- The story begins in November of 2020.

- We were getting ready to win this election.

Frankly, we did win this election.

(audience cheers) All of a sudden, oh, we have some mail-in ballots.

It's amazing how those mail-in ballots are so one-sided.

- Make America great again.

- [Jon] Democracy doesn't work if the other side is always wrong.

- This election count is still in process.

This is a race where every single... - [Reporter] Every single vote counts.

- [Reporter] All the votes have to be counted.

- [Reporter] Joe Biden has been declared the next president of the United States - [Crowd] Stop the steal.

Stop the steal.

Stop the steal.

- If you choose ideology as your determination of what you're gonna do for policy and for government, you're gonna be wrong half the time 'cause no one ideology has all the answers, just doesn't.

- [Crowd] Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donald Trump, it's time to go.

Hey, hey.

- Things don't feel like they're working really well in the democratic process.

We're just constantly at each other's throats.

- Clearly illegal, clearly voter fraud, easily provable, hundreds of witnesses, maybe thousands.

- [Reporter] There's a lot of moving parts to this, but we have not seen any evidence of 13,000 illegal votes cast.

- [Reporter] Hundreds of people have gathered on the steps of the Capitol trying to get into the Capitol building.

They believe the election was stolen and it was rigged.

- But the law matters.

- [Protestor] It doesn't matter with the Democrats.

- I took an oath under God.

- It doesn't matter with the Democrats.

- Under God.

(window cracks) - [Reporter] Protestors have now broken into the US Capitol.

Just one police officer trying to stop a crowd of dozens.

It looks like protestors are entering the Capitol at will.

- [Samar] It's what do you do when you're polarized?

How do you handle your differences?

Are you handling your differences amicably, civilly, or are you turning towards hate and violence?

- [Announcer] Support for the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American democracy was provided by the Lester G. "Ruff" Fant Fund.

- [Narrator] American democracy is struggling with deep polarization.

Partisan warfare has supplanted evidence-based problem solving and the endless ideological conflict is overwhelming the work of politics, which by the way, happens to be the mediation of differences.

- We are living in a world where a mob stormed the United States Capitol.

Never happened before, not even during the Civil War.

And so you have to sit back and think, why did that happen?

And how do we keep it from happening again?

What could we do at Vanderbilt that would shed light in this moment where all people tend to do is generate heat?

There will always be polarization.

What we have to find a way to do and the point of this project in many ways is to take some of the oxygen away from the fires of reflexive polarization.

- Yes, yup.

It's a good one.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yep.

(calm music) - It's become this, that the other side is the enemy.

The other side's not the enemy.

The problem is the enemy.

You know, poverty's the enemy.

Climate issues are the enemy.

A building long-term debt in this country is the enemy.

That's the enemy.

Now the fact that you might have a different idea of how to solve that doesn't make you my enemy.

- And when we're talking about unity right out of the gate, we're not talking about agreeing on policy.

We expect policy disagreements.

That's what democracies are about.

What we were talking about was unity of believing in the rules of the game, rule of law, the constitution and those kinds of things.

- You really have to have these amendments, principles and norms in place that everybody believes in and is subscribing to in order to have a functional democracy - [Narrator] With those democratic principles in mind, the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American democracy was established, managed by John Geer and co-chaired by Jon Meacham, Samar Ali, and former Tennessee Governor, Bill Haslam.

The project is a non-partisan hub for scholars, policy makers, activists, leaders, and others to discuss and develop evidence-based solutions that are not driven by ideological bias.

- We should all take a moment and take a step back.

- The work we're trying to do here is in a respectful, thoughtful, reflective, supra-partisan way to discuss the internal and perennial principles that need to be protected.

- More and more people think that the other side is not only wrong, but they're wrong for bad motives.

- I think that this is what's concerning for a lot of us.

And we're wondering, are we moving into an authorizing environment for cruelty, for violence, for brutality?

That's concerning.

That's not good for democracy, that's not good in a democracy.

So we're doubling down on our efforts here to see how we disrupt cycles that lead to violence and we move towards cycles that lead to unity, that lead to peace, that lead to civility.

- [Narrator] The project produces research publications, panel discussions, animated videos, unity dinners, a unity index, a course at Vanderbilt University and more, all with the goal of introducing evidence back into the national conversation and encouraging citizens to use fact-based reasoning.

- Good morning everyone, and welcome to this event here at Vanderbilt.

I'm really delighted about the conversation we're gonna have today.

