I was, I liked the bones metaphor, because, you know, for me, it’s like, you have to have a framework, you have to have kind of that like, existing structure. And then what on top of that is, is also important. So I guess the follow up that I have for this, and I said at the beginning, is that there’s been a lot of conversation about our democracy being threatened. Either of you would, do you think democracy is at risk in 2024, of risk of, you know, the bones breaking or, you know, completely deteriorating? Like osteoporosis? We could stop with this metaphor.

Demetri L. Morgan
Yeah, yeah. I’ll talk about it first. So in some ways, no, I don’t think I’m not convinced or compelled by the argument that it’s at risk, because there are some segments of the population, particularly people with minoritized identities, you know, women, people of color, trans and non binary people who, you know, we often say, democracy was never built for and designed for. And so with, in one respect, democracy never worked for, you know, significant segments of our population. And so it’s, it’s almost like the, kind of make America great again, language, it’s like, well, when was America great? Or for whom? And so the same thing is like, Is democracy being threatened? Well, for some people, that the promises of democracy have never been realized or never been enacted upon. And so the question sort of presupposes, you know, not your question. But the sort of general sense, yeah, presupposes a particular experience that leaves leaves out certain people. And so I always like to nuance it. On the other hand, I think, you know, every generation goes through particular events, whether it’s the Vietnam War, or, you know, what we described as, like focusing events, right? Things that bring people together, you know, I’m sort of an elder millennial, and so came of age in the sort of 911, you know, sort of war on terror. So every generation has things that sort of bring us to the brink, that says, like, Is this is this the best we can do in this, you know, system of governance? And, and is this really working for us? Like, I’ll never forget being in college, going through the Great Recession? And being like, am I gonna have a job like is this you know, how the world ends? Right? So I think every generation has, and then you kind of go through and it’s like, okay, like, that was bad, but we made it, we made it through it. And so, I think there is a little bit of resiliency in people, I would not argue so much as the sort of systems there’s resiliency in people to be to find ways to persist and to be resistant to things that are not working and remake them and new. That gives me a little bit of hope. But I do think we are at a sort of generational moment where things are pretty bad. But are they any worse than Vietnam? I don’t know. I wasn’t around in Vietnam. But, you know, in some of the ones that have been particularly nerve racking for me, this is definitely on par. But I’m like, you know, I thought the world was literally in the end in 2007. You know, I just didn’t know what was gonna happen. Everybody’s losing their home. And now, you know, here we are. So, that perspective. I think as you know, people age also sort of balances out the moment a little bit, but I definitely think for our college students right now, this is a pretty harrowing time.

Heather Shea
Yeah. What about you, Adam, what do you think we’re at risk?

Adam Gismondi
Um, I think since we’re all going to our college majors, I was a sociology major and the things that I think about is like the notions of folkways and mores and like, like some of the informal ways in which, you know, Demetri talks It’s about the governance structures of democracy, and then the cultural aspects of democracy. And I think some of the things that we took for granted as like, oh, you can’t really do that in this country, or this wouldn’t work for a politician or something like that, that weren’t codified, or were loosely codified are the things that are definitely at risk. Because I think that there’s we’re starting to see like some formulas emerge of how to get around some of those systems or how to disregard some of them. That concerns me. And I think, democracy, I think maybe the way I would say it is like democracy as we know, it, is at risk. But the democracy as we know, it, as Demetri said, is like, like, does it work for everyone? Like what have been our? What are the pluses of it? What are the negatives? And so that’s part of what this framework is designed for, is to think about an aspirational vision of democracy. So with ADHD, so I was part of the IDT team. Since kind of like the early days through like, like I said, it just moved for almost eight years. And one of the things that we always got questions about was just the fact that the word democracy was in our our title Institute for Democracy and higher education. And so I started making it a habit for myself that at every presentation, I would I would address that actually, proactively to think about, like, why is that in there and to talk about it with with our audiences. And it was always centered on this idea. And I think this is part of the founding principles of the office, that when we talk about democracy, we’re talking about the democracy that we want to be all be part of creating, and sort of CO creating, in that context, he was with kind of youth with college students, with people in higher ed realm. So yeah, I mean, I think that like the sort of conventional wisdom, thoughts around democracy and, and what, what, what we can assume about it? I think a lot of that is at risk. But I think for some people, actually, across the political spectrum, it’s sort of a question of, okay, so what, like, I didn’t like democracy anyway, or, you know, like, there, I think there are a lot of people that have that viewpoint. Some very rightfully, because it’s, as Demitri said, it hasn’t always worked for everybody, and in some cases, is actively worked against people. So I think part of the work to be done in the democracy space is to think creatively and think broadly, think widely with a, you know, wide aperture around what democracy can look like? And how it can, you know, serve the public good, and then how we can think about our social problems and then build a system that addresses those.

Heather Shea
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, this is this conversation is making me think on so many different levels, right? Like it is about the, you know, the one to one person engagement with a democratic process, like going in and voting, it’s also about the systems and structures that allow for people to vote. And then it’s also about like, the broader belief that we should promote and continue to, to have a democratic society, at least in the US, though, there’s so many like, layers, it seems like as we’re kind of unpacking this a little bit, I am really interested in hearing more about the model. But let’s, let’s talk a little bit about the historical component here. Because I know, democracy by Democracy redesigned, is actually the second or maybe the mult of multiple third phase of a broader project. So Adam, can you tell us a little bit about some of the some of the reasons why that project was initiated democracy by design? You know, what were some of the opportunities that presented themselves, you know, given our recent history, and how, how have we been able to, in in kind of problematizing, some of the things that have happened in our society like strengthen this this initiative?

Adam Gismondi
Sure. So actually, a lot of the work I want to be clear predates Demetri and I’s involvement in the project. Nancy, who we mentioned, Nancy Thomas, that ACLU was part of several meetings in the late, late 2000s, into the early 2010s, at various convenings and conferences, and there were conversations around some of these big picture issues of democracy and a number of civic organizations were involved. And so about 10 years ago, the first version of democracy by design was was published In the Journal of public deliberation, and I think what Nancy was going for with that was bringing together a lot of these ideas that were just starting to emerge within, I think like, the spaces within which she was engaging at that time. And the initial model, the thought was, okay, if we have these different like, sort of buckets of what makes up an aspirational democracy, in the higher ed context, there can be this idea of, okay, this is a model for us to think about when we talk about civic and democratic outcomes of university life. And so I think the original thought around this was that students would learn a little bit from every category of democracy, but then learn to do a project where they learn a lot about one of the areas. And so you have this kind of cross cutting vision for political learning on college campuses. So that model was released in 2014, I believe. And then, in 2018, at IDT, we had had a lot of really difficult conversations around what was the role of our office? What was the role of civic organizations and organizations centered around democracy? And the project kind of reemerged of like, oh, maybe that model should be revisited. And so there was, I think it was called democracy by design revisited. And that came out in 2018. In the Journal of public deliberation, again, I knew there was a question around is should deliberative democracy be a central part of this work? And would it adequately, adequately address some of these issues? So I think that it was seen as like an improved version of it. But in 2020 2021, we had conversations of like, okay, we really need to, like, go into this and, you know, do some version of like, really rethinking it, turning it upside down and, and grow the team that’s working on it. So several of us at IDG, he were part of it. I do also want to credit Norma Lopez and other faculty member, Loyola, Chicago, who was part of this with Demetri had been working on the IDG team at the time as well. And several graduate students and folks from our team, all chipped into it. But for that phase of the project, we, we looked very widely around different reports that had come out research that had been done. We did interviews and focus groups with folks from different organizations to think about like to kind of, I think, challenge our own thinking on this, but then also see like, what are we missing? What what really are the threats to democracy, and then what would like a fully functioning aspirational vision of democracy beat. And so over the course of many meetings and collaborative efforts, right, in speaking through the issues, the model that we’re going to talk through was, was sort of what emerged from that. And I should say that the project was largely funded through the generosity of the Lumina Foundation. And so gave us kind of this the encouragement and the resources and the time and space to, to work through massive amounts of information and to think really critically about what had come before and then what might come next from it.

Demetri L. Morgan
Yeah, I think, just really briefly, I think it’s important about the history. And we see this not only in the like civic learning and democratic engagement space, but in in many sectors of higher education, where kind of interesting group of professionals or faculty or an association will put out a report and say, Hey, here’s this problem, basic needs, here’s this problem, low voting rates, here’s this problem. And so they’ll do a really rigorous report, and they’ll sort of name and frame the problem. And then there’ll be sort of subsequent, you know, research and resources allocated towards the, the the endeavor and, you know, eventually sometimes become sort of normalized, where like, I think basic needs within, you know, sort of last 10 to 15 years is like a good example of it being on some people’s radar the whole time, but in terms of, you know, many people sort of saying like, Oh, yeah, students basic needs on campus, we can’t take for granted. What are we doing pantries and blah, blah, blah. So I think there’s a culture in higher ed, that’s not unique to the civic learning and democratic engagement space, of, you know, sort of doing reports and trying to spotlight issues and provide recommendations or rationale. And I think what we were also very thoughtful of and as I mentioned, we we spent a lot of time with, you know, literally since the 60s there has been successive reports of higher ed’s role and democracy. So starting then all the way through to, you know, the crucible moment that came on 2012 Nancy’s work that Adam mentioned, there’s been these, you know, really important reports that have come out that we also want to sit with and analyze and say, how do we kind of get out of that kind of boom, the bus, like, report, lots of focus, and then just something that’s a little bit more enduring? We hope, you know, we’ll see. But it’s something that’s a little bit more enduring, that has some flexibility in the framework that isn’t just talking about a particular moment in why the aspirational piece is really important. And I think, again, for the historical context, that’s important to know, because I think, no, you can think about, you know, the some of the Student Affairs, you know, sort of foundational documents, like, we just have this culture. And so we’re also trying to break out of that a little bit to present a framework that we hope is a little bit more enduring, and also valuable to the different things that happen. As you know, campuses are continuing to respond to how democracy is continuing to change and adapt.

Heather Shea
I really appreciate that, because I was thinking about models that are just like, codified, and then on a shelf, right. And, you know, we constantly kind of push back of like, who does this apply to? Who was study that, you know, created this model. And so I love that this group has really kind of revisited re envisioned, redesigned multiple times, because that is that’s the nature of the work that we do broadly. But also with when I think about all the new challenges that have arisen in the last 10 years, right, like the model from 2014, or whatever your what would not be relevant today. As relevant, maybe. But I love that there’s that constant kind of reenvisioning.

Adam Gismondi
Yeah. Can I add just one thing on that point, Heather. So that was, what you’re describing is, I think, what animated the whole idea of us doing this as a session at ash last year. Who is the president of ash, invited us to come talk through the model. And credit to Demetri on being like, you know, what I think this audience would like really benefit from and what I think people would be excited by, and what I think would help it the model is this, like a kind of a teaching format, which is very different from past ash conferences, at least the ones that I’ve been to. And so we sort of introduced the model. And then we leaned on some amazing scholars, I mean, Demetri, and had this very long list of like, a dream list of who might be able to help lead discussions in a large, you know, conference space, and much to our delight, like pretty much everyone that we asked who was able to be there? said yes, and was enthusiastic about it. And so for, I think, for us, it’s really a matter of like, you know, it’s a snapshot, it’s like an existing thing, it’ll be a document, I’m sure, and you’ll see the image of it, that’s static. But I think for us, it really is like a snapshot. And it’s like, the minute you kind of like, put it out there, it’s ready to be kind of ripped up and like revisited. And, and that we want to layer as many perspectives as we can on this. Because I think that’s, that’s the beauty of work in the democracy space is that you, it’s hard to come in and be prescriptive, and it’s hard to come in and be like, here are the rules of democracy, and here’s how you know how it should be. And I don’t think that we have really any interest in that what we have interested in is giving a framework giving a starting point for discussion, and inviting everyone into it, so that we can really, like challenge one another and have those deep discussions. That’s sort of like the whole point of educational work. And, and I would argue also of democracy work.

Heather Shea
Yeah, it was a phenomenal session, I you know, you go to these big huge conference spaces, and you kind of expect that you’re gonna get talked at right and or, there’s gonna be some interesting thing, maybe you’re going to turn to your neighbor, but like, literally the whole room just reconvened around these roundtables, and then I maybe one of the best, most generative conversations, you know, I had at Ashe because of the people in that space. So I just want to shout out to you both for facilitating but then all of the folks who helped kind of at the tables, and then Ana for kind of imagining alongside which I think is is a really a testament to ashes kind of breaking some of those like those rules, right conference conventions and such. So well let’s get into talking about the model. For those people who are listening we are going to show on this screen a A picture of the model, and Demitri is gonna kind of walk through a little bit. And then our plan is to also link this document in the show notes or in the, in the episode website. So folks who were listening to the podcast, we definitely encourage you to go there, so you can kind of experience the visual. So Demitri, tell us a little bit about it.

