nancy cantor civicengagementkennedy (2000) writes, “the blues is a life-and-death struggle. the...

18 L I B E R A L ED U C A T I O N SP R I N G 2004

As a public good, universities have a rare andcritical role to play. While we educate leadersfor the future, we also address important soci-etal issues of the day. Our discoveries can anddo change the world. We lay the groundworkfor the future as we work to preserve the cul-

ture of the past. Atthe same time, we try

out new ways to build community. The university’s role is “rare” because it is

positioned to the side of everyday life, uncon-strained by requirements for rigid adherenceto social norms or intellectual paradigms.The university can foster an experimental at-titude—playful, if you will—that can giverise to both intellectual discovery and socialinnovation.

The university takes on a “critical” rolewhen it opens its gates far enough to listen tothe different voices in the debate over the is-sues of greatest concern to society and to learnabout them firsthand. The university mustface outward toward work that changes theculture of the day.

We are at our best when we build a commu-nity of scholars and learners who feel empow-ered to be both playful in examining theirworld and responsible for affecting societalprogress. Just as we want to open our gates andlook outward, we also want to build modelcommunities on campus to invite the world inas partners.

Liberal learning and civic engagementAs AAC&U eloquently states in its Statementon Liberal Learning: “Liberal learning is soci-ety’s best investment in our shared future.”Likewise I would argue that the best way forsociety to fulfill its dreams of a shared, produc-tive, and harmonious future is to maintainuniversities as public goods. We can do this byintertwining the playfulness of liberal learningas a mode of thought and action with the re-sponsibility of civic engagement with diversestakeholders whose voices need to mattermore in our shared future. In so doing, we willbe able to educate socially responsible citizenswho will not be complacent in the face of en-trenched societal norms, but will take the ini-tiative in shaping our diverse democracy andits global interconnections.1

This can happen because, at their best, lib-eral education and civic engagement havemuch in common. Each requires vibrant andsustained exchanges of both people and ideas.Universities can offer safe havens for peoplefrom different backgrounds, races, ethnicgroups, and generations to talk, argue, and re-flect as equals in exchanges that can andshould bridge the boundaries between theuniversity and the wider world.

Now, just one generation away from a timewhen white children will be the minority inour public schools, children of different racesstill grow up in different neighborhoods with-out attending each other’s birthday parties,proms, weddings, and funerals. Because theyand we do not know each other, the stereotypesthat result have led to great inequality andinjustice in such vital areas as employment,

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NANCY CANTOR is chancellor of the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign. The article isadapted from a paper given at AAC&U’s 2004Annual Meeting.

CivicEngagement N A N C Y C A N T O R

Universities can take a

leadership rolein shaping

environments in which

differences are neither

privileged norignored

The University as a Public Good

Annual Meeting

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justice system. Mirroring our divisions at

home is ethnic, religious, andintergroup conflict in virtu-ally every corner of the globe.The result is untold humanand cultural carnage. To makematters worse, we have re-acted to the very real painand losses we have suffered onour own shores by turning in-ward, “battening the hatches”if you will, presenting real problems for thefree and vital exchanges of people and ideasthat are the foundation of our democracy.

The task of universities is urgent: to buildon themes of diversity, not only in admissionsand in recruiting, but also in creating livingand learning communities that will produce acitizenry that is both engaged and informed. Itis not enough to affirmatively provide accessto educational opportunity. We must also cre-ate opportunities and settings in which to pur-sue true integration. Universities can take aleadership role in shaping a dialogue that goesbeyond differences by supporting environ-ments in which students learn from and abouteach other—environments in which differ-ences are neither privileged nor ignored. (SeePatricia Gurin’s discussion of Benjamin Bar-ber’s distinction between ignoring and privi-leging differences in Defending Diversity, 2004.)

Building sustained exchanges: The arts as a prototypeUniversities can fulfill this mission by offeringcontexts for the exchanges of people and ideasthat are sustained, rather than one-shot effortsover a day, a week, or even a semester. Theseexchanges must appeal to people of differentexpertise and backgrounds. They should allowfor open-mindedness, permit the suspensionof everyday norms and judgments, and givestanding to everyone, across generations.

In trying to envision how such exchangesmight actually work, we might look to thearts—which I would define broadly as “ex-pressive culture” in all forms—for a naturalprototype. The arts stand to the side of dailylife, and they allow the expression of self andof social tensions in a safe way. They can alsoforge sustained connections between peoplesand ideas and cultures that otherwise either

simply remain invisible, unex-pressed, or worse yet, clash indestructive ways.

As an example, I invite youto consider the blues, a cre-ation of African-Americansthat made its way from ruralslavery to our nation’s cities,to people and places all overthe world with different musi-cal traditions, to young andold, and to other art forms. It is shown in a brilliant travel-

ing exhibition entitled “Visualizing the Blues,”photographs of the Mississippi Delta collectedby the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis.

In the catalog for this exhibition, whichwas shown at the Krannert Art Museum atthe University of Illinois, Deborah WillisKennedy (2000) writes, “The blues is a life-and-death struggle. The blues permits the liv-ing to defend life/living.” To visualize theblues, one must contend with prejudice andracism, blood and spit, malice and murder.

Ernest Withers took a photograph that illus-trates this point. Its title is “Boarding HouseBathroom From Which James Earl Ray ShotDr. King, 422 South Main Street, Memphis,April 1968.” The photograph shows a filthytoilet, an old tub, a pockmarked wall, theopen window from which a killer silenced ournation’s greatest voice for peace in the twentiethcentury. The room is repellent. Normally, wewould turn away, but as soon as we realizewhere we are, we stay to stare. We are at thevantage point of the assassin. The imagedraws us into dialogue, across history and between groups.

The arts often serve this way, as the medium,not just the reflection, of intergroup dialogue.They offer an escape from the silencing thattends to come in “normal” society, making itpossible to face highly charged and eventaboo subjects. And everyone has some“standing” in the “conversation” that ensues.In the arts, for example, it is not only diplomatswho can discuss and negotiate peace. Withoutmoney, limousines, or hotel reservations, chil-dren are taking it up, one-to-one, through a“Peace through Poetry” exchange on the In-ternet, sponsored by iEARN, an internationaleducational and resource network. The sixteenschools participating in this project are lo-cated in Chicago, Lithuania, Japan, Bulgaria,


We are at our best when we build a community of

scholars and learnerswho feel empowered to be both playful in

examining their worldand responsible

for affecting societal progress

Moscow, and in Urbana, a few blocks from ourcampus at Illinois.

“Before the war commences the end is clear,”writes Rositsa Kuneva, a student from Bulgaria.“All taking part are losers, nobody wins/Neverwins the one who fights against his fear/Sluic-ing down the earth with bloody rinse.” 2

Dialogues such as these strip away the ar-mor that we think we need to protect ourplace in the world, and there is nothing quitelike the voices of students when they aregiven standing through artistic expression.The arts demonstrate that the kinds of ex-changes we need in the nation’s colleges anduniversities are possible, but we must con-struct ways for these exchanges to occur.

Exchanges across the boundaries of race and ethnicity In our increasingly multiracial democracy it isvital that universities create exchanges acrossthe rigid boundaries of race and ethnicity, re-ligion and culture. But the exchanges thatcome so naturally in the arts need somethingmore in higher education: structures that letthese exchanges happen.

Our students, faculty, and community part-ners need settings in which we can let down ourguard, acknowledge each other’s standing inthe conversation, and feel able to express bothdiscomfort and ignorance. We need to be ableto do this formally and informally, on and off

campus, and across the groups in which wehave been socialized. Then and only then willour nation come close to realizing the educa-tional benefits of diversity. Then and only thenwill we begin to more fully embrace the fifty-year-old promise of Brown v. Board of Education.

So, why are we in higher education stilltalking about race? Because our failure to dis-card the legacy of Jim Crow has left our nationso segregated that our students, for the mostpart, do not meet as equals until they arrive atour doors. I will never forget a Latina studentwho told me, “I’ve never lived with so manywhite people before.” It is up to us to shift thatperspective to: “They’ve never had the chanceto live with ME before,” with all the opportu-nities and optimism that implies. We mustcreate learning and living communities thatwill make true integration possible, and wemust create ways to assess how well we’re doing.

