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The Center's Democracy Lab

In discussing the 鈥渄emocratic ideal鈥 of education, John Dewey argued that two fundamental traits combine the educational experience and democracy. The aim of education, he argued, is to 鈥済enerate greater reliance upon the recognition of mutual interests鈥 and 鈥渃ontinuous readjustment through meeting new situations.鈥 Building from this observation, the Democracy Lab combines Dewey's insights into education and democracy with recent trends in design-thinking pedagogy.focus on generating opportunities for students to build a mutual interest based on their differences and provide a context for them to deploy this mutual interest toward a solving a specific problem.

D.Lab courses听explore a key topic of contemporary democracy each semester.听They听provide a hands-on, design-thinking, experimental space where students elaborate a problem and devise a potential a solution around one of the major challenges confronting our contemporary democracies. Such topics may include but are not limited to: global citizenship, democracy in post-war zones, radical violence, and education justice.听D.Labs听provide a proactive environment where professors help students identify challenges within our current democratic societies and cultivate their skills to define these challenges as problems that may be treated.

Selected projects developed by students in previous D.Labs participated in the听Tocqueville Challenge.

D.Lab Examples

D.Lab on Education Justice (Fall 2022)

Course Instructor:Roman Zinigrad

Education is believed to be the strongest engine of change. It is trusted to restore justice and remedy social wrongs where law and politics fail to deliver. But education can also perpetuate injustice and become an instrument of oppression. Even with the best intentions, educational policies often uphold hidden biases, sidestep pressing moral dilemmas, or hopelessly fall behind current social needs. This course seeks to understand both the promise and limits of educational tools in achieving social justice.

In this Democracy Lab we will begin by exploring conceptual and theoretical schemes presently available for understanding contemporary controversies about education such as systemic barriers to education, links between lack of education and exploitation, bodily autonomy, 鈥渃onversion therapy鈥, 鈥渄on鈥檛 say gay鈥 laws, science and religion in schools, homeschooling and unschooling, and digital transformation of education. We will explore how education constructs and is constructed by culture, religion, and economy; how it affects and is affected by the institutions of family, community, and state; and how it can achieve equality or inequality. In the second half of the course, we will then move towards developing educational prototypes that increase social goals. Our intention is to identify the building blocks of successful educational solutions that lead to reproductive, racial, economic, LGBTQ+ or disability justice, which implement legal, political, and entrepreneurial mechanisms.

Syllabus听

D.Lab on Radical Violence (Fall 2021)

Course Instructors:Stephen W. Sawyer听&听Roman Zinigrad

Radicalization and polarization have come to define social action and mobilization across Europe, Asia and the Americas and beyond. This course seeks to understand how to achieve social and political change without resorting to civilian and state violence by examining the actors, networks, and wider social contexts driving radicalization, particularly among young people in urban and peri-urban areas. In this Democracy Lab we will begin by exploring conceptual and theoretical tools presently available for understanding this phenomenon, including the present European Research Grant 鈥淒.Rad鈥 within the Center for Critical Democracy Studies. In the second half of the course we will then move towards developing prototypes for how to de-escalate political, individual and collective violence. Our intention is to identify the building blocks of radicalization, which include a sense of being victimized; a sense of being thwarted or lacking agency in established legal and political structures; and coming under the influence of 鈥渦s vs them鈥 identity formulations.

Syllabus

D.Lab on Global Citizenship (Spring 2020)

Course Instructors:Peter H盲gel听&听Stephen W. Sawyer

In our age of globalization, citizenship is experiencing major transformations, in practice as in theory. Migrants destroying their passports, states offering citizenship for sale, an increasing number of people holding multiple passports 鈥 what do such realities entail? As global governance has gained traction, citizenship, a concept that used to be conceived in national terms, is receiving a cosmopolitan imagination, which is being opposed, sometimes violently, by nationalistic forces. But what could global citizenship consist of? Our Democracy Lab explores this question in very concrete terms. It provides a hands-on, design-thinking, experimental space where students elaborate a specific problem of global citizenship and devise a potential solution together.

Syllabus