Demetri L. Morgan
Yeah, so um, one of the things that is also important in terms of the context, I’m gonna run through this, because there’s lots of other things we want to talk about, I definitely encourage you all to follow up with the links and resources. But the redesign language was also really intentional. And so just like, Heather and Adam had mentioned that, you know, we are looking for spaces and places for people to wrestle with the framework and to talk about it and to dream with it. And to critique it, as a as a working group. And as a team, we did that with each other. And even the name of redesign was trying to kind of acknowledge that there is some ways that democracy needs to be sort of designed and new and afresh. And there’s other ways that we think are other things that we think are kind of hallmarks but need to be reformed. And so even sitting in that tension, is really important in this sort of, you know, was modeled within our sort of inner workings as a team. And as we’ve kind of slowly rolled it out, we’ve seen people activated by this. And so our hope, you know, again, is that this activates, you know, we invite disagreement or skepticism or like, oh, and even at the table that I was facilitating, there were so many, you know, sort of really interesting thoughts where I’m like, yeah, we can think about that, or, yeah, I would love to see how that works in. And so you know, as you’re sort of listening to this, but also in your follow up with this, we invite you to kind of use this as a as a framework to think with campus partners to think with students student organizations, about what this looks like, on your particular campus or in your in your unit. So as we mentioned, you know, we’re really, it’s really important to always emphasize, we’re talking about a more aspirational version of democracy. And that’s trying to sit in the tension that, as we’ve mentioned, a few times, democracy has never worked for some, for some people for some groups. And so when we talk about aspiration, we are trying to dream up and sort of have an idea of, you know, radical hope that things can be different to the extent that we can work together think together, and remain in tension with how we move forward. So we sort of say that up front, kind of right at the top, and big and bold, the center component of the framework talks about what what democracy redesign is, and we sort of stand firmly on the principles of equity, inclusion and justice. And we know in some parts of the country, those have become bad words. But we think that democracy you know, as sort of thought of it conceived in its best version is one where people have what they need, which is a sort of, sort of crass version, or definition of equity. But it’s inclusive, which means people can participate a variety of ways. And there’s also just right meaning that there’s a sense of being able to, you know, live in an experience, you know, the sort of fullness of humanity in both the structural way and in the more social way. So we sort of the framework stands on those components. And we think when these kind of six principles or practices are lived into, it leads us more into this idea of equity, inclusion and justice. So, you know, really briefly, the different components of the framework, starts with this idea of democracy redesigned is contested and reinvented. And so this idea, in short, is what we’ve been talking about this whole time that we don’t believe in sort of the static notion of democracy, that the contest of of power of people saying, hey, we want things to be different, or, Hey, we need to hold on to some of these things. There’s actually some good in the way that we talk about liberty or there’s actually some good in the way that we, you know, have separation of church and state, whatever it may be this idea of conserving things, but also progressing, right, which we know sort of makes up the parties. That’s the bedrock of contested and reinvented, and we think that that’s a healthy component. There are things we want to conserve, there are things we want to progress past. And so a democracy we design does that. The second pillar is this idea of educated and informed as educators of course, we got to make sure that that was prominently in there. So it was really important for us to think about this idea of what does it mean to actually be educated? What does it mean to think about the developmental experiences that we know students are going to go through in the college environment in particular, and and also recognizing that you can be educated, you can be a really great engineer, but not be informed at all about what’s going on in public affairs or what’s going on with your government. So we ground this in the media, we ground this in the way that people consume information that we want students in a society that is both educated and informed. And the interplay of those two things being really powerful. The third practice is this idea of compassionate and empowering, we were working on this framework in the midst of COVID-19. And so when you think about what it means to be compassionate, where, you know, what does it mean, to wear masks to protect your neighbor to think about first responders and people who are, you know, sort of part of, you know, different industries that are having to work. There’s this idea of, of compassion that feels really important to a society that wants to be engaged in democracy, when you’re thinking about more than just yourself, but also one that’s empowering, right? What does it mean to engage in, you know, sort of practices that allow people to be empowered in their life life experiences, to recognize different forms of expertise, to understand how different people need to sometimes get out of the way or to move aside so that other people can be activated. And so balancing those ideas was really important. And you’ll notice that there’s balancing a lot of these, which is sort of also something that we thought was important. The next one is this idea of trustworthy us. So ultimately, when you’re working in groups, when you’re working in society, there has to be a sort of fundamental idea of trust. So, you know, way back, not way back. But you know, 30 years ago, this idea of Bowling Alone, or social capital, how we engage in civic organizations, or you know, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and what does that look like, in today’s day and age to develop trust in one another, in a sort of social media environment in a, you know, artificial intelligence environment, where trust in what is genuine is really hard to determine. And so we thought, that this idea and concept of trustworthy, you know, maybe it doesn’t look like social capital, but this idea of being able to understand and believe, you know, sort of your fellow person, and what they’re saying and what they’re doing, and also, having trust in the systems is really important, or at least responsive. And just, this is a little bit more on the governance side of things. But we want policies and systems that are responsive and just to individual. So, you know, can we access the ballot box? Are people able to navigate the criminal justice system in ways that are responsive to, you know, short, changing norms and expectations? What does it look like to make sure that governance, governance is accountable that, you know, politicians and policymakers are accountable to two people is really important. And then lastly, this idea of accessible and participatory, you know, to do democracy together, people have to have access, and this is access broadly defined everything from thinking about ability and how people can experience things in ways that are responsive, in thoughtful to the different ways people experienced life, all the way to making sure people can access, you know, the opportunity to vote for their individuals, or, you know, thinking about dreamers here, or documented individuals or undocumented individuals, what does it look like to be having an accessible democracy and a participatory democracy, as alongside really wrote in kind of concise ways of thinking about participation. So we wanted to dream and be expansive, because we know that there are lots of different individuals who are participating in democracy, even if it’s not codified in very narrow ways like voting. And so in this category, we think really expansively about the practices that go into an accessible participatory democracy. So that was the like 32nd cliffnotes version. But hopefully, that gives you know, sort of an idea and also piques your interest to kind of follow up and read a little bit more, we have kind of little blurbs and summaries of each of these things. But that’s kind of the general sense of of those components.

