by Laura Huenneke, Provost
I really enjoyed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s visit to campus this past Monday. Her conversation was a reminder that legal minds are very disciplined and focused, not too patient with fuzzy thinking or the confusion of political with legal analysis.
Her thesis is that civic engagement is endangered, in part because of the waning of civic education and in part because of decreasing participation in civic discourse. People seem less likely today to hold thoughtful conversations or engage in difficult discussions; instead we hear polarized shouting or witness passive disengagement.
Justice O’Connor suggested that we accept invitations to serve – for example, on juries or in volunteer activities — as well as invest in civics education. On that point, NAU is doing a good job. Our faculty are leaders in the American Democracy Project, and our students benefit from service learning projects, action research teams and so on.
But what about engagement in the life of our own academic community?
The Faculty Senate is tackling important issues this year but struggles to fill its committees and councils; some colleges are not well represented. Another forum for engagement is the PlanNAU website, established to encourage discussion in our strategic planning process. Some interesting ideas have been posted, but not many of them draw any comments or true exchange of thoughtful ideas.
Engagement begins here at home. How do we encourage a vigorous, diverse, but respectful exchange of ideas?
It is timely to ready your comments on civic engagement. Over the last few weeks a handful of people with units on and off campus worked to unfold a major worldwide event on the NAU campus, which was held just a couple of hours ago (noon Feb 14) at the Union. In the process of getting the word out and ‘buy in’ from some there was a mix of enthusiastic ‘how can I help’ and some (in my opinion) unhealthy and dis-connected communication lacking support of the “One Billion Rising” event. This event was intended to join worldwide community and educate on a core social problem which is pandemic. I don’t feel it appropriate in this format to name names or units, but this range of buy in from fully engaged to distancing is a real life current example of the need for civic education. I’ve been on the NAU campus 30 years now and would be happy to elaborate if it would help. Thank you for making this forum available.