We must understand that the idea of “civicengagement” goes beyond service or volunteerwork. We must immerse ourselves in environ-ments of genuine exchange, and these canstart at home, on our own campuses. Vibrantmultiracial/multicultural exchanges that bringthe issues of society to our doorstep are as muchabout civic engagement as are our programs inneighboring communities. We should also takethe extra step of inviting our community neigh-bors onto our campuses as we build new modelsof community.

SP R I N G 2004 L I B E R A L ED U C A T I O N 21

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Annual Meeting

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What would such communities look like? Andhow can we use what we know about the arts asa model? At Illinois, as on many campuses, wehave been asking these questions for severalyears and I thought it might be useful to de-scribe a few of our efforts, keeping in mind theanalogies with the artistic exchanges I have al-ready described.

Exchanges that eschew boundaries. One of themost powerful aspects of artistic exchanges isthat they eschew the “normal” boundaries anddistinctions of social life—anyone and every-one can be engaged in artistic expression, andfrequently these exchanges draw diverse peoplesand generations together. In a similar vein,when we created our new Center for Democ-racy in a Multiracial Society in 2002, we re-solved that it would bring together scholars,students, and community activists to engagein conversation about the many racialized po-sitions of different groups and individuals inour society.

The Center drew its advisory board from theleadership of all of our ethnic studies programson campus. It invited community activists tocome to campus for sabbaticals at the Center.It engaged students from different campuscommunities in intergroup conversations and

analyses that go beyond “black and white.”And it funded projects to examine the experi-ence of democracy in daily life from these dif-ferent positions.

Many of the Center’s initiatives intention-ally engage multiple generations of bothnovices and experts. They circumvent the “si-lencing” that comes with power and status,and they give “standing” to those who oftenare the most affected but the least heard. Forexample, the Center faculty have mobilizedwith Latino/a community activists in Illinoisto address two issues of critical importance totheir community—narrowing the K-12achievement gap and lobbying for the rightsof children of undocumented families. Asthey define what it means to “mobilize withthe community,” the goal is to position thefamilies and the students to be heard.

It is the families themselves who are help-ing to design interventions in the schools. It isour students, many of whom have firsthandexperience with being excluded by virtue oftheir parents’ status, who are speaking to thelegislators in Springfield, dialoguing at theCenter with statewide leaders of the newestFreedom Rides, and learning in action as theytake part in opening up educational opportu-nity to our fastest- growing student populationin Illinois. Their voices have authenticity andpower when they are finally given the stage.


Annual Meeting

Annual Meeting

Listen to the words of YeseniaSanchez, who came to ourcampus on a Freedom Ride:

I am fighting for my dignity.I am an undocumented stu-dent and, just like manyothers, feel helpless becausemy dreams and goals are be-ing snatched away. I wake up every morn-ing and feel that my life is in limbo, nothingis certain . . . I am also here for my mother.When she was a young girl, she was onlyable to go up to the sixth grade because shewas a woman and was supposed to be athome. She tells me how every night shedreamed about going to school. Her dreamsare also mine, and I am determined to besomeone. Exchanges that take a lesson from history. We

also take a lesson from the arts in trying to en-courage cross-talk about race and opportunity,contrasting historical dreams and contempo-rary realities. At the moment, for example, weare in the middle of a year-long commemora-tion of the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v.Board, honoring those who put their lives onthe line for the cause of justice, reexaminingtheir struggle, and rededicating ourselves totheir still unfulfilled dream.

At our entering student convocation lastAugust, we began with a speech from the di-rector of our women’s studies program, Profes-sor Kal Alston, about what Brown v. Boardhad meant to her African-American familyand to her own education in predominantlywhite schools. We’ll end the year with a com-mencement address by legal scholar and ac-tivist, Professor Lani Guinier. In between wehave sponsored symposia, performances, bookclubs, community research projects and part-nerships, and dialogues. We are seeing bothsynergy and exchange.

