Administration & civic engagement—mystery or mysterium?

“Why do you need anybody to help you set up this office? You’ve got that picture of Gandhi—he worked with nothing!” said a key upper administration person to me, half-jokingly, when I asked for staff assistance to set up the then Duke Center for Civic Engagement (DCCE). I completed the half-joke by quipping that Gandhi had accomplished everything that he did without holding an official position and therefore I might well do the same, step off and serve unfettered by officialdom.

Here, I reflect on the flowers that have grown between the bricks of the now dismantled- DCCE. The DCCE-story simply serves to illustrate the larger lesson that I learned from an administration which, in adopting mysterious practices, had exempted itself from the civic engagement that it spent millions of dollars to promote—A university can never succeed in creating and sustaining an ethos of “engaged learning” if its leadership does not embody civic values. Ethos-creation needs much more beyond empty genuflection.

Administrations worry about campaigns for fund-raising that demand we scrub our faces and look shiny no matter what ails us. But the inner gaze is freer—it is part of the economy of a deeper, more nurturing growth that admits our struggles. Two leaders whom we remember in a special way this month—Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr,—unremittingly cultivated this habit of inner scrutiny. Both believed that that there could be no political struggle without introspection and no introspection was complete without a translation into everyday practices. As Gandhi and King’s lives clearly showed, both introspection and practice were necessary for a principled, courageous, and compassionate life. If Gandhi and King’s lives are of worth to not just our heritages but to our daily run, then ordinary practices of civility—not included in campaign scripts of civic engagement—would need to mark our trot.

So let’s go to the example.

Following the recommendation for faculty governance made by the Klein-Wells committee in 2009, our previous provost invited me to be the Faculty Director of the Duke Center for Civic Engagement which had had an undefined twin existence since its creation alongside DukeEngage. I accepted the position because the idea was tremendously exciting. Imagine a university-wide center that would help identify the connections between all our manifold efforts in community service, a center that, over time, would shape the process of a delivering a comprehensive education about what it means to be-in-the-world through practices of citizenship and care. By the time the DCCE was up and going, I had reached out to every unit in the university that had been community-minded and familiarized myself with individual histories, approaches and voices. Through dialogue with, and the participation of, faculty, students, and staff—and constant encouragement from the provost and vice-provost & dean of undergraduate education—the DCCE created and ran several successful programs. The Civic Engagement Studios, for instance, funded research-driven interdisciplinary groups that brought together Duke students and faculty and local and/or international collaborators to study a civic challenge over an academic year. The Studios over the years engaged topics as urgent and diverse as civic dialogue in Islam, environmental entrepreneurship, urban parks and race-relations, theater and identity, writing and Durham public schools—and others. With help from Duke experts in advising and technology and with faculty guidance, the DCCE’s Knowledge Maps project began to group courses across the university curriculum, creating suggestive pathways to help students and advisors visualize the many lens through which a student could connect theoretical understandings and “field” engagements. This was necessary, we believed, for a university that was vigorously marketing its commitment to civic engagement and providing increasing opportunities to students. The DCCE’s Civic Thursdays were conversation-forums that brought different disciplines together to candidly discuss shared issues in civic engagement. For instance, how do medicine, history and public policy conceptualize and value public service?

Just as the DCCE began to participate in national conversations—even inspiring a peer institution to model the Studios—the sinister whisper reached me that the DCCE was going to be slashed by a 40% cut in its budget. Apart from the rumble that it was part of “a necessary budget cut across the board,” no explanation was ever outlined. Then followed the ugly muddle of determining how to lay off recently-hired staff, mutilating the healthy dialogue and spirit of trust and collaboration that had been built between the DCCE and various offices in administration. It was eerie to witness trusted individuals become shadows that slunk away into the crevices of difficult conversations. Despite my reminders that the formal review of DCCE and my directorship be conducted —as stipulated by the administration that birthed the DCCE—it was never done. President Brodhead’s enthusiasm when I showed him a PowerPoint presentation of the DCCE’s work and vision almost had me convinced I would wake up from a nightmare until I showed him the slide about the random 40% cut and saw his response—nonplussed. The supportive and hard-working faculty board expressed shock and bewilderment. Some questioned the limits of administrative prerogative. The matter went to the Academic Council. At another level, I objected to ethnic remarks and personal critique that were directed at me by a key person in upper administration with whom I had worked closely to build the DCCE. I refused the private apology which was offered to me both by him and by others in administration as such an apology continued to dis-acknowledge not only my own commitment to the university but also the collective work of the DCCE. Then like ghosts who tire after a while with their own specters, these issues faded away. It had all been a mystery.

And yet, this mystery contains the possibility of a mysterium akin to the one envisaged by the Russian composer, Alexander Scriabin who died in 1915 when he was just 43. Scriabin had begun to develop a visionary musical work called “Mysterium” that he wanted performed in the summit of the Himalayas, a work in which everybody in the audience would participate—“there will not be a single spectator,” he said—and all modalities of creative expression—dance, words, lights, smell, visual effects—would be utilized. The idea was to induce a transformative moment, a new humanity.

This essay is not so much about what was, what remained and what new things were created. Rather it is about what the experience of the DCCE can teach us about how to administer civic engagement. If civic engagement is to be the university’s musical mysterium, then our administrative culture—not just our students in civic engagement programs—must: