Catalyst Papers
Exisiting Catalyst Papers
- Paper #1: Why it is imperative to strengthen American democracy through study, dialogue, and change in higher education (PDF)
- Nancy L. Thomas (ed.), Acting Director, The Democracy Imperative University of New Hampshire, Summer 2007 - Paper #2: Leading in the UNH community: Achieving common goals through shared leadership (PDF)
- Bruce L. Mallory, Provost and Executive Vice President, University of New Hampshire
Help Wanted: We are still looking for authors for a few key papers. Keep reading!
TDI challenges colleges and universities to consider how their academic programs contribute to strengthening deliberative democracy, particularly inclusive dialogue, public reasoning and deliberation, democratic leadership and governance, and political engagement and efficacy. Our Catalyst Papers initiative is designed to help campuses break that task down into manageable parts by asking, what can be done on campus within specific academic programs and activities? We know that no particular discipline or program "owns" democracy, and we want to learn more about where democratic learning happens, as well as how these programs can work together more effectively.
We envision Catalyst Papers as a series of broad concept papers that explore deliberative democracy in a discipline (e.g., sociology, communication, political science, education), interdisciplinary programs (e.g., women's studies, leadership studies), or in "high impact learning structures" (e.g., first year experiences, study abroad, diversity programming). We will be selecting from among the best papers and asking the authors to write a more comprehensive paper for a special issue of the Journal of Public Deliberation.
Many papers are complete or in the works: political science, public administration, education, philosophy, communication, diversity programming, libraries, offices of civic engagement, law, and intergroup dialogue programs. But we still have a wish list that includes:
- Conflict resolution
- Sociology
- First-year experiences
- American studies
- Social Justice studies
- Environmental studies
- Cultural studies
- Planning
- Religious studies
- Global studies
- Anthropology
- Criminal Justice
If you are interested in writing a paper, contact Nancy Thomas.