- So every program we do, we want to get people to understand that whether you're on the left side or the right side of the spectrum, the more important thing is to have evidence and to try to adjudicate that in a way that tells you what's the best policy because if you choose ideology as your determination of what you're gonna do for policy and for government, you're gonna be wrong half the time 'cause no one ideology has all the answers, just doesn't.

Evidence isn't gonna get you to 100%, but it's gonna get you a lot closer to better answers and more frequently good answers than if you just rely on ideology.

And so each and every program is tied with that notion in mind.

- There are parts of the pluribus that see themselves as in possession, exclusive possession of the truth.

Opinions aren't evidence.

Evidence is the considered result of both experience and reason.

To argue from facts as opposed to an ideological predisposition was an essential insight.

- So one of the things that I think matters is just giving people better information.

- If we can give people a fair and a balanced account of information, we can remind people that we need this evidence that's not ideologically driven.

I think that, you know, that fills an important need.

It teaches how to have civil discourse to realize that the person on the other side of the fence, so to speak, might just be right and listen to that person.

And at least at minimum, you learn from that prospect - The fact that people are actually having that discussion, we should reflect on that to say, maybe we need to reevaluate what we're doing here.

- It's an ability to say, I might be wrong.

I might be wrong, is in some ways a threshold question for political unity.

So this comes back to all of us, right?

We have to support people who are willing to compromise.

And you just have to make clear that you don't have to give up your political life if you compromise.

- My political mentor was Senator Howard Baker.

He was a senator from Tennessee and he had a saying, always remember the other person might be right.

And that's a good place to start our conversations.

But that doesn't mean we're not supposed to have a point of view.

I'm a Republican, I can give you lots of reasons why, you know, I think that perspective is the right one.

But I get in trouble if I always think that I'm right and the other side's wrong because that's just not true.

It's not true anywhere else in my life.

Why would it be true in my politics?

- On an individual level, if someone disagrees with me and they're telling me I'm wrong, I have to be able to weigh whether or not that's true.

I could be.

And I don't know anybody who enjoys being told they're wrong.

So I don't wanna hear it, I don't wanna be told that I could be wrong, but the personal takeaway here is an openness to think, okay, maybe you have a point.

And that's the nature of American democracy.

It requires an enormous amount of work.

And part of that work is understanding that you have to say something if the evidence leads you bad about the good guys or good about the bad guys.

The key thing is, do we agree on principles that enable us to not have to win every afternoon?

(intense bouncy music) - Honestly, TikTok.

- Usually it's social media.

- I read BBC and Economist.

- [Participant] TikTok, - [Participant] I get a lot of news from Instagram.

- [Participant] Washington Post or Wall Street Journal.

- [Participant] It's usually social media.

- No one reads like paper news 'cause like it's all like online news.

- [Bill] The world's changed so much recently in that you can get countless options for where to get your news.

And you can, by the way, pick your place on the spectrum from way left to way right or anywhere in between.

- [John] Really what's going on is people have created their own information bubbles.

- And that's one of the reasons why one of our pillars at the project is on the information marketplace, making sure that people get the facts and the evidence that they need to make informed decisions.

- [Narrator] We live in an age where information is available at our fingertips.

It's produced by individuals, organizations, and providers all with their own agenda.

That means it is possible that information may be polluted with inaccuracies and biases.

Because of this, it can be challenging to obtain true and reliable information.

In today's information marketplace, being a discerning consumer is crucial.

- No matter who you are, we have confirmation bias.

We want people to tell us what we know to be true.

When I was in office, when I read an article about me that was good, I read every word maybe twice.

When it was a bad article, I'd, psh, I'm swiping or turning the page or whatever it is, okay?

That's just how we are.

Our problem today is this, more and more we just hang out with people who are like us.

They look like us, you know, racially, we tend to be live with people in the same income segment.

More and more we even find people who are moving to certain places because there's more people that vote like me there.

The downside to that is, first of all, we get to choose our own news and we get to curate that on my phone.

After a while, it sees what I click on.

So it tells me more of the news that I like.

And then I'm around people who look and think a lot more like me, that confirmation bias says, therefore, because my news tells me everything I think is right, and my friends and the people I hang out with tell me everything I think is right, I'm not right.

Like I'm like 100% right, which means the other side is really, really wrong.

We just have to realize that's the world we live in today.

- We learn when people disagree with us because we have to sit back and think, okay, why are they holding that position?

And maybe you come back and say, look, I'm still gonna hold to my position, but I understand what you're coming with.

We learn from criticism, we learn from divergent views.

