Description
Book SynopsisRenewing America’s Civic Compact addresses the chief challenges and principal tensions in the operation of our civil society in order to consider possible paths forward. The meritocracy, multiculturalism, issues of race, technology, and populist nationalism in American democracy today are some of the issues that have created more tensions to American public life. Chapters address the condition of civil conversation within the university and across American society. This collection then engages debates over the continued relevance and durability of liberal ideas and institutions; whether we have accessible means and resources to channel digital technology more fruitfully for the sake of human achievement and well-being; and how some have endeavored to revitalize the American civic vocation through both scholarly and practical education. Finally, the volume closes with a call to restore civic friendship, properly understood, as the foundation for renewing America’s civic compact.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Carol McNamara and Trevor Shelley
Part I: Diagnosis of the American Malady
Chapter 1: We All Live on Campus Now: Andrew Sullivan
Chapter 2: The Constitution of Knowledge: Jonathan Rauch
Chapter 3: Renewing Civic Education: How to Restore Strategic Competence and Confidence: H.R. McMaster
Part II: Meritocracy, Racial Challenges, and the Populist Response
Chapter 4: Meritocracy, Populism and Worker Power: Michael Lind
Chapter 5: The Inescapable Meritocracy: Rita Koganzon
Chapter 6 Systemic Racism: Defining Terms and Evaluating Evidence: Lara Bazelon
Chapter 7: On the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America: Glenn Loury
Part III: The Case for Liberal Ideas and Institutions
Chapter 8: The Three Pillars of Liberalism: Michael Zuckert
Chapter 9: Truth and Virtue in the Founders’ Liberalism: C. Bradley Thompson
Chapter 10: Conservative Democracy Rightly and Wrongly Understood: Daniel Mahoney
Part IV: A Civic Compact for Our Digital Age
Chapter 11: Beyond Information Idolatry: A Civic Compact for a Technoscientific Age: J. Benjamin Hurlbut
Chapter 12: Social Media and The Prestige Economy Trap: Buying Allies, Losing Friends, and the Audience Effect: Pamela Paresky
Chapter 13: Steamboat or Showboat? Space, Wealth, and the American Way: Charles Rubin
Part V: Cultivating Our Civic Vocation and Contributing to the Common Good
Chapter 14: Empowering the Rising Generation to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative: Ian Rowe
Chapter 15: Civics at Work: Defending Democratic Institutions: Suzanne Spaulding
Part VI: Civic Friendship
Chapter 16: Civic Friendship: Lessons from Aristotle: Michael Pakaluk
Chapter 17: Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln: Neighborly Citizens of a Common Country: Diana Schaub
Chapter 18: How Civic Friendship is a Fact not an Ideal, and How it Explains Our Present Moment: Paul Ludwig
