National Institute for Civil Discourse

In this episode of NICD Chat, Timothy J. Shaffer, PhD speaks with Joshua Darr, PhD at Louisiana State University and Matthew P. Hitt, PhD at Colorado State University. They speak about their book Home Style Opinion: How Local Newspapers Can Slow Polarization from Cambridge University Press coauthored with Johanna L. Dunaway. Local newspapers can hold back the rising tide of political division in America by turning away from the partisan battles in Washington and focusing their opinion page...

NICD's Timothy Shaffer facilitates an engaging discussion about the relationship of social media, misinformation, and civil discourse in democracy. Guests include three members of the NICD Research Network. Patricia Rossini is a Derby Fellow in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool, UK and incoming Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. Sarah Sobieraj is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Tufts University. Dannagal Goldthwaite Young is Professor of...

Robert B. Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and author of Sustaining Democracy: What We Owe to the Other Side (Oxford University Press, 2021). This conversation between NICD's Dr. Timothy Shaffer and Dr. Talisse highlights the challenge of what it means to wrestle with what Talisse calls the "democrat's dilemma:" the tension between the moral requirement to recognize the equality of political opponents and the moral directive to pursue and...

Recently, Oxford University Press has published The Ubiquitous Presidency: Presidential Communication and Digital Democracy in Tumultuous Times, written by Joshua M. Scacco and Kevin Coe. In this episode of NICD Chat, Timothy Shaffer speaks with Scacco and Kevin Coe about their recent book, what it means to think about the modern presidency reaching back to the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt to today. Significantly, the book utilizes data to make arguments about the impact and significance...

Bob Bordone is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, author, coach, and teacher on negotiation, mediation, consensus-building, dialogue, and facilitation. He is the founder and principal at the Cambridge Negotiation Institute. He is also currently a Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School and previously served as the Thaddeus R. Beal Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School for more than two decades where he also founded and directed the Harvard Law School Negotiation and...

Emily Sydnor is assistant professor of political science at Southwestern University who has recently published Disrespectful Democracy: The Psychology of Political Incivility from Columbia University Press. This episode explores the book and its implications for political discourse and the issue of incivility--and whether it is good or bad for democracy. The majority of Americans think that politics has an “incivility problem” and that this problem is only getting worse. Research...

This episode of NICD Chat is a lecture by Dr. Jennifer Mercieca, Associate Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University. She spoke at the third biannual NICD Research Convening that took place September 26-28, 2019 in Tucson, Arizona. Dr. Mercieca's talk, entitled "Is Our Public Sphere Under Attack?," explored weaponized rhetoric and its impact on American political discourse. Dr. Mercieca writes about American political discourse, especially as it relates to citizenship, democracy,...

This is a special episode of NICD Chat, rebroadcasting an interview between Becky Margiotta of the Unleashing Social Change podcast and Cheryl Graeve of NICD. ~~~ Racial, political, and generational division are not new concepts. We’ve been faced with the repercussions of division for as long as the human race has existed, but is it possible to bridge those divides? Today’s guest, Cheryl Graeve, works hand-in-hand with the National Institute for Civil Discourse to actively encourage...

NICD Chat - A dialogue between former NICD Executive Director (now Emerita) Carolyn Lukensmeyer and former White House Chief of Staff Thomas F. McLarty III. They speak about their shared time in the White House during the Clinton administration and the importance of working together, a sentiment McLarty wrote about in an op-ed called "The Case to Stop Campaigning and Start Governing." You can read about McLarty's speech at George Washington University referenced in the podcast here.

A conversation between Jane Calderwood and Tracey Todd about the role of social media and fake news in the 2016 election.

A conversation with Michele Chadwick of Gem County, Idaho about her work in public office and how it connects with civility.

NICD Chat with Lewis Diuguid, a long time member of The Kansas City Star’s editorial board who stepped down from that position in October 2016. To follow Diuguid, visit https://twitter.com/diuguidlewis.