If honest and broadbased discourse about civility can be seen as an encouraging starting point for a change in pubic culture, then 2015 is off to a particularly encouraging start. This January has already seen articles written about civility as it relates to a wide range of topics including local government, protests against police brutality,…
This post is part of our ongoing effort to highlight discourse about civility around the web. Our articles for civility linkblogging come from a wide cross-section of blogs and newspapers, magazines and other websites, from the United States and abroad.
This week’s edition of the segment is devoted to some of the high-profile debate regarding civility that has taken place on and around university campuses in the month of September. In September, administrators at the University of California, Berkeley and Penn State University called for civil discourse from faculty, students, and alumni as the new semester got underway. But as several of the articles featured here pointed out, civility in this context is not without its dangers.
This post is part of our ongoing effort to highlight discourse about civility around the web. Our articles for civility linkblogging come from a wide cross-section of blogs and newspapers, magazines and other websites, from the United States and abroad.
Notable among this week’s articles is one eloquent call for civility in debates over marriage equality, and a creative response by three Philadelphia women to the problem of harassment on the street and elsewhere. In the former, Indianapolis Star columnist Erika Smith reminds us that that not everyone who opposes same-sex marriage is a religious zealot. And not everyone who supports same-sex marriage is a rainbow-clad heathen. While in the latter, Rochelle Keyhan, Erin Filson, and Anna Kegler explain the impetus and impact of their groups, Hollaback Philly and Geeks for CONsent.
Every once in a while I cross paths with a woman I supported in a recent local election. Now an elected local official, she tells me how much work there is to the job. For every government meeting, council or committee, she receives and reads pages and pages of background material. She gets multiple contacts each day from constituents and those wishing to influence her thoughts and votes on various issues. She researches issues and city actions. We discuss how much more there is to serving in office than running to serve, and I thank her for her work.
The election cycles never seem to end. The constant ads and solicitations unfortunately draw attention to the contests rather than the work our elected officials have been selected to do. Even with a four year term, thinking of how to conduct and fund the next election is always in the back of an official’s mind.
Clive Cook, over at Bloomberg View, did a particularly good job last week of articulating one of the central dilemmas that face many of us who are interested in civility within the landscape of our highly charged political present. His article, “Krugman’s Wrong: Civility Isn’t Stupid,” looks at one of the biggest players and one of the most common tropes in progressive politics in the United States; but his point is well made, and equally applicable among conservatives.
The dilemma is this: is it ever acceptable to take a break from civility and launch an ad hominem attack on a political opponent? Especially when it is apparent, from your perspective, that that opponent is acting in bad faith?
This post is part of our ongoing effort to highlight discourse about civility around the web. Our articles for civility linkblogging come from a wide cross-section of blogs and newspapers, magazines and other websites, from the United States and abroad.
This week, the thing to notice in our list is less the specifics of the articles themselves than the scope of topics and geographies that defines them as a group. We have calls for civility in the civic culture of Pakistan and in the local politics of Massachusetts. We have incivility on Twitter and in one newspaper’s letters to the editor. We have horse racing, the legal profession, and the ongoing disputed primary between incumbent Thad Cochran and challenger Chris McDaniel for the Republican Senate nomination in the state of Mississippi.
This post is part of our ongoing effort to highlight discourse about civility around the web. Our articles for civility linkblogging come from a wide cross-section of blogs and newspapers, magazines and other websites, from the United States and abroad.
Of note this week is an article about New York Times columnist David Brooks, and his recent remarks to MATRIX:MIDLAND, an event in Midland, Michigan. There, he called civility a moral issue. We live he said, too much in a culture that affirms external virtues; good grades, financial success, fame. And as a result, we undervalue intangible qualities like strength of character that are necessary to lead, or govern, or discourse civilly with one another.
The purpose of this week’s post is to point out an excellent online civility resource that we here at The Civility Blog have sadly previously neglected. It is called The Civil Conversations Project. And it is an extension of On Being — NPR’s radio program about the place of faith and spirituality in American life.
This post is part of our ongoing effort to highlight discourse about civility around the web. Our articles for civility linkblogging come from a wide cross-section of blogs and newspapers, magazines and other websites, from the United States and abroad.
This week’s post focuses on what we might call small civilities — etiquette on trains and parking lots, civility in online gaming communities and student evaluations. But as these articles all make clear, small civilities add up. Teaching evaluations in college classrooms may mean a venue to vent for disappointed students, but for instructors, they are a measure of continued employment. Crowded trains may seem like mere inconvenience, but as Dr. P. M. Forni says, in a close-quartered bus or train, you have in action two of the main incivility-causing factors. These are anonymity and stress. And in combination, they can escalate into violence.
Institute member Mark Winburn recently sent us this image on the back of an envelope containing his renewal. The design, a riff on the Keep Calm and Carry On message that has become a regular feature of t-shirts, coffee mugs, and mousepads around the world, is based on a poster produced by the British Government…