Heather Shea
Wow, thank you so much. This was a great refresher for me as I listened to you, I’ll talk about it at ash and then reflecting on the conversation that we ended up having at our table. Adam other other things you’d like to add to the description of the model.

Adam Gismondi
Demitri crushed it. So I don’t want to I don’t want to I don’t want to even touch it. I think you did a great job. I’ll say. Just because I realized we’re referencing a lot this this ash Session. I’ll just say that. So what we did was we we shared the background on it, some of the stuff that we’ve talked about today, and then we put out some Discussion Questions to at the tables. And so I think our hope is that we’ll be able to have like more of like a public digital gathering space for people on this. So for anyone that’s listening or watching this, we’ll link what we can, including the image of the model. But I think things to look for coming forward on this will be, we’ve already done some writing on this. We have the questions from this, and we will be packaging some of the early discussion, feedback that we got to

Heather Shea
Yeah. So it sounds like there’s going to be future opportunities for the audience for this podcast to connect, you know, either directly or through some kind of, you know, longer process. You want to say, say more about, you know, where and how, and, and that kind of thing, like, how can they make sure that they stay in touch? If it’s just going to a website? Even?

Adam Gismondi
Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think, definitely, I’ll say like, I think you can reach out to Demitri and I, with questions or anything like that for clarification, or to just like engage us like, I think we’re always happy to, to chat on email, or Twitter or whatever. But in terms of gathering spaces for this, like I said, it’s, my guess is that will probably come out like in various ways. We’ll make it we’ll probably be like redundant across like multiple websites. I know that Nancy at ACU, we’ll have it up on the IDG website, at some point, like as these things come out, and I should note, I think this episode will be like, up and most people will listen to this after the after the moment has passed. But at this week’s AAC and U conference, there are going to be sessions on this too. So we’re trying to really like get this out there for people to, to engage critically with and to think about and to offer feedback to, I think it’s still a little bit to be determined how we’re going to gather some of the feedback. But I think our goal is to have some sort of like, digital spot at the very least to like where people can kind of add comments or read through this. And maybe some like Google Docs and things like that. That’ll be interactive for folks. Yeah, very

Heather Shea
cool. I’d love to hear a little bit our audiences, you know, folks who work in higher education and student affairs roles or as practitioners, graduate students, faculty, you know, so when I think about like the application, I think about like, engaging college students in some of these bigger conversations, you know, how college students come to identify themselves? And, you know, Demetri, you said earlier about political identity development, like, that’s super fascinating. And before we started recording, we were talking about, like, you know, coming to college is often a time to define yourself outside of how your parents have, or your guardians, or others have kind of framed your identity. So that also relates, of course, to politics. I’m going to spend a few minutes kind of in this space of like, how do we take this and make it applicable on our campuses? And then keep the conversation going with students? Whoever wants to go first?

