Schwartz: Leadership and civic disengagement
Joel Schwartz The professor has made the study of civic engagement a passion.
“Leadership” and “service”: When it comes to civic engagement, Joel
Schwartz wants to change the subject. A preoccupation with those models
presupposes and perpetuates the civic disengagement that marks
contemporary American society, he believes. The focus, he said, should
be on building publics.
Schwartz, dean of interdisciplinary studies at the College, professor
of government and director of the Charles Center, mapped out his
thinking in a video lecture produced by the College’s Office of
University Relations in partnership with the Swem Media Center. In it,
he identified civic disengagement as the social phenomenon of the last
half century and he suggested that it is facilitated because “we have
reinvented how we interact with each other so that it does not rely on
civic engagement.”
Schwartz is interested in efforts that focus on “reinvigorating,
rebuilding and renewing” citizenship. He suggests that the increase in
books published with the word “leadership” in the title from a relative
few during the 1950s to more than 9,000 during the last five years is
feeding off disengagement—“it reminds me of rabbits breeding,” he said.
In a direct challenge to recently published calls for a new
philanthropy, he said, “We don’t even know what the public’s needs are
until it exists as a public.”
Additional quotes:
During the extended video session, Schwartz made the following comments about:
A temporary public
I was involved with a local middle school where attempts were being
made to initiate a dress code. Parents were consulted. Administrators
had their professional opinions of how this would take kid’s focus off
having to have the most trendy, expensive clothes. There wasn’t much
conversation with students. Some of the students instituted a public
forum to engage in this conversation. After joking back and forth,
students didn’t tend to like the dress code because they saw it as
stultifying their individuality. One African-American student made an
interesting point. He said, “Look, when you talk about dress codes,
you’re talking about polo shirts and khaki pants. You’re talking about
imposing white, middle-class, preppy standards on the whole school.
It’s not that this is a neutral dress code, this is the exercise of
power by one group over another (my words).” Let’s face it. He has a
good point. It’s not that dress codes look like the norms in the
African American community.
To be honest, the whole group came to a better understanding. They all
decided they didn’t want a dress code, but also there was the formation
of a public there, the formation of a community. This could spill over
into other issues, but the discussion ended. It closed down.
On the Roman sidelines
One dimension of being a follower means having a spectator role. …
Spectator citizenship: It allows you to have this fake involvement in
politics even while you, yourself, are passive. It happened during the
Roman Empire when elites created circuses and public spectacles
partially because everybody was unemployed and it was dangerous to have
them sitting there idly when there wasn’t a real role for their
engagement.
Right heart, wrong results
Given such a massive movement in this service direction, it is
quite hard to deviate from that. The people who focus on service and
leadership are the people whose hearts are in the right place. They’re
frustrated. They want to help. They want to contribute to the
community. They want to be responsible citizens. How do you do that in
a world of disengagement? You either don’t do it at all or you come up
with a model of service that works assuming that disengagement.
Philanthropy, service, leadership; they are the central words of people
trying to be responsible. They can deliver food. They can pick up
trash. There is nothing inherently wrong in that, but they serve to
institutionalize and to perpetuate that civic disengagement that is the
reason they are needed to begin with.