And so that disagreement is really critical, but we need to find a way to get people to break outta those information bubbles.

- I have seen kind of progression.

- This is a challenge for us right now in this current environment, including how algorithms are working and how algorithms are pushing out data and information, how they're incentivizing people to behave in one way or the other.

- More than ever, we're having global media outlets, which are also evolving and increasing, commenting and influencing US media.

I'm hearing a lot of people who will quote investigations that they've seen coming out of Haaretz, coming out of Guardian and other publications too.

So it's not only us media outlets that are influencing and shaping us public opinion.

- We're living in a golden age of citizen stress tests.

(laughs) Every minute is a test of citizenship.

You have to consider the source of every news report.

You have to weigh the motivations and opinions behind any Tweet, any rendered opinion.

You can take very little at face value and that's really hard.

The way American information has always been promulgated is through private enterprise.

Private enterprise with a public sense of mission.

The pamphleteers of the revolution were printing it out and selling it.

Newspapers have never been free.

And so the economics matter here and one of the reasons for the rebirth of partisan media is that that's a sounder economic model.

You want be able to go to advertisers and say, we have 1 million conservatives and if you wanna sell stuff to them, this is what you've got.

That's easier to do than saying, we have a million really interested citizens who are interested in all sorts of things and we want you to sell stuff to them.

If you're an advertiser, you want this, you don't want that.

- People have to remember that there's a lot of folks who do well by stirring up outrage and anger.

Cable news is kind of built around that idea.

That's the more I can get you mad, the more you're gonna keep watching.

And particularly if I get you mad by telling something that you already believe and the confirmation bias kicks in and you're gonna watch more and more of it.

- It's an economic model that depends on outrage and it's exhausting.

And so we have this machinery of perpetual conflict and it doesn't require what the quality of the fuel is that goes into the machine.

Nobody wakes up at cable news networks at 05:00 a.m., scans the headlines and says, oh, we are not gonna have anything to talk about today, so let's not do it.

Right, it doesn't matter.

That Chyron is hungry.

You just gotta keep it coming.

And so that has a distorting effect on what's actually worth talking about.

- We also can get carried away sometimes with thinking about how large an impact they have.

If you look at the viewership in any one show, you're talking about a couple of million people.

You're talking about 1% max of the US population.

- The other thing is, one shouldn't underestimate the American public.

That is that they do want to get things right and they may be subject to misinformation, whatever, but give them the tools so that they can sort that through.

Exactly what that is is not clear to me.

But again, if technology created this problem, maybe technology can get us out of it in some way, you know, shape or form.

And I think it's also just having these kinds of conversations and making sure you show respect to the other side.

- [Narrator] One conversation the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy hosted was an event with former Congressman Tim Ryan on civil discourse in the disinformation age.

He was asked, how do you fight misinformation?

- It's hard, I mean, it's really, really hard today.

I'm stunned at the number of people who get their political news from TikTok.

I mean, it's like, it's unreal.

Like, and it's like it's not balanced and it's just, you know, more commentary.

So it's really, really difficult.

I think the problem is that we are not, and I say this as a Democrat, we are not connecting emotionally to the voters.

And when you don't connect emotionally, then people are susceptible to all of this misinformation 'cause they don't trust anybody.

And I think that's the underlying problem is that there's not a lot of trust.

- This is the test of our time.

It requires a sense of evidence-based judgment, it requires a generosity of spirit, it requires patience and who the hell wants to do all that all the time?

But here we are and we have to.

(calm music) - It's tough to answer yes or no.

I'll say no for now.

- No.

- Yes, sort of.

- No.

- Mm, no.

Actually, yes, yes.

- I think, yeah, I think so.

- In a way, like a lack thereof spiritual identity I guess.

- I would say no.

- No.

- Yes.

- So religion is like economics or geography.

It's a perennial force in American politics.

- The reality is when you approach an issue, all of us, we really bring our worldview to the table on everything we do.

- I do not think that religion should be what governs nation states, but it can absolutely influence how people are engaging with their values, how they're relating to their values, how they're deciding what their values are.

- Religion that is authentic lifts us up beyond ourselves to Mount Pisgah's lofty heights where we behold a promised land.

That's what authentic religion can do.

Now human beings can take religion and use it to debase.

(intense music) (calm music) - [Narrator] The relationship between American democracy and religion is complex.

Although the guiding principles of democracy and religion are to cultivate community and promote civil discourse, they both seem to be fueling today's polarization.