Demetri L. Morgan
Yeah, so I’ll start off. So I think about it on like, 15 levels, but I try to be concise. So one of them when we looked at the the research about, you know, sort of a student’s political identity development, one of the things that was so fascinating to me, and why I chose to do my dissertation work on it is because a lot of the literature was kind of done in the post World War II, where people were like, No, we got to fight off communism, and you know, make great, you know, American citizens. And, you know, what was most fascinating to me, when we think about that time period, but you know, the GI Bill and, you know, sort of many other things where the, this idea of the middle middle class was created, is that people became very comfortable with this idea that their responsibility for civic education, it was a K through 12 endeavor, and between your K through 12 Your church in your home life, people working to get enough socialization to be good citizens. And you can see sort of the flaws in that thinking and sort of who was included in that model of K through 12. You know, sort of your church and, and in your home life. And so as you know, so my mom is from Jamaica, grew up in a single parent household. And you know, we were not having conversations around the dinner table about about voting. She became you know, she had a green card and became a naturalized citizen, but that was well into You know, my early in my adult life. And so this idea of, you know, what is the role of higher education for me is both personal but also really interesting because we know and not, you know, sort of saying anything bad about our K 12 colleagues, but we know that education is going to be really different for different students coming through the K through 12 pipeline, when they get to us on college campuses, we know you know, increasingly, right, most students identify as nuns religiously. So there are, you know, sort of a whole swath of people who are having their civic engagement look very different. That’s not just codified in a church or synagogue. And then again, we know that people’s home life, whether this parent or guardian is much more complex, and differentiated than we thought. So, if the pillars of how we thought about socialization are much different now and 2024, then when a lot of the writing was done in the 60s to 80s, to me, that is that is like what are called as hired professional student affairs. Educators in particular, is that that work? You know, it continues for us, right. So for me, again, my own story includes getting to the University of Florida and, and having opportunities to participate in fraternities and orientation and, you know, different things where we were having to deal with what was going on politically or nationally talk with students, and I was learning from mentors to say like, Hey, here’s how we talk about these things, or here’s how these things intersect with your own lived experiences. And that was really powerful for me. And so I think there’s opportunities all that to say, well, we can play a role right next higher ed can’t do all of the socialization around politics. But I think we have a really unique and important role and the opportunities that we have to have those conversations to think about, wow, you know, what happened on Tuesday at the Iowa or Monday on the at the Iowa caucuses? What did you see? What did you hear? What was interesting? How does that relate to where you grew up? How was it different? And those probing questions, get students to think right, and help them think about their own values around the experiences. And so I think really, practically, being willing to have those conversations not in a way, and I know, everybody’s always like, Well, we were gonna, you know, indoctrinate students. And I’m like, students are way more resilient than we give them credit for, like, whenever you ever been able to convince a 20 year old to do something that they don’t want to do, right, like, it’s there, they, you know, are, they’re gonna sort of, they’re open to opportunities for conversation. And I think that’s something that we can cultivate as higher ed educators, how do we have conversations that are thoughtful, and that’s one of the things we’re excited about this framework, because it gives us sort of a way in the conversation about what we hope this society can look like that then have opportunities for follow up? So it’s a really flowery answer, but I think really, tangibly it’s having opportunities to have conversations about what people want to experience as they move, you know, to and through their different phases of life. And, and, you know, thinking about that role that we can play as advisors or, you know, sort of student or, you know, mentors in the different spaces that we take up. Adam, go ahead.

Adam Gismondi
So, in addition to everything Demitri said, which I agree with, I, so when I was doing my dissertation, which is like 10 years ago, now, I defended in 2015, I was studying was how students were using social media and how it was impacting their civic learning and participation, and, and everything ranging from their activism to just kind of surface level learning around different issues. And I remember that time, there was a, there was a cohort of us, I think, many of whom have been guests on this very show, across the country, who were studying issues on on digital platforms, and social media, and we all became friends. And one of the things I feel like was a common refrain from all of us to professionals was to think beyond just like the physical campus around what was happening and to, to not just disregard and be like, Oh, that’s online, you know, like, and I don’t mean that in the sense of like, policing what was happening in other spaces, but to really think about student development, and think about the full student experience in a way that has changed, you know, at that point, even. And I think there are some, you know, some of that’s continued and some of it is more like parallel in this discussion. I think that the ways in which students are gaining or gathering information has changed completely since that time. Some of the challenges that they’re facing in terms of their democratic participation and their civic engagement has changed. Um, and so I think that like, anyone who considers themselves an educator in, in the, you know, k 16 Plus space, like I think needs to think about like, what does that mean? Like, what are we up against in terms of dissent, misinformation? What are we up against in terms of how quickly like activist movements can happen? And how does that fly in the face of like these traditional structures of student engagement, which, for a long time, I think have been outmoded in comparison to how things happen. And that gives students a reason to turn away from their college or university, when they’re like, Oh, I’m not going to wait six months for funding or six months for a space or like recognition in the Student Organization process. So I think that, like, it’s easy to manage something away. Sometimes as, as someone who worked in student affairs for six years, like, I’ve seen it like you can, you can put up these structural barriers to stop students, by just being like, oh, there’s like these 10 different forms, and they each take a week to get processed. Or you can just wait for a student to graduate, I’ve seen people do things like that. And that that’s not that, to me, that’s, that’s not being an educator, like that’s, that’s failing on the, on the duties of the of the role, so. But in terms of like, some of the positive things that people can do, especially in student affairs, I think that putting students in spaces of cognitive dissonance, and in spaces where they’re challenged, and in spaces where they’re, they challenge themselves to think with depth around different issues and to engage with others from you know, sometimes like very different backgrounds, from their own sometimes like a little bit different. I think that that’s all part of the learning experience. And I think that a lot of that, you know, with student safety in mind, of course, within reason I’m talking here, but to allow students to have moments of critical thinking and to intentionally set up those environments is really an important part of this work. And I think, you know, like I said, we’re I don’t think Demetri and I view this as like a prescriptive thing. But I think that, you know, this framework and others that are out, there are ways to start thinking about, like, how does my work align with us, I always say to you, to folks that are in our space, you know, look at your colleges, statements around civic, you know, their mission statement where they’ll say, we prepare students for civic life for, you know, for active engagement in democracy. But there is a question of like, are you actually doing your work in a way that aligns with that? And are you thinking about that when you’re when you’re planning out? Events, learning opportunities, engagement? And I think that, you know, this is what we’re trying to provide here is yet another way for people to think about aligning mission, vision and values with, like, daily practice. Yeah, amen. Strategic planning.

