Beyond civic engagement to political action: ‘Un-Freedoms’
By Dé Bryant, Director of the Social Action Project, Department of Psychology, IU South Bend, Published November 11, 2005
Our current president, Adam Herbert, also stressed the critical role of civic engagement in our university work. His recent State of the University address spotlighted campus-community initiatives around the system (http://www.indiana.edu/~pres/sou05.shtml ). He commended us all for working hard to improve the quality of life for the citizens who become our students, supporters and benefactors.
For the past 10 years, Campus Compact, a consortium of 11 Midwest universities, has drawn together exemplars of these efforts through the Faculty Fellows program (http://www.campuscompact.org/resources ). In 2004-2005, I became a Faculty Fellow and my own Social Action Project (http://www.iusb.edu/~sbsocact ) was highlighted with others to show how powerfully teaching citizenship can impact both the campus and the community.
I focus beyond civic engagement and service-learning because I believe a just society is possible. We, the privileged, in U.S. universities, have a responsibility to address the “un-freedoms.”
Personally, I have long believed that reflecting on civic engagement—how the person engages the material and translates it into something meaningful for a life—was necessary but not sufficient. The learner must become proactive, look toward policy change as an extension of their civic involvement. Bridging scholarship and social justice is precisely what today’s social problems require. One of my colleagues scoffs, calling the work impossibly (naively) idealistic. When he looks at deeply rooted social problems like racism, sexism, poverty, homelessness and AIDS, he sees them as massive and immovable. Far beyond the influence of any “happy little band.”
To my thinking, political action is about successive approximations: moving step by step closer to the just society we envision. There are no miracle cures. The work requires that we live in paradox. We are enriched for reaching beyond our classroom walls and connecting with the communities in which we are embedded. These linkages are also potential flashpoints that can bring any work down in flames. The work can be hard and messy and sometimes demanding beyond any limits envisioned by reasonable minds.
Yet, we must go beyond civic engagement to political action because “un-freedoms” exist. What is an “un-freedom” (http://www.freedomcenter.org/ )? It is more than the opposite of freedom, just as peace is more than the absence of conflict. Un-freedoms are composed of nuances and ambiguities and contradictions, some of which can be easily rationalized. The more uncomfortable they make us, the more readily we can explain them away.
Moving into political action requires that we leave the safety of academia’s predictable rhythms and step into the tumultuous events shaping current history. To see the new millennium’s racism, cloaked in political correctness and supported by social structures with tap roots 10 generations deep. To see a single mother trapped beneath the glass ceiling and fleeing her abuser. To see the transgendered who are a diagnostic label to therapists, a morality lesson to neighbors but people to no one. Failing to see a young man in a wheelchair because his disability makes him invisible. To see a father and husband with full-blown AIDS denying his condition because the mythical “they” are the only ones at risk.
I focus beyond civic engagement and service-learning because I believe a just society is possible. We, the privileged, in U.S. universities, have a responsibility to address the un-freedoms.
