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Students move out of their dorm at the University of Michigan as schools across the country shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Virus threatens a long-anticipated surge in student voting
College students were once hailed as a crucial voting bloc in 2020, but their momentum may be halted by the coronavirus pandemic that has shuttered campuses from coast to coast.
Registration drives, absentee ballot parties, political forums and new voter trainings are all on hold. Students are scrambling to chase down absentee ballot forms that were mailed to campuses but must now be forwarded to a home or other address. Newly designated campus polling places will stand empty for the remaining primaries, several of which have been delayed in any case. And students who return this fall will have little time to prepare for Election Day.
" I understand the appeal of sticking with one's own tribe," says RDI's Uriel Epshtein, "but I fear that if we're unwilling to experience the discomfort of engaging those with whom we disagree, we may become increasingly willing to sacrifice the principles underpinning our republic to avoid doing so."
Meet the reformer: Uriel Epshtein, combating American authoritarian impulses
Uriel Epshtein is executive director of the Renew Democracy Initiative, created three years ago by former world chess champion Garry Kasparov to combat populism, promote core constitutional values and offer a home to political centrists. He came to the job after stints at the Boston Consulting Group, DoorDash and Uber. As a Yale undergraduate, he founded and continues to chair the Peace & Dialogue Leadership Initiative, which promotes campus college dialogues on policy in the Middle East. That experience had a profound influence on him, he says, as he began to see increasing similarity between polarized partisan U.S. politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His answers have been edited for clarity and length.
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RDI produces content with the goal of empowering the American public to understand and prioritize core constitutional principles.
Even as the streets empty and people retreat into their homes,"it is essential we maintain our commitment to protect each other," writes Auburn professor Jesús Tirado.
Social distancing is a civic duty. But it's not our only civic responsibility.
Tirado is an assistant professor of secondary social science education at Auburn University. A version of this piece was first published by Education Week.
It is safe to say that social distancing has become part of our new daily lexicon. It's important to know that this is saving people's lives. But we all must recognize that, in this world of social distancing, we do not need to continue our practice of spectator democracy that keeps us sitting on the sidelines while others make the important decisions for us.
In the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, social distancing is a form of civic duty, something we are doing to protect the most vulnerable of our society. We've given up March Madness for social media tags like #stayhome and #stayhomesavelives that build solidarity around our shared stories of staying in.
And while we think about what we've lost, we are hoping that we can hold on to something much more important: each other.
A congressional commission is urging a major investment in civic education and a call to service — from joining the military to local volunteerism, like the SF-Marin Food Bank (above).
$200M needed annually to boost civic ed, commission on public service says
After more than two years of work, the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service has produced 164 recommendations for improving education about how our country works and for encouraging more people to engage in public service.
Most of the attention on the 225-page report released this week, titled "Inspired to Service," has focused on a single recommendation: requiring women to register for the draft the way men have had to for four decades.
What's being missed is how critical the panel views public service in all forms — from joining the military to volunteering at the local food pantry. Also lost is the report's comprehensive overview of where the country stands in civic education and public service and its detailed agenda for improvement.