Before Ava Murdock ’29 took Introduction to Comparative Politics, she understood the benefits of the rights and freedoms that come from living in the U.S.
But studying different political systems around the world taught her that those rights are easily lost and much harder to gain back.
“We can’t rely on what we have now and just let it sit. We have to continually criticize government and fight for our rights,” said Murdock, an economics and public policy major in the College of Arts and Sciences, who earned the highest grade in the class. “It’s always important to really stand up for what we have now, and I think that’s something all college students could look at.”
Tom Pepinsky, the Walter F. LaFeber Professor of government in the College of Arts and Sciences and in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy, teaches students about democracy and other political regimes in his course Introduction to Comparative Politics.
As the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the course is one of the many ways Cornell educates its students about democracy, how to participate in it and how to support it. Courses across Cornell’s colleges cover topics from how to engage in civil discourse to using data to inform public policy and how to advocate for government transparency and First Amendment rights. And the new Cornell Center on Democracy will further educate students about the fundamental questions facing democracies; through targeted research, education and public engagement, it aims to reverse democratic declines and bolster democracy worldwide.
When teaching Introduction to Comparative Politics, Tom Pepinsky, the Walter F. LaFeber Professor of government in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy, emphasizes that democracy doesn’t automatically produce justice or equality – but it does tend to create the conditions where these characteristics can emerge.
“The value of choosing leaders this way is that nobody has to kill each other. You get orderly transitions of power,” Pepinsky said. “That’s a remarkably good thing, even if it’s not the same thing as justice or freedom or any other things that we might want democracy to also produce.”
Murdock discovered that democracies generally offer their citizens intellectual and social freedoms, because they tend to have stable economies. For example, she learned that no free democracy has ever experienced a massive famine. “I was totally shocked by that,” she said. “In a democracy, you’re preventing famine, which you saw in dictatorships because they would not be held accountable by their public.”
Pepinsky covers democracies in three of his 27 lectures and saves discussion about the U.S. for very last class, when he tells students these conversations are possible only because they live in a democracy. “In the nondemocratic countries, you can’t study these things,” he said. “They’re not going to ban biology or math. They’re going to ban political science.”
A different kind of civic education
Avi Dhyani ’28 learned a valuable lesson about democracy in an unlikely place: a computer programming course.
For a final project in Data Management and Programming for Policy and Society in the Brooks School, he and three classmates created and analyzed a database to investigate political action committees (PACs). They found a strong association between candidates who received PAC money and those who got elected after 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to support candidates.
The exercise taught Dhyani, a public policy major in the Brooks School, the importance of leveraging data to inform public policy. “An informed citizenry, which is crucial, vital for a strong democracy, needs data, needs records, needs historical facts for future generations to analyze,” he said.
Kate Manne, professor of philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences, discussed declining birth rates and family size with Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist, as part of the course Disagreement, offered in A&S in the spring semester.
Data science gives students concrete tools to move beyond rhetoric and test claims about what strengthens or undermines democratic participation, said Jan Voelkel, assistant professor of sociology and public policy in the Brooks School, who teaches the course. “When a student can look at data and explore ‘Was this policy actually impactful?’ – that’s a fundamentally different kind of civic education,” he said.
One of the most important things he aims to impart to students is a data-based skepticism toward easy narratives on problems like democratic backsliding. “Data science lets students evaluate proposed solutions with rigor rather than just enthusiasm.”
After taking the course, Dhyani concluded that public policy decisions must be based on facts and data, rather than a political party’s particular agenda. “Cornell teaching these type of classes is not just theoretical,” he said.
“I can now use my data-analysis skills, so when I’m talking about issues, I’m not talking about just a feeling,” Dhyani said, “but I’m able to say, ‘Look, my data is consistent with X but inconsistent with Y.’ That, as somebody who wants to be a future policymaker, is going to be crucial.”
Disagreeing better
Perhaps the first step in teaching students about democracy is teaching them how to engage in civil discourse, said Peter Loewen, the Harold Tanner Dean of A&S.
In the spring semester, he piloted a course called Disagreement, which sought to provide students with the tools they need to disagree effectively, especially on social and political topics. “It’s not unique to Cornell, but I saw it as a need,” Loewen said.