While religion is personal, it's also a fundamental pillar of our nation.

And its practice is protected by the Constitution.

Yet elected officials are obligated to swear an oath to protect and uphold the constitution, not a religious pledge.

- We have a separation of church and state in this country wonderfully.

But you can't separate politics from religion because both are about people.

And every great reform movement in American life has had something to do with religion.

A huge amount of the terrible things that have afflicted America have sought religious sanction and justification.

So to paint with one brush, religion all good, religion all bad is pointless.

The question is, what is the utility of it?

What is the goal of it?

- I think the role that faith can play and should play is this, at the heart of most faiths is this realization that we're imperfect people.

And if I know that's true, if I know I'm an imperfect person, then I know, again, back to what I said before, I could be wrong in my political argument as well.

So that's number one, number two, this whole idea of created in the image of God.

If I think you are created in the image of God, I can't really say I'm gonna do everything I can to have the most clever put down of you on social media today.

That's my goal is to put you down in the best way possible.

Well that doesn't actually work if I truly think you're created in the image of God.

- And the beauty of religion is the choice.

And it's between you and God.

And so I think politics also pollutes faith.

I mean, the politicization of religion is actually taking away the spirituality and the divine nature of the religion.

And one of the things that makes our democracy special is that we have separation of religion and state.

That was a very and has always been a very big deal in our country.

And that is a norm and that is a principle that we should hold.

- The key for us is not to try to entirely secularize the public square, which is pointless, but to manage and marshal religious feeling toward goals that fit within the American mission.

And the American mission as I define it, which is not unique or original with me, is how do you more fully realize the promises of the Declaration of Independence?

I have certain moral objections to certain prevailing laws of the land, but I'm not gonna withdraw totally from that land because of that.

What one's faith would actually tell one is that you just, you try to change it.

- [Narrator] What role do spiritual leaders play in the relationship between democracy and religion?

Bishop Michael Bruce Curry and Jon Meacham explored the intersection of religion and democracy during a live conversation hosted by the Unity Project.

- Yeah, but I do believe that the work of preaching still has potential to move.

But we, and I say we as one who has been doing it for over 40 years now, we have failed our folk.

They've come in hungry, for solid food, for good food that would sustain them and we've given them fast food.

And sometimes we've given them fast food of cheap grace, of just some quick french fries and a Big Mac.

Well, I shouldn't say, you know, just fast food.

And by solid food, I don't mean abstraction.

I mean something that I can take away.

And I had to preach to a congregation that was composed of PhDs, MDs, you know, folk working at the electric plants, I mean a mixed congregation.

They forced me because of the diversity and this was an African American congregation, but because of the deep diversity that was there, but educational and all sorts, age and all sorts of things, they forced me to have to crystallize a message that everybody could leave that place on Sunday morning and have something that could nurture them all week long.

We who preach must find a way we must preach every week so that the people of God leave that church and they've found a better way to live for the next week.

I do also wanna suggest that teaching, we must consistently lift up the dignity, worth, and value of every human being created in the image and likeness of God.

To raise up the value in the dignity and worth of every human being, of every child of God is to help us learn how to do what Jesus was getting at in the parable of the Good Samaritan because the Good Samaritan didn't help the guy who had gotten beaten up on the side of the road just 'cause he said, I'm gonna do something good today.

In fact, he may or may not have liked him, who knows?

I mean, they were theoretically enemies, or at least they were adversaries in some sense.

And yet he helped him anyway.

Why?

Because he was a hurting human being on the side of the road.

And every human being is a child of God.

And if they're a child of God and I'm a child of God, that's my brother, that's my sister, that's my sibling.

- What people of faith have to do and always have, or Jesus wouldn't have had to talk about it about surrendering unto Caesar is to what extent does one's personal creed govern one's actions in a larger community?

And are there certain rights and responsibilities that we enjoy that may require us not to act at every moment on the impulses of our religion?

- Which reminds me of all those, and I know you didn't, we're not here for a sermon, but-- - Oh sure, go ahead.

(laughs) - Or I could give one.

- That's right, that's right.

- All those wonderful stories of Jesus and his disciples on a boat at night, the most dangerous time in the ancient world.

And Jesus walking on the water at night, Jesus appearing to his disciples at night in the midst of storms.

That's where we are.

We're in the midst of the storms and in one of those stories, Peter jumps out of the boat and he starts walking toward Jesus.

And he does okay until he starts looking at the storm.

And his focus shifts from focusing on Jesus, if you will, and he focuses on the storm.