As part of the commemoration, we invitedback to campus alumni from Project 500,which in 1968 recruited African-Americanstudents from all over the nation to enroll atIllinois. As graduates, many continued thestruggle for civil rights their entire lives andour current students took note of theirlessons. Numbers of current students told uslater they were so moved by hearing the sto-ries of this older generation that afterwardsthey met as a group on their own to do somesoul-searching about themselves.

In fact, that kind of story-telling and social introspec-tion is a key component increating new contexts for ex-change on campus. The Brownv. Board commemoration it-self, for example, is now theobject of study by undergradu-

ates participating in a new initiative we arecalling The Ethnography of the University.This initiative is giving students the opportu-nity to examine deliberately their own andtheir peers’ experiences of race at the univer-sity and then to report their work, their inter-views, their data, and their conclusions on aWeb archive for future use by other students aswell as faculty, staff, and members of our largercommunity. As the Web archive develops, wetoo will be able to better assess the impact ofour efforts to foster multiracial exchange.

So far, the students’ research on the Brownv. Board commemoration indicates that a bigevent, such as the convocation that all firstyear students are expected to attend, can makea big difference. Their interviews showed that,while only some of our 38,000 students knewabout Brown, and many did not, every singlefirst-year student interviewed knew somethingabout it and had something to say. A massive


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The arts demonstratethat the kinds of

exchanges we need inthe nation’s colleges

and universities are possible

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one-time effort can create interest that thencarries over to the book clubs, symposia, per-formances, and other venues that offer smaller,ongoing contexts for exchange.

Understanding difference in the service ofbuilding common cause happens one personat a time, and it requires that we be able to re-flect on our experience and see it in relationto the experiences of others. This, of course, iswhat happens frequently between artist andaudience, as each critiques the other’s expres-sions. It is also what is happening to the stu-dents who are doing the research in theEthnography of the University initiative andwe hope it is happening with other students asthey gather together to reflect on Brown.

Living and learning together in safe havens. Ofcourse, nothing can quite match the awaken-ing that occurs when students come togetherinformally as peers, and in those rare but criti-cal moments, let down their guard, shed theirprotective armor, and enter into what can thenbecome sustained dialogues about diversity.

In this light, I’d like to share a commentfrom a University of Michigan undergraduatewho answered an e-mail request to all studentsfrom the president of the Michigan StudentAssembly, to describe the impact, positive ornegative, of diversity on their lives. This iswhat she said, in her words, in 1997:

My roommate and I roomed blind. I had noidea whom I would end up with. In mid-Au-gust I found out all about her. She was fromDetroit and black. This didn’t bother me onebit. So far we have gotten along great. . . .Here is one thing that I found funny. . . . My roommate has a flat iron that she uses tostraighten AND curl her hair with. She hadbeen bugging me for a while to let her try iton my hair. This one Friday night I decidedto let her give it a try. . . . So she reached formy hair with her hand so that she could graba chunk to brush. “EEEE,” she shrieked.“What is that? . . . No, nothing is wrong. Ijust can’t believe what your hair feels like! . . .I’ve never felt any white girl’s hair before,”she said. “I had no idea it was so different.”We spent the next hour discussing how wetake care of our hair, how much it costs toget it done, and we also argued about what aperm is. This isn’t a great educational story,but now I feel a little more “worldly” and notas sheltered as I had before. It’s the littlethings like this that make impacts on my life.Small, but nonetheless important. Diversityhelps to make the world a little smaller. In one brief moment, two students who were

already friends and even shared the same roomreally saw each other in new ways, as womenwith hair that was different and bad hair daysthat were the same. One more blind spot dis-appeared in the slow way things happen whenreal integration finally occurs, when differencescan be affirmed, talked about, and shared.

So how do we foster this sense of safety toexpress the self and social tensions in non-judgmental and authentic ways in both livingand learning environments—and preferably atthe place that living and learning intersect?Again using the insight we can get from thearts, compare the difference in the courage ofexpression we typically see in campus theaterto the muted “politeness” of many classroomdiscussions.

Classroom conversations can be just ascourageous, but first we must structure the con-text to provide just enough safety for students


Excerpt from an editorial by Robert L. Kelly,executive secretary of AAC, in theAssociation’s Bulletin, March 1930.