Peter Loewen, the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, teaches a course titled Disagreement, which provides students with the tools they need to disagree effectively, especially on social and political topics.
“There’s an easy playbook now. Assume the worst of the other side, demonize them, be unfairly uncritical of your own side,” Loewen said. “And then enjoy feeling you’re on the right moral side of things.” “That’s a good, cheap drug. I thought it was important to show students there’s another way to do it.”
For the course, “the hope was that students get a sense of not only how to disagree better, but why disagreement is fundamental to democracy, and why so many things over which we disagree are actually really hard problems with multiple ways of understanding them,” he said.
The class will be offered again in the fall semester.
Another a new course, Pathways to Purpose: Civic Leadership in Law, Health, Tech and Business, also aims to equip students to work with people of different perspectives, while also encouraging them to think about the role of purpose, civic engagement and democracy in their personal, academic and professional lives. It was co-taught by Colleen Barry, dean of the Cornell Brooks, and Rachel Dunifon, the Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Dean of the College of Human Ecology.
Defending the First Amendment
As a second- and third-year law student, Alex Venditti, J.D. ’25, learned how to use the law to protect speech from government interference.
As part of the First Amendment Clinic‘s Local Journalism Project, in Cornell Law School, Venditti litigated on behalf of The Reporter, the local newspaper in Delhi, New York. The suit says Delaware County officials stripped The Reporter of its designation as the official county newspaper, an important source of revenue from printing legal notices, to retaliate against the paper’s reporting on how the officials conducted county business. The county claims it acted because the paper increased the cost of the ads. The case is ongoing.
Other clinic projects include fighting a book ban in Idaho and investigating whether school board policies in New York state restrict free speech. And the Local Journalism Project represents small media outlets fighting libel suits, subpoenas seeking their sources and more.
“It dawned on me throughout this work that it takes serious effort from the people, whether that be the media or in a democratic sense, to actually obtain disclosure and accountability,” said Venditti, now an attorney with Jones Day, who continues to work on The Reporter case.
At its heart, the clinic’s activity strengthens democracy and freedom of speech, said Mark Jackson ’81, J.D. ’85, adjunct professor of law and the clinic’s director. “Improving the level of discourse, allowing all voices to speak, enhances our collective conversation,” he said. “And in local journalism, obviously better informing our public about what’s going on with respect to their government and their communities makes them better citizens, which helps democracy.”
The intrinsic value of democracy
Two questions provide the foundation to the course Global Democracy and Public Policy: first, what inputs make democracy possible? “Then we flip it, and ask, ‘What does democracy make possible in our society?'” said Rachel Beatty Riedl, the Peggy J. Koenig ’78 Director of the Cornell Center on Democracy, who teaches the course.
Students study the intrinsic value of democracy: how it protects freedoms and our ability to live in a society with the rule of law, which should translate into effective governance that meets its citizens’ needs, and how those rights and freedoms work across complex societies, said Riedl, who is a professor in the Brooks School and the Department of Government (A&S).
“That is really so fundamental for allowing students to understand both how to be democratic citizens and what democracy’s absence would mean,” she said.
Rachel Beatty Riedl, the Peggy J. Koenig ’78 Director of the Cornell Center on Democracy and professor of government in the College of Arts and Sciences and in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy, teaches the undergraduate course Global Democracy and Public Policy in A&S.
Many students are intrigued by the tension between liberty and order in society, she said. With too much order – like surveillance and government control – society loses liberty. But with too little order – like a dysfunctional rule of law – society also loses liberty, due to resulting violence from criminal gangs and anti-state terrorists, or even the inability to enforce contracts, for example.
“That relates to why we see some people around the world voting against democratic leaders if those governments haven’t been able to provide the right balance between order and liberty in their communities and countries,” she said.
Students often start the semester equating democratic participation with simply voting. Through the course, they grasp that the competition of ideas in public spaces and civic engagement are also important ways to participate in and support democracy, she said.
“If our young people today don’t have a strong grounding in what democracy is and what it provides us, how can we be expected to practice it, much less to uphold it when it’s under strain?”