We must not shift our focus from becoming the true democracy, a multiracial, multi-ethnic pluralistic democracy.

We must not shift from that vision of who we can be by focusing only on the storms that are in the midst because the storms will consume us, they will consume our perception.

And eventually we'll believe that that's all there is, lightning, thunder and, and the role of the water.

Instead of the possibility of becoming that shiny city on a hill.

It is a moment of decision and we must decide, will e pluribus unum, will we truly become for many diverse peoples, one nation invisible with liberty and justice not just for some but for all?

(intense music) - 1000%.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- [Narrator] Race has always played a role in American democracy, which is why race in America is one of the pillars of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy.

The project explores the historical and present day impacts of racism in all its forms and ways to work toward a more equal and just society.

Samar Ali, co-chair of the Unity Project has devoted her career to bringing people together to move towards peace.

- I'm a conflicts resolutions practitioner and I work at the intersection of national security, economic development, and human rights.

Had the opportunity when I was at Vanderbilt to meet Archbishop Tutu and his family, which led me to be mentored by him in South Africa on a number of topics and range of different areas, including truth and reconciliation.

And it's that also further inspired me as someone who grew up as a Palestinian Syrian American Muslim woman in the south, to wanna dedicate my career to figuring out how we transcend divides and bring people together in order to move towards peace.

(calm music) We had hundreds of years of slavery.

We also have an indigenous population that we didn't treat fairly and that we haven't treated fairly and it gets back to truth and reconciliation.

Have we properly acknowledged our truth?

Have we properly reconciled with it?

And I think that that is a continuous process.

Now what I see is a lot of times people talking about racism on the individual level and not enough conversation about racism on the systemic level.

Some people, when I use that language, get turned off and instead of backing away, I lean in and ask, why?

Why is it turning you off?

And what I tend to hear back is because I feel like you're calling me a racist.

And so then it's why do you feel that way?

Why do you feel I'm calling you a racist by talking about a system that's riddled with racism and bias?

How about we work together to fix it and to make it better rather than just denying it?

These are complex problems but by ignoring them, we only make them worse.

Criminal justice reform is a good example where we saw bipartisan criminal justice reform.

Embedded in that was addressing and is continuing to address systemic racism in the prison system.

- [Narrator] A brief from Pew Charitable Trusts states that quote, "By the year 2000, Black people made up almost half of the state prison population, but only about 13% of the US population.

And although a wave of changes to sentencing and corrections policies over the past two decades has helped lessen disparities in federal and state prisons, Black adults were still imprisoned at five times the rate for white adults in 2020."

- One of the things I learned in office is about how the criminal justice system works.

You know, most of us have the good fortune or blessing to not really interact with the criminal justice system a lot.

And I realized along the way, like how little I understood about the judicial system and in the process, so one of the things I learned is I became convinced that not for everybody, but for some people, that our sentences are just way too long.

And we tried to begin looking at that near the end of the my time.

I would've liked to have worked on that a little bit more if I had actually understood how the system worked better.

I came to be convinced after time that we had a lot of people serving very long sentences that I'm not certain it was in the best interest of society for them to be serving sentences that long.

- I'm very excited about this event because we have Governor Bill Haslam and Ms. Cyntoia Brown Long together in public at a public event for the first time since their past collided dramatically in 2019.

- [Narrator] At the age of 16, Cyntoia Brown was convicted of murder and robbery resulting in a life sentence.

Her case gained national attention after several high profile celebrities expressed outrage over her sentence.

In January, 2019, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam commuted Brown's life sentence leading to her release in August of the same year.

- The hard thing in Cyntoia's case was when I started looking into this, I'm really near the very end of my time and I realized there's several Cyntoia's, if not more out there in the system.

And the only reason I knew about Cyntoia was because she had gotten all this media attention.

So the question is then what do you do?

Is it fair to treat her differently because all these super media personalities from Kim Kardashian to Snoop Dogg, to LeBron James had tweeted about her?

Is it fair to treat her differently?

Or is it also fair to leave her in there when you know it's not the right thing to do?

- [Narrator] In 2022, the Vanderbilt Unity Project hosted a discussion on criminal justice reform featuring former Governor Haslam and Cyntoia Brown Long.

- I'd made a big mistake as governor.

As governor you have the power to grant clemency or pardon or exoneration even is almost total.

Unless you're getting paid money for it, you can do whatever you think is best, okay?

And I had gotten some advice when I went into office that said, everybody and their brother's gonna be coming up to you asking for a pardon or getting something taken, you know, their DUI from college taken off the record, whatever, don't do it.

