Practices of Pluralism: A Report From the Field

From September 7-9, I was fortunate to attend the first-ever Pluralism Summit, sponsored by the Pluralism and Civil Exchange Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.  I attended to promote the HxLIbraries’ new Open Inquiry Toolkit for teaching information literacy.   I rediscovered there what a professional conference could be at its best, when those with a wide range of views, professions, organizations, politics, faiths or belief systems, and attitudes toward society, come together with a common goal of learning together in supporting the norms of a liberal democracy.  This article describes the special features of the conference and some key lessons for me as I continue to process what I heard, saw, spoke with others about at the conference.

A Generative Conference Model

My years of attending conferences, large and small, have imprinted on me the predictable “conference script”— major keynote addresses given by luminaries, panels featuring lesser lights, and, given the size of the conference, much rushing about from ballroom to meeting room across hotels or other venues.  Particularly in recent years, I have absorbed the monocultural library conference script, where only certain perspectives and viewpoints are highlighted and where predictable interactions occur.  Although there may be side conversations, networking, and “dealmaking”* that question the prevailing ideological orientation of major professional associations, self-censorship often encloses those conversations within circles of circumspection.  The “script” has become very familiar to many of us because of the new orthodoxies of identity essentialism and a particular brand of social justice, of stylized language and tropes, and with certain tenets that close down free expression and wide-ranging debate.  This “script” increasingly reflects a calcified ideology at odds with a healthy discourse in professional life. 

The welcome change for me in imagining what a conference could be came from attending the Pluralism Summit, involving grant recipients of the Mercatus Center’s Pluralism and Civil Exchange Program.  Notable features of the Summit that resonated for me included:

• The heterogeneous participants (public intellectuals, academics, artists, community activists, national civic leaders, and one librarian)

• The small size (no more than 150 participants)

• The intimate location (one hotel)

• The short length (2 days)

• The relaxed pace (major events interspersed with quiet or personal time)

• The in-depth discussions (in breakout sessions, over meals, informal discussions through the conference)

• The exploratory, open-ended spirit (a process for creating new meanings together, for the participants)

Topics covered at the Summit ranged across the impact of social media; building better neighborhoods and civic associations; social trust; artificial intelligence; conspiracy theories; news media and trust issues; the role of civility in sustaining liberal democracies; the habits of mind and behavior needed to forge better understandings across divides; the “hard” issues in politics where agreement may not be possible; and others that broadly fall within the ambit of Pluralism—a set of values and attitudes that are necessary for the flourishing of citizens in a liberal democracy.  

That flourishing was strikingly described by brief talks given by “Pluralists in Action”:

• David McCullough III described the Action Exchange Program that he leads, where high school seniors live for a week in a very different part of the country, with a different family or setting, to understand better their country’s variety;

• Nathan Beacom offered the new Lyceum Movement, which brings together neighbors who learn to talk in search of the common good;

• Angel Parham showed with powerful visuals some historic buildings in New Orleans (including antebellum markets of enslaved people)—presented as palimpsests, a way of understanding the layered past, in order to advance better social conversations about complexities in the present;

• Eboo Patel and Manu Meel conversed about crossing divides on campus, and in society more generally, by giving up identitarianism;

• Joan McGregor discussed how to build moral capital and restoring “civic grace” in society, with mutual respect and listening to widely differing perspectives;

• Clay Routledge explained his research on flourishing, focused on building and interacting with others in community to transcend the epistemic bubbles created by social media and the isolation it often causes. 

These “Pluralists in Action,” and others, addressed the action-oriented, building orientation of Pluralism as an ethos, in creating a civic culture that reaches across divides, increases mutual understanding instead of fomenting polarization, and creates conditions for creating shared meaning.   These civic builders also honored diversity of profession, age, race, nationality, gender, faith, political viewpoint, and cultural perspective.  In libraries, we would greatly benefit from this approach to diversity within a common ethos of truth-seeking and verification—and thereby reinvigorate our own professional ethos.  