“Instances could be multiplied indefinitely to show that the central purpose of the uni-versities, and even much more the collegesof liberal arts and sciences, is not to providefor the development of ‘intellects’ of studentsbut for the intellectual life of students. Theprocess to be sure is ‘intellectual’ in thesense that it aspires to lead to thinking as itsgoal, but is also aesthetic, moral, social, andreligious in the sense that the end sought isthe finest possible texture of the student’smind, involves as its ideal a persistent intel-lectual curiosity, a desire to study, and thepower and habit of study.”

1915Ninety Years in Print

to try to get to know each other and experi-ence alternative perspectives on the world.At Illinois, we are building on the work of amodel developed at Michigan in our Programin Intergroup Relations, which facilitatesstructured dialogues across small groups tocreate environments in which discomfort,ignorance, and even conflict are tolerated inthe service of building trust and a sense ofcommon fate.

Next fall, we will take another step byopening a new living and learning residencefor first and second year students. It will bededicated to Intergroup Relations and Mul-tiracial Integration, with cultural program-ming, structured dialogues, and classes taughtby faculty fellows from our Center for Democ-racy. The idea here is a simple one: Sincemost students have had very little, if any, ex-perience in crossing the boundaries of raceand ethnicity in their daily lives, we need tostructure safe environments for integration,for learning how to do the hard work of reach-ing out and living and learning in a multiracialcommunity.

We know that most students, majority andminority, will say that there are substantialracial tensions on campus. At the same time,they will also say that at college they havemade, often for the first time in their lives,some very good, close relationships with per-sons of other races and ethnicities. It is our re-sponsibility to foster these kinds of intergroupexperiences, preparing the ground of daily lifein our campus community. We want to en-courage the actual reaching out, on theground, from one person to another. And werecognize that if we want students to becomeengaged citizens of the world, people who canquestion that world and prod it to be a betterplace—somewhere they want to live—wemust invite them to change higher education,to share it, and to make it stretch to fit them.We want our students to change our univer-sity and to make it better.

Knowing the other, shaping the selfWe have a hope in this nation that we can drawon the talent, skill, insight, and imaginationof all of our citizens, and higher educationmust help to lead the way. With a nod to WaltWhitman, the poet Langston Hughes expressedthis hope—this conviction—in an equallypowerful way, in a poem entitled “I, Too.” 3

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.They send me to eat in the kitchenWhen company comes, But I laugh, And eat well,And grow strong.

Tomorrow, I’ll be at the tableWhen company comes.Nobody’ll dareSay to me,“Eat in the kitchen,”Then.

Besides,They’ll see how beautiful I amAnd be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

To lead the way toward fulfilling this hope,we in higher education must figure out how tosit together around our table and engage withdifference. It is through this social introspec-tion, done in the company of others and in-formed by the clash of perspectives, that liberallearning occurs, sustained by difference andstrengthened by the solidarity that follows. nnnnn

To respond to this article, e-mail [email protected],with the author’s name on the subject line.

END NOTES1. See the Guiding Principles for the Center for Lib-

eral Education and Civic Engagement, a coopera-tive effort of AAC&U and Campus Compact.

2. www.vceducation.org/peace/schools/ukraine208.html.3. From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, by

Langston Hughes, copyright © 1994 by The Estateof Langston Hughes. Used by permission of AlfredA. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

WORKS CITEDGrutter v. Bollinger, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 02-214,

June 23, 2003.Gurin, Patricia, ed., Earl Lewis, Eric Dey, Sylvia Hur-

tado, Jeffrey S. Lehman. 2004. Defending diversity:Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan.Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Kennedy, Deborah Willis. 2000. Coda: Imagine theblues. In Wendy McDoris, Visualizing the blues: Im-ages of the American South. Memphis: The DixonGallery and Garden.

National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders.1968. Report of the National Advisory Commission onCivil Disorders. Washington, DC: GovernmentPrinting Office, March 1.


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nancy cantor civicengagementkennedy (2000) writes, “the blues is a life-and-death struggle. the...

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