Just wait till your last few months in office and then you won't be being besieged by people.

And I said, that sounds smart.

And that was not smart.

It was a big mistake because you had this flood of things that came to you and you thought, I can be smart enough to figure this out.

When they bring it, I'll say, okay, this person should get off, that person should.

You thought, I can figure all that out and you can't, - Obviously I'm a proponent for clemency, but when you think about it, this is one person and you have-- - Sure.

- Clemency is not the answer.

- That's right.

That's I think right.

- Parol reform, yeah.

Parole reform is the answer.

I mean, even like on clemency you have the parole board that acts as this barrier.

So for many people it's, you file a petition for clemency, you just hope and pray that somebody can get it to the governor because it most likely is gonna stop at the parole board.

- One of the things the governor does is appoint the parole board and you come into office brand new and you take on a lot of assign assignments.

And when you're first appointing parole board members, you don't sit down and think, what's your view of, you know, the length of sentences and the ability for people to be rehabilitated in prison?

What, you know, walk me through your philosophy of that.

You don't really have all those conversations.

But you realize how much discretion they have.

And so when you're appointing somebody who has a lot of discretion, you need to think about, okay, what are their views on a lot of these issues?

I didn't have a well-developed philosophy of how I looked at parole.

I didn't, I had never really interacted with the criminal justice system.

I didn't know what I thought.

And it's not like in your first years, you have a lot of time to go off by yourself and read and develop that philosophy.

So my point would be the governor has that and I think it's better to be with the governor than anywhere else, but he or she takes a while to think about, well, what kind of person do I want on that board?

See I thought I need some really good citizens on there, but I didn't think about enough about how do I, what's my philosophy around parole?

- Because there are different approaches to parole boards and one approach to parole board is to have experts who know about treatment programs, who can assess risk and who can really individualize the evaluation of the individual as opposed to people who are good citizens but nonetheless don't know any of that stuff.

- Right, right.

- And you might get a very different decision depending on which type of person you have on the parole board.

- I look at it as trying to continually change the, you know, push the trajectory in a different direction through who you put in charge the prisons and who they hire, et cetera.

But it takes a long time to move a big ship like a state.

- I feel like there need to be more people who are actually impacted by these systems to have a voice at the table.

We need to have committees, we need to have, you know, and when I say committees, I mean committees where changes are actually implemented after those suggestions are made.

We need to have people who are performing the audits that aren't just other people from other prisons or who are already in the system, but some people who don't really have a connection to TDOC doing these audits.

- [Interviewer] And the committees would include prisoners.

- Absolutely they should.

(intense music) - My interest in democracy and its relationship in crisis really was sparked after the 2020 election.

- I really wanted to know the inner workings of our democracy.

- Because I came from an environment where learning wasn't really acceptable.

So this was definitely something where I was like, let's engage in critical thinking.

- I really want to broaden my horizons and learn more about American democracy.

- [Narrator] An integral component of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy is the course American democracy, conflict and consensus, an undergraduate course offered by the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University.

- And there is, in my opinion, a moral dimension to democracy.

If you do not see people as fully included as you are, in the promise and the reality of the Declaration of Independence, then you are tending toward an autocracy of race or gender or economic power.

Pick your differentiator.

But if we are not equal before the law, then it is not a democracy.

- It's an undergraduate course.

It's a course basically about the American democracy being under stress.

And so our objective with the students is obviously to continue to inject this kind of evidence-based approach to the conversations.

We also really have a vested interest in trying to get them to think conceptually, what exactly is a democracy?

What exactly is an autocracy?

What is authoritarianism?

These are not easily defined concepts and we want them to think about those concepts and grapple with them.

I have a very clear memory of the first earlier days in class, we had a paper that was due, 750 words on what is a democracy.

They were all very confident they knew what that was.

And we spent the class, Jon and I, picking apart every definition they came up with because you know, academics have only been wrestling with it for about 2,000 years.

And students started to realize, wait a second, this is not easy.

- Most political decisions as many of you are studying are not stark.

They're shades of gray, there's nuance.

- So it's on us to make sure our stuff is getting out and that we're studying things that are gonna be mattering to people and are gonna make a difference.

- We also are really committed to bringing in diverse perspectives.

We brought in David French for example, who's a conservative columnist.

We brought in Major Garrett who was a CBS news correspondent.

We had recently Tim Ryan, former member of Congress come in, Nancy Pelosi, we're bringing a lot of speakers with different perspectives 'cause we want the students exposed to those perspectives 'cause it's so absolutely critical.

- The biggest contributor to our learning is the amount of guest speakers that we have coming to the class.

All coming to the course to not only present their experience but their research, their work, things that they have gathered throughout their lives.

And it's a huge way in which each Vanderbilt student who takes this course learns.

- Our history textbooks is not what we are learning from.

We are learning from the lived experience of the speakers that come in.

The one that really resonated with me the most was representative Tim Ryan from Ohio.

Representative Ryan recently lost an election and I felt that he was able to speak more freely about disagreeing with politicians, about decisions even within his own party.

- One of Jimmy Carter's aides used to say that the Democrats show up to a gunfight with a 10 point policy plan.

(class laughs) - We have to look at the real roots of the issues as people and not as politicians on the left or the right.

- Everybody had very similar messages when they talked about the state of the country and what they believed needed to be done to fix it, which I think is really interesting given how little they probably overlapped on other policy beliefs.

- We all want the same outcome.

We all want a united nation.

We all want this country to be collectively, a country that everyone's accepted, that everyone gets to participate, everyone's voice is heard.

However, those means are different.

- These students are perfectly capable of figuring it out.

And if we can give them the ingredients, the evidence, the theories, they can bake their own kind of cake.

And the fact that there may be all different kinds of cakes out there, that diversity of thought is what in fact empowers the nation.

- Over spring break, I started reading your book and there was this one-- - He must have had a lot of fun.

(class laughs) Yeah, right, yeah.

- It said, "It is a fact of American history that we are not always good, but that goodness is possible, not universal, not ubiquitous, not inevitable, but possible."

Could you maybe give an example of when this goodness was possible in the face of challenging circumstances and when it maybe proved its possibility?

- March, 1965.

- I'm biased because I love Vanderbilt and I love the students, but they really ask good questions.

David French being a conservative communist had strong positions about, for example, gay marriage.

And he'd written about those prior to the decision by the Supreme Court that made it gay marriage law of the land.

And a student, a very respectful student, asked a question that could have been asked in a nasty fashion, and it wasn't, it was asking a respectful fashion.

And David French answered that with grace and subtlety and that student who clearly was very much in favor of gay marriage, came away satisfied.

And here's people with different views and they're having that conversation and they both come away, probably not agreeing, but they come away with respect for each other.

And that's a tribute not just to David French, it's a tribute to our students who see the value of that.

And that's one thing that we, you know, we're really stressing with the students and it comes naturally to them.

Jon says, Meacham says that our students are sharp but don't have sharp elbows.

- My personal view about how you deal with it now, which is not dispositive as a solution, is you try not to tell people they're wrong.

You try to argue what is right.

- [Student] But how do you think that that relates to us thinking about conversations Today?

- [Jon] Yeah, I think it's vital - Conversation is the seed that blossoms into something beautiful.

Yes, there are differences.

You know what, I might be Latino, I might be a homosexual, but that doesn't make me any different.

There's always some sort of common ground.

and you can find that through conversation.

- And I think that's also a really interesting way to broaden out your own perspective.

Either strengthen your own position or change what it is you believe.

- It's cliche, we hear it a lot.

Oh, hear all the perspectives.

But actively engaging and understanding different perspectives is much harder than actually listening to it and actually applying it to your everyday life.

- And we are in need of politicians who are going to come in and unify the country.

And by doing that, you have to acknowledge the fact that there are fundamental disagreements, but that neither of you are wrong.

You just disagree and you work together to find a solution.

- When I'm depressed, I think about the students.

They're engaged, they're bright, they're fair-minded.

There's an honesty and a a sense of conviction without being self-righteous.

And that's not a bad way for the country to be either.

(calm music) - I think we should have more of a space to just be able to like say what we want and like have honest conversations without like falling too far into like attacking each other.

- If education was a main criteria for the people in power, being in power, then I think that could change a lot.

- [Interviewee] I think the hatred on both sides is the biggest problem facing us.

- I feel like we all hope everyone can be like more understanding for each other.

- [Interviewee] I think we need to reframe the way that we think about where each of us lies on a political spectrum.

- That's a loaded question 'cause the answer is a lot.

- [Interviewee] I feel like not a lot of people's words are being put out there, like the majority.

- [Interviewee] Making it not as black and white and just more like fluid throughout.

- [Interviewee] Say like so many issues with campaign funding, so many issues like super pacs, things like that.

