UB awarded federal grant to promote civil discourse

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The faculty of the University at Buffalo’s Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) program has received a nearly $4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) for a four-year civil discourse initiative that will help students cultivate the virtues, skills and norms essential to productive civic dialogue and community engagement.

The grant is among a set of similar yet distinct initiatives at 17 institutions of higher education that were awarded roughly $52 million in DOE funding aimed at promoting civil discourse on college and university campuses. This grant builds on UB PPE’s substantial success in attracting external support for its educational, research and community engagement activities. UB PPE has received more than $7 million in grants in the past two years.

The UB project, “From Campus to Community: Civil Discourse as a Catalyst for Local Civic Renewal,” will leverage various resources through curricular innovation; co-curricular experiences outside the classroom where students will further develop skills and norms; public deliberation and community facing events; and rigorous research.

“The PPE program is one of UB’s most interdisciplinary and civically oriented academic units, bringing together specialists in political economy, social epistemology, markets and freedom, democratic theory, and civic virtue,” says Justin Bruner, the grant’s principal investigator.

He adds that PPE also maintains deep collaborative ties with national partners, such as the Institute for Humane Studies, complementing its faculty expertise with unparalleled access to external expertise and speaker networks.

The key objectives of “From Campus to Community” are designed to strengthen students’ civic competencies, including intellectual humility and openness; improve the campus climate around discourse; build curriculum; engage the community through an expansion of PPE’s successful history of hosting deliberative forums and community salons; and generate rigorous and generalizable knowledge.

Bruner says the grant’s curriculum component will “build a new ecosystem of courses” that will include three new undergraduate courses on free expression and civil discourse; a new certificate program in civil discourse and civic leadership; as well as an executive education program for civic leaders.

This aspect of the grant aligns with new requirements approved by the State University of New York, of which UB is the flagship, that adds a civic discourse component to the general education core competencies.

Civil discourse operates through the coordination of two mechanisms, both of which are threaded through this initiative, according to Bruner.

“A basic skillset is required that enables people to clearly articulate a position that builds steps leading to an argument’s conclusions,” he says. “But civil discourse also involves a set of norms and expectations. I must feel that someone is going to respectfully entertain my argument, and they in turn are approaching things in the same way.

“This is the basis of our program. It’s a full court press that considers civil discourse as both skill- and norm-based.”

“From Campus to Community” will also include a longitudinal study on the social norms of civil discourse to be conducted during the grant period.

This fall’s incoming class of first-year students will have the option to participate in the study, which will gauge the program’s impact using validated measures of intellectual humility, civic trust, viewpoint openness, and the norms that support these behaviors.

“Participation is not mandatory, but we’ll be following up with students who do take part on a semester-by-semester basis measuring primary effects and then using network analysis to determine secondary effects,” says Bruner. This will allow UB researchers to study the dynamics of social norm emergence in rich detail.

“Even if you don’t participate with any element attached to the grant, but your dormmate, for instance does, how might that impact an understanding of managing disagreements during your four years at UB?” Bruner adds.

“We’re excited to find out.”