Heather Shea
Yeah, I know, campuses are often kind of rethinking that, and I think you raised a couple of really interesting, you know, one is the bricks and mortar of the campus isn’t always the boundary, you know, it’s, it can be in lots of other spaces. And when I think about, like, where students learn, you know, that that is a that is a whole nother topic. And I think the conversations among have between, you know, we also lost some of that ability during COVID, to come together and actually be in spaces where we had to experience you know, kind of that dissonance because we could just, you know, turn off our camera, go on mute, you know, is it’s like that ability to be in that kind of space of discomfort. And I think we’re seeing the repercussions of that now, to a certain extent, on our campuses where, you know, at least on my campus, I’m seeing a lot of like, struggles with being in those kinds of Intergroup Dialogue spaces. That’s the just to just to preview some future episodes that were that were queuing up because I think it’s, it’s a part of a larger conversation about, you know, what does that conversation look like?

Demetri L. Morgan
Yeah, I’m so glad to hear that there will be and I can’t wait to check out the future episodes, because one of the things that I was going to bring up that I’m thinking a lot about now is how in the answer this sort of original question as well, about what folks can be doing or how to sort of enact this is, yeah, I think for many of us that were working on college campuses in 2016, after the this sort of, you know, sort of surprise election, and in you know, many campuses were caught flat footed in terms of providing sort of student resources and support. And then, you know, we go to 2020 and we’re sort of, you know, sort of peak pandemic time. So the there was campus stuff, but it was more muted and now, you know twice my force. One of the things in terms of, you know, I feel like we’ve gotten a little rusty as campuses where like the the voter engagement stuff is really strong. And that’s important. But you know, Adam and I both on approach like that as a component of a component, right? Like, yes, we want active voter engagement, get out the vote, that’s so important. But there are all of these other components to how we can engage students in this, and part of it is being proactive and thinking through, you know, regardless of how the election turns out, there’s going to be all of these little things that happened to him through an hour already happening, you know, to and through that campuses need to be prepared for, you know, and so what are those conversations at department meetings? Around, hey, if this were to happen, like, you know, if, you know, Trump gets indicted and can’t actually be on the ballot, and there are gonna be segments of our students who, you know, feel like that is the biggest injustice ever, what are we going to do? What supports are we going to provide? Vice versa, right, if you know, certain certain candidate wins, or certain things happen, and what I’m anxious about is, you know, the pandemic, kind of in terms of that institutional response hasn’t, you know, we haven’t had to activate that in terms of Intergroup Dialogue in terms of how to model you know, this, this summit is critical thinking well, in person, right, like, where there’s proximity. So I, I’m, I’m hoping and encouraging people to be proactive now, thinking about those things. Because you know, November 2024, will be here before we know it, but there going to be a ton of things that happen before it. And you know, the the time is now to sort of be thinking about that, beyond voter engagement beyond, what are we doing for get out the vote? What are the other supports and systems? And are we do we have a plan with all the various scenarios that are going on it contextualized for your state, right contextualize for the things we hear all the time, like, I’m in red state, so and so and we can’t say these things. And it’s like, yeah, that’s fair. But we will ultimately you want to support students, we’re going to create educational environments. So how do we talk about it and be, you know, creative in our conversations, and that takes even more planning, if you are in a context where you maybe can’t as readily, you know, think about things and do things. And so that’s where the sort of, you know, proactive and being on offense is really important to me. And I’m, we’re starting to see some of it, but for how things might play out. I’m curious and encouraging others to think about that more and more.

Heather Shea
This has been such a great conversation, I’m glad that we kind of, you know, broke away from the script and just kind of chatted at the end, because there’s so many other so there’s has to be like 2.0 or 3.0 conversation here. Particularly as we get closer, and then beyond the the election, which I know is just just a component of all of this, but it’s definitely sparking my attention. So this episode, or this podcast, rather, is called Student Affairs NOW, I’d love to hear a couple of final thoughts about what you’re pondering considering thinking about traveling. And then if you would like folks to be able to connect with you any way that they can do that, whether it’s LinkedIn or Twitter, or if people are still using Twitter, this is but a conversation we’ve been having. It’s like, do we even still say that, or other other ways that folks can connect with you? So Demitri, I’ll start with you.