- [Interviewee] And I think people have goals that are more similar than they realize but because of the underlying beliefs they have, perhaps there are different ways of going.

- [Narrator] The question of how to strengthen American democracy is difficult to answer.

Not because there's no answer, but because there's an abundance of answers From fostering healthy communication to promoting civil discourse, enhancing education, encouraging critical thought, a commitment to democratic principles.

The list is long.

However, at its core, the solution depends on compromise.

- We are absolutely struggling with the capacity to compromise and not just compromise for compromise sake.

I get very tired of that.

This is not about civility so that we can all just come to a 50% conclusion.

Sometimes that's not the right thing to do.

Sometimes the other side is wrong and you have to call that out.

But most of the time in American history, it's been a little more mixed.

And that's the nature of American democracy.

- When we hire politicians, when we elect a senator, when we elect a president, we not just elect them to do our bidding, we also elect them for their judgment.

And we want that to be part of this process because they're quote, "experts".

- [Bill] And the hopes for this project is the whole idea of let's talk about what's involved in governing.

I mean, I'm afraid we've lost the idea of what are we actually electing people to do.

We're not electing people to beat the other side.

We're electing people again to solve problems and do things that we can't do for ourselves.

We cannot build interstate highway systems ourselves.

We cannot set up a system of justice ourselves.

So we hire people, that's what we elect people to do, is to do those things.

And so we need to think about like, what are we actually electing?

We're not just electing them to beat the other side, we're electing them to do certain functions.

- That's why debate becomes very important.

'cause we can influence each other's opinion, but also if we're going to be functional in the way we do it in a healthy way is why I'm arguing for healthy competition over deadly competition, over violent, over hateful, over such divisiveness of where we lose community.

- This stuff's hard.

One of my conclusions after being, you know, in office for almost 16 years is the decisions that got to me, particularly as governor by the time I got there, if there was an easy answer, it was made long ago.

Okay and there's usually a really good other side to the argument and we need to remember that number one, that the complexity of the issues before our leaders, number one and number two, to give a little grace.

How's this yelling at each other?

How's that working out for us?

It's not and so let's try, try a different approach.

Try saying, alright, I'm willing to listen and let's see if we can get to the best solution together.

- Leadership, it starts with you.

You have a platform.

So the one thing that the mayor, the governor, whomever the elected official is they have is a platform and a microphone and people are listening.

And so if you set a tone, the words, the actions, et cetera, that help people model that behavior, then I think like you're going to begin to see a shift in attitude.

And right now we are, I think we are way too caught up in national debates and we are not having enough conversations around local governance.

And the national rhetoric is influencing how we are engaging with each other at the local level.

- My hope is that all of us would look and say, listen, there's something bigger that we get to be a part of that's not just about ourselves.

And this idea of winning is just not the right path.

The issue should always be about what's the right answer?

Not what's my answer, what's the right answer?

- So this comes back to all of us, right?

We have to incentivize people saying, you're right on this one, you're wrong on that one.

We have to support people who are willing to compromise because as Lincoln said, "All men act on incentive."

- I was in Berlin right after the Berlin wall fell and I saw something that somebody had painted on what was left of the wall that has stuck with me to that this day.

And it said, "When a lot of little people in a lot of little places do a lot of little things, big changes happen."

I think here at the Vanderbilt Project, we're not under the illusion that we're gonna single-handedly ride in and save democracy and change the level of discourse in the country, but we think we can play our role by engendering conversations on this campus and in this state and around the country by bringing in voices that can speak to that.

Sometimes those voices aren't always voices that, you know, all of us in the room even agree with.

But the point is to start having those conversations.

- What was your reaction to the prosecutor's statements?

- [Samar] These are ways to bring people together, to explore old and potentially new narratives that are inspired by old narratives to move forward together in positive ways.

- What's vital is not us, we screwed it up.

People who look like me are the problem.

What matters is the next generation.

And they need to encounter these case studies, they need to understand these forces, they need to take the time to engage with important texts, important arguments in order to create this habit of heart and mind.

Where democracy has the capacity to self-correct and create a world that you wanna live in.

- The question is like, what are you gonna do about?

What am I going to do about it?

And you say, well, I'm not elected to anything, but no, but you're part of a lot of conversations, like I said, real world and online.

And if those conversations can start changing again, back to the Berlin Wall quote, "A lot of little people in a lot of little places do a lot of little things, the world can change".

(calm music) (calm music) - [Announcer] Support for the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy was provided by the Lester G. "Ruff" Fant Fund.

(lively music)