University of Arizona Establishes "Civility Institute"
The New York Times reports:
The University of Arizona — whose Tucson campus President Obama used for his nationwide address on civility after the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords last month — will announce on Monday that it is establishing an institute to promote compromise among opposing political parties and views, the organization’s director said on Sunday.
The honorary chairmen of the foundation, to be called the National Institute for Civil Discourse, will be President Bill Clinton and President George H. W. Bush, said the director, Brint Milward, who also leads the university’s School of Government and Public Policy.
Dr. Milward said the institute would focus on political disagreements “from the grass roots all the way to the top.”
“In a great democracy, it’s important for people to hold fast to principles, but at the same time to understand where they might be able to compromise,” he said.
The idea for the institute, he said, grew out of the national conversation that began in January after the shootings in Tucson that killed six people and injured 13 others, including Ms. Giffords, a Democrat who represented the Tucson area in Congress. Politicians and pundits raised questions and criticisms about the nation’s political discourse, with many calling for calmer rhetoric while pointing out commentary they considered incendiary.
President Obama weighed in with a speech the week after the attack, urging Americans to “remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.”
“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do,” Mr. Obama said, “it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”
One portion of the speech was particularly inspiring for Fred DuVal, vice chairman of the Arizona Board of Regents, who came up with the idea for the institute while listening to the president’s address.
