"Deliberating Across Difference(s)" is a platform for bringing people together who represent different (if not opposing) points of views and experiences. The goal is deliberation, the speaking, listening, and reflection necessary for determining the best (most productive, efficient, and ethical) course of future action. Only through such deliberation can the ideas most beneficial to the community as a whole emerge. After all, as Cass Sustein reminds us in The Second Bill of Rights, the original framers of the Constitution envisioned deliberation among diverse people who disagreed on issues both large and small, for only through such deliberation can the ideas most beneficial to the community as a whole emerge. Reflective deliberation and communicating across differences are essential to our democratic future.

Given the importance of deliberating across differences, then, the Center has launched an exploration—with experts in the field—of ways to promote and sustain deliberation within groups of unlike minds. How can we communicate across differences of gender, race, religion, economics, resource availability, region, and politics in order to promote the larger public good? What can we do to encourage robust yet civil democratic deliberation in our increasingly diverse society? The abilities to agree, disagree, and discuss important issues are basic to engaged citizenship in a vibrant democracy. Yet most US citizens imagine deliberating with others in only the most negative terms: those "shout-back" television programs (think "Crossfire" or "Hannity and Combs") or on-the-street confrontations between demonstrators with irreconcilable points of view (witness recent pro- and anti-immigration marches). Instead of reasoned debate, we now too often witness only polar disagreement. Instead of reflective deliberation, we see citizens angered or silenced by the sense that they have no voice.  Instead of negotiation and compromise, we see our political leaders resorting to the politics of personal destruction. Little wonder our students and fellow citizens feel frustrated with the state of public deliberation, if not disengaged altogether.

Anthony Appiah (The Ethics of Identity, Cosmopolitanism),LuMing Mao (Reading Chinese Fortune Cookie), Danielle Allen (Talking to Strangers), Sharon Crowley (Toward a Civil Discourse), Iris Young (Inclusion and Democracy), Lani Guinier (Lift Every Voice), Cornel West (Democracy Matters), and Krista Ratcliffe (Rhetorical Listening) are among the scholars we have already hosted or hope to invite to Penn State to help us answer these questions.   A series of lectures and colloquia as well as an edited collection (edited by Distinguished Professor R. Keith Gilyard) will be the outgrowth of this program.