Lessons from the Summit

While Pluralism itself will by its nature be variously defined, the participants in this Summit gathered under the broad umbrella of civic 

associationism, with agreement to listen with respect, to explore the implications of living together peacefully despite divides and disagreements; to search for common ground; and to see the humanity in a richly diverse group of thinkers, builders, teachers, scholars, and leaders.    It did not surprise me to hear familiar books mentioned in plenary and breakout sessions that might provide an implicit curriculum for Pluralism:  Tocqueville’s Democracy in America; Robert Bellah’s Habits of the Heart; Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone; and Yuval Levin’s A Time to Build.  The longish subtitle of this last book, From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus: How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream, could serve as a close approximation of the overall theme of the conference.

The ideas of these authors, and many others, flowed freely in discussions as participants sought a provisional understanding of the possibilities of civic renewal and renewed respect for the institutions—formal and informal—where collective sense-making, a renewed search for collective meaning, become possible. 

The idea of “intermediary institutions,” identified by Tocqueville to provide a sense of belonging and purpose for the individual, between them and the state or government, or depersonalized bureaucracies, came to the fore in many discussions.   Those smaller circles of association live in communities where citizens can converse, discuss, debate, and search for meaning and common purposes together, in a peaceful manner.  This aspiration of civic associationism, throughout the Summit, was an overarching impetus.  Many of the sessions addressed the now-toxic political and cultural divides impoverishing us, where distrust of institutions and experts spreads throughout our shared discourse like a speedy acid, making a shared sense of facts, knowledge, and citizenry very difficult.   The participants in the Summit were, in effect, creating a countercultural moment in listening, reflecting, and speaking together on behalf of a better vision of civic culture.  They were becoming Pluralists in action.

In thinking about Pluralism Summit and its generativity, I developed a set of touchstones for a Pluralist ethos, which complement the a statement on Pluralism on this substack, Neutrality and Pluralism: A Manifesto for Libraries (Dudley).   I believe these touchstones are important in revitalizing a shared civic culture in which libraries can thrive as part of a network of sense-making institutions. These are the institutions that create possibilities for creating meaning and understanding together.  These include professions, organizations and groups such as journalism and newspapers, museums, civic groups, reading clubs, and community organizations of various types. We will need to reform or renew them in order to revitalize social relationships, create greater civility and less polarization, and increase social trust.  These Pluralist touchstones are still emerging from this Summit, but they align well with the historic mission of libraries.

The Touchstones

Pluralists develop the following habits and practices:

·      Listening without judgment in order to understand

·      Perspective-taking to increase nuanced discussions and conversations

·      Engaging in dialogue without expecting that others will change their views

·      Building projects that amplify a sense of community

·      Tolerating uncertainty and ambiguity (avoiding the Certainty Trap)

·      Offering evidence for claims but retaining curiosity about additional evidence

·      Creating spaces for deep reading, thinking, reflection, and conversation

·      Seeking new partnerships in order to renew a more humane discourse

·      Mediating the tension between “civic grace” in tolerating widely divergent views, with demands for evidence and facts, to promote an epistemic commons (this HxA precept, “Make Your Way with Evidence” partly addresses this touchstone).   

·      Accepting that some issues and questions are “hard” and not easily answered or resolved at a societal level (hence the need for local civic associations).

If some of these habits of mind and practices form a Pluralist Ethos, what are the implications for library professional practice? How can we build community with a new Pluralist approach that renews librarianship in a time where professional connections and associations are riven, where there is alienation from the new orthodoxies, when there are divergent views of the future of libraries within their communities, with the larger public trusting most institutions less, and trusting “influencers” and polarizing impostors more?

Pluralism and Libraries: Some Thought Experiments

In the current climate, fostering pluralism is hugely challenging.   However, libraries and librarians can promote these habits and practices by renewing their historic dedication to intellectual freedom, freedom to read, and equal access to collections, staff expertise, resources and facilities.  However, in addressing current challenges of mistrust and polarization, librarians should consider the following practices to amplify pluralism:

Professional/associational options

• Build new professional groups that operate more at the grassroots level and that focus on core responsibilities of the profession rather than the newer Critical Social Justice-oriented programming now prevalent in national library organizations. Examples are growing: the new Forward Libraries association, the HxLibraries community, and others.  Creating networks of librarians who believe in pluralism, and practice it, can revitalize the field and reduce the drive for conformity and promote intellectual diversity.

