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NPR’s Protojournalist Talks With Cassandra Dahnke

ByAdam Zolkover

In the excitement preceding last month’s Civility Symposium in Washington, D.C., we here at The Civility Blog allowed one key story to slip through the cracks. Linton Weeks, political journalist and NPR correspondent, sat down with Institute co-founder Cassandra Dahnke to talk about the Trayvon Martin verdict, civility, and social protest.

The article, which appeared as part of NPR’s Protojournalist series, features Cassandra’s responses to questions of how to defuse volatile confrontation and how to weave civility into the national fabric.

Civility Linkblogging: Judaism, Lawyers, and Centrist Strategies

ByAdam Zolkover

This week’s links range geographically from Florida to Washington State, Colorodo to New Jersey. But in terms of topic, they focus on two recurring issues: strategies for maintaining and enforcing civility in the legal profession; and the possibility of finding civility in centrist politics at the municiple level, and in our political parties more broadly.

Civility Linkblogging: Turkey, Canada, and The Internet

ByAdam Zolkover

This post is part of an ongoing series that highlights discourse about civility from around the Web. We glean the links in this segment from as broad a cross-section as we can manage of blogs, newspapers, magazines, and other online venues, from the United States and around the world. This week’s links, in part, follow…

Debating Civility in Linux Software Development

ByAdam Zolkover

Think that civility in government is a matter only for senators and representatives? Think again. In the world of open source software, July saw a vigorous debate about the tone and tenor of Linus Torvald’s governance of the Linux kernel, one of the largest and most active collaborative software development projects today.

Originally started in 1991 by Torvalds, the Linux kernel is a key piece of code that powers computers around the world from the Internet’s largest servers to pocket-sized Android smartphones. Torvalds is known for dealing brusquely with the project’s contributors, often rejecting what he considers to be poor programming, publicly, in colorful and sometimes overwrought language.

Civility Linkblogging: Minnesota, Tennessee, Australia, and the Neighborhood of Make-Believe

ByAdam Zolkover

This post is part of an ongoing series that highlights discourse about civility from around the Web. We glean the links in this segment from as broad a cross-section as we can manage of blogs, newspapers, magazines, and other online venues, from the United States and around the world.

This week’s links include two calls for civility from the state of Tennessee, a call for humility — not civility — from Minnesota, a conservative perspective on civility and civic engagement, and a discussion of the civility situation in Australian politics, and the creeping allure of political polarization.

Civility Linkblogging: Feminism, Christianity, Academia, and Government

ByAdam Zolkover

This is the first in our ongoing series of posts highlighting discourse about civility around the Web. Here, we search out thoughtful, up-to-date articles about civility-related problems and solutions, about conversation and action across the political aisle, about being heard by people who believe differently from ourselves, and especially about listening to people who say things that may be difficult for us to hear.