Demetri L. Morgan
Yeah, so one of the other things on top of just kind of being prepared for all of the things and trying not to be flat footed, so having those conversations, I’m also really worried about student burnout around politics in particular, because of how, you know, sort of activated whether it’s, you know, sort of Israel, Hamas, or, you know, there’s still the lingering impacts of me too, and you have a summer of 2020, and George Floyd that we have a, you know, sort of engaged in restorative ways to sort of think through those traumas, and are adding on top of it. And you know, for many of us, that are working with student leaders who are experiencing and being responsive to all these things. So what is sort of political burnout is basically the question I’ve been thinking, look like, you know, are people exhausted by the conversation exhausted by the, you know, sort of 24/7 you know, sort of CNN Fox News of it all? And and how do we still do all of the, you know, aspirational things we’ve talked about to this point, when people are tired and burnout and cynical, and so, you know, that’s where why we invite people to think with us, I don’t have the answer to that. But I would love for us, you know, as a community, of higher ed educators and student parents, for professional in particular to think through like how do we support students through burnout in ways that manifests differently because it’s not just like racial battle fatigue, or it’s not just, you know, the sort of like activist labor that Chris Linder and others have talked about, but this particular component of of politics that I’m really interested in and then yeah, where you can find me, I’m on LinkedIn, still have a Twitter but not that active at Demetri Morgan PhD. And so yeah, we’d love to connect. Obviously, I get really excited about these topics and love hearing from others and learning from others. And so you know, please definitely reach out and connect.

Heather Shea
Great, thanks, Demitri. Adam. Um,

Adam Gismondi
so one thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is actually like, this has been kind of an ongoing curiosity of mine is, like, sort of youth, political, political identity development, which was brought up earlier, but I think like, some of the researchers in the space, I feel like, often revert back to kind of traditional forms of like, had, you know, as a student, a Democrat or the Republican or do they are they magically an independent, and there’s, you know, and I think that what I’ve seen, and I draw a lot of my, like, the most interesting things that I see are in, like the space of intersecting of like arts, library sciences, information technology, and people that like, aren’t really like traditional researchers that like kind of dig into these issues that are just kind of like, they’re probably online too much. But they like are these observations of like, what they’re seeing in the spaces, and one of them is really, really hyper specific, sometimes contradictory political identities in young people. So they don’t see themselves. I mean, there’s, they’re like miles from being part of a political party. And there are issues that they care about, but the ground like shifts very quickly underneath them. And they see themselves as kind of, like patchwork identity of different viewpoints. And it’s, like, to me that seems very unpredictable. Like I’d say that without any actually, like positive or negative judgment on it, it’s actually just, I’m just curious about it of like, how those identities form, and then what implications that has long term for like, the political identity of the country, and then globally, because I think that that’s, I think that’s actually very much a product of, of the internet, and how social media works, is that you have kind of these like different clusters of like how someone views themselves and how they understand and engage with, like the political arena and democracy. So that’s something I’m like, I like I’m always following that, like, general area of of interest. If people want to connect with me, yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best like, feel free to add me. Just Adam Gismondi, there’s one other one out there, he works for World Wrestling Entertainment, and it’s not me. But we do accidentally get emails for each other and forward back and forth. So we have a funny dialogue. Been middle name to which is the really strange thing. But yeah, LinkedIn, and Twitter, just Adam Gismondi or email me, I think it’s up on the on our website. And yeah, we’ll be sharing links for other ways to connect with the work. And yeah, thanks for listening to this point, or anyone that’s still on. Okay.

Heather Shea
Great. Well, thank you both. Just really appreciate the conversation and the, the, you know, the generative work that you all are doing in this space, and I’m really excited to have our listeners engage. I also want to take a moment to express our gratitude for our producer, Nat Ambrosey does all this amazing work behind the scenes to make us look and sound great. You were amazing Nat and also thanks to today’s episode sponsors, so LeaderShape partners with colleges and universities to create transformational LeaderShape experiences for students and professionals. With a focus on creating a more just caring and thriving world. LeaderShape offers engaging learning experiences on courageous dialogue integrity, equity, resilience, and community building. And you can find out more by visiting leadershape.org or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn, and Routledge Taylor Francis is the world’s leading academic publisher in education, publishing a wide range of books, journals and other resources for practitioners, faculty and administrators and researchers. And recently, Routledge Taylor, Francis welcomed stylus publishing to their publishing program, and they are thrilled to enrich their offerings in higher education, teaching Student Affairs, professional development, assessment and more. And so we’re really grateful for their support of the podcast Student Affairs NOW and you can visit and view their complete catalogue of education titles at routledge.com/education. So to all of our listeners if you’re tuning in today haven’t yet subscribed to our weekly newsletter, please take a moment to enter your email on our website. And while you’re there, you can download our recent archives recently published episodes and look forward to seeing you all in the future. Once again, I’m Heather Shea thanks for everybody’s watching, listening. Let’s make it a great week.