☆ “Direct their energies not against each other but against the problems”: Bay Area political science profs on books that combat polarization (part 1)
Shouting matches at local universities. Vitriolic online rants. Hasty—even angry—dismissal when you try discussing politics with others. Below, Opp Now asked Bay Area political science professors for their exclusive literature rec's on bringing folks together to better their community, in today's age of increasing ideological polarization.
Patrick Murphy, University of San Francisco politics professor and Urban and Public Affairs program director: Politics, particularly local politics, should be about solving problems for people. A major contributor to the polarization of today is the sidelining of facts in our political and policy debates. Political leaders, in the best case, cherry pick which facts they want to use; in the worst case, they simply make things up that aren’t true. As a consequence, serious consideration of problems facing society get reduced to bullet points and posts on social media. Think about it. Do you really think there is a major policy challenge that can be solved with 140 characters?
My recommendation is a slim pamphlet from the Urban Institute: "Principles of Evidence-based Policy Making." It is a nerdy little document that puts facts at the center of problem solving. If we are going to solve the big problems we face, we have to start with an agreed-upon set of facts.
Filip Kovacevic, University of San Francisco political science adjunct professor: My recommendation is a novel “The Plague” by a French Nobel Prize winner and philosopher Albert Camus. This novel shows that when faced with serious problems, such as we have today both domestically and globally, a community can survive only if those in charge put their political and ideological differences aside and direct their energies not against each other but against the problems threatening the community's survival. There are many social and economic issues that can be resolved relatively quickly by tapping into the tremendous innovative potential of human spirit that all of us, no matter who we are, have in common.
Bruce Cain, Stanford University political science professor: I would strongly recommend that you look at some of the work being done at the CDDRL on possible reforms to alleviate polarization (e.g., rank choice voting) and how to identify and deal with misinformation. CDDRL has several scholars such as Larry Diamond who have delved deeply into this.
As for myself, I have tried to work across the aisle with Hoover people on bipartisan election reform, writing about possible common ground election practices.
We must deal with confidence in the election system, or we will be courting even more serious polarized trouble and turmoil in the future.
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