• Promote greater diversity of thought—an essential element of pluralism—through a wider range of speakers at national conferences.  Even if the current conformist climate militates against it, the profession will be stronger and more vibrant if speakers like Erec Smith, Irshad Manji, Eboo Patel, Monica Guzman, or Chloe Valdary are invited to speak, participate in panels, and contribute to intellectual pluralism within the field

• Create new outlets for pluralistic thought to take root: open access journals, open access monographs, symposia and conference papers, that stimulate widely diverse thinking within the field, beyond the major journals and publishers

• Renew the concept of the library as “third place”, based on Ray Oldenberg’s concept of common spaces other than home,  in The Great Good Place.    This may be especially appropriate for public libraries, in their role as hub and information provider for a wide range of community members.  But academic libraries should also consider adapting this idea as their own: in creating a truly neutral space that all campus groups consider a crossroads of intellectual perspectives and an ongoing conversation space for programming that elevates civic discourse for the campus.

Internal library options

• Create connections with other groups on campus and communities dedicated to viewpoint diversity and pluralism.  For academic libraries, this could involve individuals participating in Heterodox Academy’s Campus Communities Program, or forming partnerships with civic dialogue centers.  For public libraries, possibilities for creating alliances with civic organizations like Bridge USA or Braver Angels are often plentiful

• Within libraries, redirect professional development toward pluralism by creating a welcoming environment free from viewpoint discrimination.  Amy Edmondson’s Fearless Organization model offers one approach for creating psychological safety for viewpoint diversity to flourish.  Leaders should learn about its efficacy because it is a research-based model for creating more open discussions where staff at all levels, regardless of their beliefs, can feel valued and heard.  Relatedly, Kaetrena Davis Kendrick’s research on morale issues in academic libraries in relationship to leadership offers an encouraging example of scholarship directed to organizational improvement, in fostering greater professional affiliation and sense of purpose in organizational life.  Her research has become widely known, but could be used more for professional development in all libraries.

• Imagine a new evidence-based approach to library strategic planning, away from some of the moral imperatives of ideology and toward a set of methodologies becoming more prevalent in other fields. For example, the Open Science Framework offers one such approach through testing of hypotheses and generating pre-registered questions and methods reviewed by experts.   The Adversarial Collaboration Project engages scholars and scientists in testing different hypotheses to overcome the replication problems in psychology and other behavioral sciences.    These models offer potential for more empirical approaches in shaping programming and interaction with researchers in other fields—in Communications, Journalism and Media Studies, Educational Theory, Policy Studies, and Applied Epistemology.  These collaborations can stimulate fresh interdisciplinary thinking and pluralistic planning and research in libraries.  

Outside of health sciences’s Evidence-Based Practice model, and the related EBLIP (Evidence-Based Library and Information Practice) model, librarianship does not have profession-wide, agreed-upon methods to offer within organizations—or across the profession-- to test conflicting claims and ideas. Libraries deploy surveys and focus groups repeatedly to collect data, and LIS research ranges across autoethnographies to case studies to observational studies, to document analysis and archival research, to pre-and post-tests, but more rigor, openness, and sharing of evidence is needed to think and plan better, and to avoid the traps of planning according to groupthink, facile assumptions, or current ideological fashions. 

Pluralism and the Questions

A new Pluralist Ethos, living through recommendations from the Neutrality and Pluralism Manifesto, creates opportunities for rethinking, reimagining, moving beyond current conformity within the field.   Both grassroots activity, and discussions in regional and national discussions, are necessary to recreate trust and build a more flourishing future for libraries, librarians, and the communities they help create with other institutions.  

In reflecting on the Pluralism Summit that opened my eyes toward new possibilities for the field, I would add one additional practice for Pluralists:  they “live the questions” of the current time in imagining renewal for themselves and fellow citizens.  The poet Rilke caught this attitude best:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”  (Letters to a Young Poet)

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*For an intriguing examination of alternatives for professional conferences, see:  Roger Schonfeld and Laura Brown, “A Framework for the Future of Conferences,” The Scholarly Kitchen, March 1, 2021.  Schonfeld and Brown identify the crucial “networking” and “dealmaking” features of conferences that make generativity and innovation possible. 

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Note: The Pluralism Summit also aired a new documentary, “Undivide Us”, about current sociopolitical divides, and one option used to overcome them with one group of citizens.  The “Undivide Us” website and trailer for the documentary are here.

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