Michael Diniscia and Ellyn M Toscano eds. "Civility Unbound: Contesting a Democratic Value" (NYU Press, 2026)

0:00Welcome to the new books network. Hello, this is Lily Gorn with the new books network, the new books in political science podcast. I'm joined today by one of the two editors of civility unbound, contesting a democratic value, and that is Michael Denisha, who edited this volume with Ellen Toscano. And we also have one of the contributing authors who say in Rashid, both of whom we'll be speaking to me today about this 2026 New York University Press book, civility unbound, that came out of a conference where many academics, practitioners, politicians, former politicians, and others were in conversation about the idea of civility and what it means particularly in a democracy. But I'm going to let my guests talk about that.

1:00I'd like to welcome Michael and Hussein to the new books in political science podcast, and I'm going to ask them to tell us a little bit about themselves separately, and also how they came to this project. Michael, I will start with you. Sure. And thank you so much, Lily, for having us on the podcast. This is a lot of fun to talk about civility. We're going to have a very civil conversation here. I'm sure. I mean, I'm joking because civility turned out to be, as the subtitle suggests, a very contested concept. So as background, I'm the research director at NYU's John Bratima Center, the center's name for a former member of Congress who then became president of NYU in the 1980s and really 1990s. John, when he was on Capitol Hill, was a leader in legislation and education, the arts and humanities.

2:01And we focus our work in the areas where John was active. And he gave us a particular mission of bringing together, as he would say, thinkers and doers together. And for us, it's really our bread and butter. And we've been so committed and pleased with how this process works. So we come up with an interesting topic, an interesting question, ones that we feel are not getting enough attention. And we do a deep dive. And we pull together really smart people from... So I describe it as being both multi-practice and multidisciplinary. So we've got scholars and the scholars come from the arts, the humanities, public policy communications, all over the fields. And then we bring them together with practitioners, so for folks from the foundation world who

3:01are funding work in a particular area, folks who are coming out of the arts who are curators or other professionals, leaders of cultural institutions, other types of practitioners. So civility, in particular, was a really broad-based attempt to get to an interesting question. So we've got sociologists, philosophers, historians, political scientists. We've got former member of Congress. We've got a former union leader. We have a poet. A scholar of comedy who used to work with Norman Lear. We've got a scholar of religion and Hussein. So it's just a really sort of all hands-on deck approach to tackling a particular issue. Civility, we started the project that resulted in this book back in 2021.

4:01So we were sort of coming out of January 6th and sort of the revolution at what happened that day. And hearing a lot of calls to, you know, can't we return to a state of civilian and or politics? Have we so devolved in our politics that, you know, we're resorting to violence in such a dramatic fashion? And so, you know, we took those calls and our initial thoughts were, okay, let's do something examining the theory and practice of civility. And, you know, it's only after we started sitting, my colleagues and I started sitting down and really thinking through the concept that it was very quick. We were like, wait a second, is civility such a positive? What does civility really mean? And for us, I think we had this, we came down to the paradox of civility.

5:09So on the one hand, it's these rules of engagement that allow us to have debate, have compromise, make action in democratic society. On the other, it's this weapon that's deployed by those empowered to maintain the status quo. And so we took about three years of, we did a series of online conversations who saying took part in the final one, but just these series of online conversations sort of breaking down civility, but everything revolved around that paradox. And I think at the end, trying to come to some ideas, no conclusions, no, not even consensus, I would say, but on how to redeem civility. So we hope that's where some of the value in this book is and having all of these folks

6:13tackle the idea from so many different perspectives. And then some offering ideas on how to redeem civility for it to be a really positive. And I think Hussein in particular does that in his chapter. So I think I will pause there so Hussein can say a few words about himself. Great. Thank you for that hand off, Michael. And really thanks for having us on. My name's Tussain Rashid. I'm the founding co-director of Religion and Public Life at Union Theological Seminary. I work on Religion and US Popular Culture and our center works on critical religious literacy for Adjust World at Peace. So we're very much interested in theory and method in a practical application. So Michael and I were introduced through a mutual friend, a woman named Isavar Amon, who at the time was working for an institution, the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, the Golden Bridgest Program. And she and I ended up co-authoring a piece for the last volume Michael co-edited called

7:15Are the Arts Essential. So I think because of that, Michael reached out to me and asked me to contribute here. I will leave him to speak to if somebody dropped out at the last minute or if I was really invited early on. But it was a real pleasure to work on this because this question of civility I think is so germane as somebody who is involved in politics, both personally and professionally, a electoral politics that is where I've also been hearing this concern about this return to civility. And what does civility mean? And really trying to poke at it in my chapter, in my essay, through the lens of popular culture, to think about what we consider a civil and incivil and who's allowed to be incivil or uncivil. And I'm using these terms interchangeably, although I think there is a subtle nuance there. But we laud up these historical moments of civil disobedience. We don't call it incivility or we don't call it being uncivil.

