Negotiating the paradoxes of poverty: presidential rhetoric on welfare from Johnson to Clinton

This project examines how Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton discussed issues of poverty and welfare from Johnsons declaration of War on Poverty in 1964 to Clintons signing of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996. I argue that there are four critical tensions relevant to the debate concerning contemporary poverty in the United Statespolitics vs. policy, deserving vs. undeserving, help vs. hinder, and equality vs. freedomand the key to improving the manner in which the nation confronts the problem of poverty requires understanding and negotiating these tensions. The analysis reveals that the five presidents had a mixed but overall rather poor record in confronting the four paradoxes. In general they tended either to avoid the tensions altogether, or fall to one or the other extreme. That being said, the analysis also reveals that there is considerable common ground concerning some critical issues between all the presidents, whether they were Democrats or Republicans, ideologically moderate or more partisan. Foremost among these are the beliefs that equal opportunity should be the overarching ideal, work should be rewarded well, and those that cannot help themselves should be supported as generously as possible by the government. I conclude that the 1996 law, while based in part on questionable assumptions concerning the condition of the poor, could lead to a significant re-framing of the debate away from the generally unpopular focus on welfare and welfare recipients and toward the working poor and the conditions and difficulties under which they labor, which could potentially lead to other positive transformations beneficial to the American poor

Do Experts Help or Hinder? An Empirical Examination of Experts and Expertise during Public Deliberation

We consider expertise in interaction during small group public deliberations. Taking communication as design, we analyze the intentional design of deliberative format using invited experts to support public discussions. Through discourse analysis of one expert’s interventions into the group discussion, we suggest how expertise might best contribute to public deliberation

Higher Education Exchange: 2010

This annual publication serves as a forum for new ideas and dialogue between scholars and the larger public. Essays explore ways that students, administrators, and faculty can initiate and sustain an ongoing conversation about the public life they share.The Higher Education Exchange is founded on a thought articulated by Thomas Jefferson in 1820: "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."In the tradition of Jefferson, the Higher Education Exchange agrees that a central goal of higher education is to help make democracy possible by preparing citizens for public life. The Higher Education Exchange is part of a movement to strengthen higher education's democratic mission and foster a more democratic culture throughout American society.Working in this tradition, the Higher Education Exchange publishes interviews, case studies, analyses, news, and ideas about efforts within higher education to develop more democratic societies

The Cold War Court: a rhetorical analysis of the Supreme Court's debate concerning the American Communist Party in Dennis v. United States, 1951

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to [email protected], referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references and cases sited: p. 185-194.Issued also on microfiche from Lange Micrographics.In the midst of the McCarthy era, eleven national leaders of the American Communist Party were arrested under the provisions of the Smith Act. Their case, Dennis v. United States, eventually rose to the Supreme Court, where a sharply divided Court ruled 6-2 to affirm the convictions of the eleven. The case sparked five written opinions: the plurality opinion of Chief Justice Fred Vinson, concurring opinions from Justice Frankfurter and Justice Jackson, and dissenting opinions from Justice Black and Justice Douglas. Though the Court's ruling enjoyed immense contemporary approval, as the century comes to a close, the Dennis ruling is now considered exceedingly deficient. The Court is typically accused of allowing or even encouraging the excesses of McCarthyism.This analysis seeks to better understand the actions of the Court during this trying time in American history. The analysis focuses on the written text of the Dennis decision, which is mined to uncover the arguments and counter-arguments made by the justices in attempting to decide the case. The analysis focuses on the plurality opinion of Chief Justice Vinson, and the manner in which the subsequent four opinions responded to Vinson's arguments. The analysis uncovered definite mistakes performed by the five justices, misinterpretations which are difficult to judge without knowledge of the author's intent, strategic restraint by the two dissenters, and the important influence of official impediments at the hands of judicial constraints. Lastly, several conclusions are offered concerning the judicial rhetoric, the anti-communism debate, and the role of the Supreme Court in the American democracy

Power, ethics, and deliberative democracy: exploring the contribution of passionate impartiality in diverse communities

Presented at the Fall 2012 Center for Collaborative Conservation (https://collaborativeconservation.org/) Seminar and Discussion Series, "Power and Ethics in (Collaborative) Conservation", September 25, 2012, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. This series focused on the work that the CCC's Collaborative Conservation Fellows have been doing across the Western U.S. and around the world.Martín Carcasson, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Communication Studies department of Colorado State University, and the founder and director of the CSU Center for Public Deliberation (CPD). He also serves as a Senior Public Engagement Fellow with Public Agenda, a nationally recognized public engagement firm based in New York, and is adjunct faculty for the University of Denver Conflict Resolution Program. His research focuses on contemporary public affairs, and the interdisciplinary theory and practice of deliberative democracy and collaborative governance. The CPD serves as an impartial resource for the Northern Colorado community dedicated to enhancing local democracy through improved public communication, community problem solving, and collaborative decision-making. Dr. Carcasson trains students and community members to serve as impartial facilitators, who then work with local governments, school boards, and community organizations to design, facilitate, and report on innovative public forums on important issues. His research has been published in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, the Journal of Public Deliberation, Higher Education Exchange, the International Journal of Conflict Resolution, New Directions in Higher Education, Public Sector Digest, and the Quarterly Journal of Speech.Includes recorded speech and PowerPoint presentation.Practitioners and theorists involved with the deliberative democracy movement are constantly striving for the unreachable ideal of a democracy where a broad, representative group of stakeholders work through difficult issues collaboratively and come to a reasoned public judgment. Critics, however, express concerns that deliberative democracy efforts often close off diverse voices and atypical communication styles, and thus unduly support dominate voices and the status quo. Experts, on the other hand, fear that deliberative democracy perspectives can often exacerbate public misinformation. This presentation will examine the concept of "passionate impartiality" that underlies the work of the CSU Center for Public Deliberation as a potential tool for negotiating these difficult tensions and improving the quality of public discourse and community problem-solving

The Critical Role of Local Centers and Institutes in Advancing Deliberative Democracy

Utilizing the development and early history of the Colorado State University Center for Public Deliberation as an example, this paper makes the case for expanding the number of and the level of support for such campus-based centers as critical resources for expanding deliberative democracy. Due to their ability to not only provide deliberative capacity to the community, but also to attract students to our field and equip with them with essential skills, to strengthen the connection of colleges and universities to their local communities, and to contribute to the further development of deliberative theory and practice, these local “hubs of democracy” represent a natural “win-win-win-win” that warrants significant focus as we work to develop the deliberative culture of our communities

Editors\u27 Introduction: Special Issue on Higher Education

This issue of the Journal for Public Deliberation challenges colleges and universities to consider how their academic programs help strengthen American democracy. In this introduction, the editors summarize and connect the contributions in this special issue

Do Experts Help or Hinder? An Empirical Examination of Experts and Expertise during Public Deliberation

We consider expertise in interaction during small group public deliberations. Taking communication as design, we analyze the intentional design of deliberative format using invited experts to support public discussions. Through discourse analysis of one expert’s interventions into the group discussion, we suggest how expertise might best contribute to public deliberation.</p