This course introduces the Rutgers community to the community development methodologies known throughout the world as Sustained Dialogue and Public Deliberation. These approaches to community peacemaking involve the application of skills in design, analysis, and communications to a variety of intergroup situations.

Learning to create public peace processes in our communities and in our world would seem a challenge well suited to the mission of the urban university. Applying methods of cross-community dialogue both on campus and in surrounding communities is the goal of this course. In this course, we will build on work developed and conducted over the past 30 years by Dr. Harold Saunders and his associates within the Kettering Foundation and the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue.

Students enrolled in the course should be prepared to meet in a twice-weekly seminar, and to participate in field experiences on campus or in the surrounding community that involve the application of principles and methodologies of sustained dialogue and public deliberation.

The course will be conducted by Prof. Jon Van Til, who will be assisted by Dean Allison Wisniewski. The course is open to both graduate students and advanced undergraduates.

Roger Lohmann, Jon Van Til and Dolly Ford, SUSTAINED DIALOGUE AND PUBLIC DELIBERATION (in process).

Harold H. Saunders, A PUBLIC PEACE PROCESS. New York: Palgrave, 2001

Harold H. Saunders, "Sustained Dialogue to Transform Deep-Rooted Human Conflicts" (copy provided by instructor)

Teddy Nemeroff and David Tukey, "Diving In: A Handbook for Improving Race Relations on College Campuses through the Process of Sustained Dialogue", 2001. (copies available from instructor).

James Voorhees, DIALOGUE SUSTAINED: THE MULTILEVEL PEACE PROCESS AND THE DARTMOUTH CONFERENCE. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2002.

Harry C. Boyte, "Information-Age Populism: Higher Education as a Civic Learning Organization." Washington: Council on Public Policy Education, 2002.

Stephanie Burkhalter, John Gastil, and Todd Kelshaw, "A Conceptual Definition and Theoretical Model of Public Deliberation in Small Face-to-Face Groups". Communication Theory 12:4, November 2002, 398-422.

John Gastil and James P. Dillard, "Increasing Political Sophistication Through Public Deliberation." Political Communication 16:1, Jan-Mar 1999, 3-23.

Christian Hunold, "Corporatism, Pluralism, and Democracy: Toward a Deliberative Theory of Bureaucratic Accountability." Governance 14:2, April 2001, 151-167.

Kettering Foundation, "Framing Issues for Public Deliberation", 2000 (copies available from instructor).

_______, "Creating Citizens Through Public Deliberation" (Scott London)

_______, "Making Choices Together: The Power of Public Deliberation"

_______, "What Citizens Can Do: A Public Way to Act"

_______, "For Communities to Work" (David Mathews)

David Michael Ryfe, "The Practice of Deliberative Democracy: A Study of 16 Deliberative Organizations." Political Communication 19, 2002, 359-377 (on general reserve).

Harold H. Saunders, "A Citizen's Political Process". The Kettering Review 22: 1 Spring 2004, 37-46.

Maeve Cooke, "Five Arguments for Deliberative Democracy." Political Studies 48:5, December 2000, 947-969.

James S. Fishkin and Peter Laslett, DEBATING DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.

Christopher Gates and Drew O'Connor, "Toward a Healthy Democracy." National Civic Review: 89:2, Summer 2000, 161-167.

Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, "Deliberative Democracy Beyond Process." Journal of Political Philosophy 10:2, 2002, 153-174.

Chantal Mouffe, "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?" Social Research 66:3, Fall 1999, 745-758.

Judith Rodin and Stephen P. Steinberg, eds. Public discourse in America : conversation and community in the twenty-first century. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.

Richard Florida, THE RISE OF THE CREATIVE CLASS. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

Roger Lohmann, THE COMMONS. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992.

Robert Putnam, BOWLING ALONE. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Jon Van Til, GROWING CIVIL SOCIETY. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.

George Mitchell, MAKING PEACE. Berkeley, U. California, 1999.

Elisabeth Porter, "Creating Dialogical Spaces in Northern Ireland." International Feminist Journal of Politics 2:2, Summer 2000, 163-184.

Norman Porter, THE ELUSIVE QUEST: RECONCILIATION IN NORTHERN IRELAND. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2003.

Jon Van Til, "Community Innovation in Securing a Wholesome Future in Northern Ireland", Derry Chair of Learning lecture, June 2004. http://crab.rutgers.edu/~vantil/papers/DERRY.html

Students will be able to develop field experience to organize and learn from during this course. Two examples of such experiences are:

1. Sustained Dialogue Tables. These are luncheon groups that involve a range of students from different backgrounds (age, gender, sexual preference, race, ethnicity, class, etc.) that meet, with student organization and moderation, every other week. The purpose of these tables is to develop dialogue across one or more social divides and to observe the impact of the dialogue on understanding and tolerance over time.
2. Public Deliberation experiences. These are community-based meetings in which a public issue is explored and an effort is made to arrive at a community consensus or position. These experiences may be organized by participating students, or observed as they occur "naturally" in the course of community process in Camden and surrounding areas.

1. How does Sustained Dialogue relate to other forms of applied social science aimed at group problem solving?
2. How do SD/PD relate to the approaches used in Community Design planning?
3. What are the major lessons to be learned from the extensive literature on "deliberative democracy"?
4. How can SD/PD be introduced into the classroom?
5. What special issues do class and race raise in the processes of SD/PD?
6. Compare and contrast "sustained dialogue" and "public deliberation".

Students will be expected to attend all sessions, perform class assignments as announced, participate actively in organizing and developing sustained dialogue and public deliberation experiences, and author a research/observation paper on a selected aspect of sustained dialogue/public deliberation. A final examination will also be required.