8:17We call it civil disobedience. And I think even in that is very telling is that to be civil is to be obedient. And the question is obedient to whom. And that's what I'm very interested in is who gets to decide what you're obedient to whom you're obedient, who has to be obedient, and who gets to be in the dominant position. And so really thinking through those questions through in the short chapter, questions of race and gender. But I mean, there's so many different ways we could do it. But I think one of the interesting challenges for me, both in terms of my own personal orientation, but also methodologically to offer criticism, is actually not the critical work. Because here's the criticism and here's a way forward. I think that's where critical theory gets interesting. And what I try to do is make this my approach a little bit more full circle. I start with the theorist Raymond Williams and using his keywords volume to see how he talks about civility and civilization and understanding that civilization is not an

9:23end state, but is a process of negotiation. And we tend to, I think, the contemporary period make it an end state. It is, or really going back to colonialism, but really impacting the modern period that we tend to tripping civilizes an end state rather than a negotiated process in society. And so for me, I think where civility is interesting, if we want to redeem the terms thinking about, actually, how do we make space for negotiation for people with differing views without questions of power or subservience, obedience coming into play, and really trying to work towards a more trusted, equitable society? And I think that to me was the interesting part of this project and being invited into this is to say, okay, there are deep problems with this term. Is it redeemable? I think it is. But I think there's a lot of work that needs to go into it, but probably a lot less work than trying to figure out a better word than civility. So, you know, reordering all of society is far easier than trying to think through our linguistic biases. So I would understand that to be the case.

10:23Yes. Lily, why are you just jumping on one quick thing? Absolutely. Go for it. The editor of this, I'm reading everyone's pieces. So many folks, as Hussein did, went to etymology and definition of the word. So like, starts with Anthony Appia going back to the Latin and Greek roots of civis and Paulus, Paulus mean for cities in Greek, but also then becoming the base of the word for polite, which is often confused with civility. But so many folks did it, but I think Hussein, you did it in some of the best ways of defining the term. So as you were just describing, but also the both you and Lynna Tagahaki getting into the idea of what is civilizing, what is civilization and how that was used to define the in groups and the out groups and the rules that are applicable for the in group and different rules

11:27that are imposed on the out groups. Well, you're kind of still my next question a little bit, because I did want to get into a discussion of what this concept is, this idea of civility. As you've both been talking about, there's a slippery nature to the word itself in terms of how it's applied and what the background meaning is. Michael, you just mentioned the idea of being polite as somehow connected to being civil or civility. And Hussein, you were also talking about essentially the space of negotiation as opposed to the end state. So the space where we can be engaged without it being violent or problematic. But underneath and in lots of the chapters, particularly Hussein, your chapter, but others

12:31as well, there is this question of the fact that civility seems to also include lots of power dynamics. And that's one of the parts that most people don't necessarily think about, but I think is really, really important when we're thinking about this concept. Can you both talk about how the project sort of unveiled some of that? Sure. I'll start with a little bit and then Hussein should jump in. It really became apparent really on that this is about power dynamics. It's about, as I was saying earlier, defining the in groups and the out groups and the rules that are applicable to each or imposed on the other. I mean, and that's also sort of the insidiousness of the term civility that Hussein was getting

13:32to, but also that, and had Gaki and Kate Stimson and Troy McElwain all have essays about is that it's so deceptively simple. I think Linda Gaki was saying it's both simple but expansive. So it's, I mean, so you just someone can't we just have a civil dialogue about something seems so innocent, so matter of fact. But Hussein, you can talk about how that's, you know, implying a certain power dynamic. And as Linda Gaki also talks about, it's, it highlights the inequalities that exist in our relationships and it's taking, it's when making a request to be civil, it's implying we're both on unequal footing when that's absolutely not the case. So it's insidious because it seems so simple when it's really not.

14:37That can also be, I think, sometimes uses a tool. So as Karen, Jackson Weaver and her essay about the women of the civil rights movement, they use civility as a weapon, but from those challenging the status quo, I know there's a lot and the idea of civility politics that we don't have time to get into from here, but she really, I think, illustrates how effectively it was used as a weapon in that struggle. So it's, yeah, you just, from the very start of this, the very first scholars we engaged, there's no getting past the power dynamics, but maybe Hussein, you can say a little more on that. You know, I think Michael, that's really it, it's this question of power and you know, Lily, you started the question by asking about civility and the ability to disagree. And I think Michael's earlier mention of politeness is really germane right now because I think

15:44there is this conflation between civility and politeness. You know, we can agree to disagree about whether the Yankees or the Red Sox are the better baseball team, right? I mean, we know there's only one right answer that is always the Yankees or the Red Sox, but we can agree to disagree about that and we can agree to disagree about that in a civil way. What we can't agree to disagree about is we can agree to disagree about whether we should have Medicare for all in this country, right? Like should we provide universal health care or what are the best ways to do it? What I think we have to draw lines around is we cannot agree to disagree about whether somebody has a right to live because of their sexuality or their gender or their race, right? There have to be these markers. And I think what civility and politeness discourse gets us to is the idea that we should be working towards a legal extermination of a people, like we're seeing with trans individuals in this country right now, right?

16:47That we should allow that to happen in the name of civility or politeness. I think this is where civility and politeness get a bad term and this is where power dynamics come into play. And I think it's really important to understand how power comes in and there was this, I'm going to paraphrase it incorrectly. If either one of you remembers the quote better, please do correct me. But this was a quote that was getting traction during the George Floyd protests that for those with privilege, equality feels like violence. And I think we have to understand that in systems of hierarchical power, any attempt to destabilize those structures of power will always feel metaphorically violent to the people who have the privilege and who are actually enforcing actual violence against minoritized people, right? Because they're afraid that what they've done to other people will come back to them. So that metaphor becomes very real. And I think we have to understand that psychological aspect as well as that power aspect that comes into play here. And I think what civility does is it tries to mask all of that and hide that.

17:52And I quote this thinker Stephen Duncombe, and Stephen Duncombe, sorry, Stephen Duncombe in my chapter who writes about this idea of ethical spectacle, right? But you have to do these things that are visually stunning to get people's attention of ethical actions. So the King marches or gone, these marches would be ethical spectacle or the example I use in my chapter is Colin Kaepernick's taking on me is an ethical spectacle. But the flip side of that is the fascist spectacle. The spectacle that allows you to maintain the status quo that allows you to maintain power dynamics. The thing is Colin Kaepernick gets disciplined for his nonviolent protest. But Michael mentioned January 6th, that's a fascist spectacle. People are pardoned for that. We have the Charlottesville white riots. People are not very charged for that, right? Even though Heather Hire is murdered during it. So what we allow as acceptable is things that violence that allows power structures to

18:58exist will never be disciplined, but nonviolence that challenges power has to be met with violence and has to be disciplined. And that's where civility, I think, has earned properly a bad reputation in the modern period. And I think there are ways to recover it still. And so my next question for both of you and to some degree, the two of you representing the other thinkers in the book is this role of civility in a democracy. Because this is also, and who's saying I was really taken with the way that you sort of talk about this towards the end of your essay, that the democracy needs to have the space to have the conversation. And one of the things that you're just pointing out now is also the issue of violence, which is what a democracy is supposed to be keeping us from doing in terms of having that conversation. So my question is, where does civility sort of work and not work in a sort of democratic

20:06regime like in the United States? I think there is. I want to say I'm very negative for a moment. So please let me go into that space and then I'll try to come. That's fine. I'm an academic. You know, I think it presupposes that the United States is properly a representative democracy. There is an argument to be made that the United States did not become a representative democracy until the passage of the civil rights act in the 1960s. I'm not entirely convinced it was or became a representative democracy. That point as we've seen through various acts of voter disenfranchisement, the loss of voting rights, polling places, so on and so forth. That's a political science argument. Michael's probably a better situated to make that argument than me with the Brat of a center. But I think that civility is an important part of making a democracy at its ideal form, that a civility in its ideal form is an important part of making a democracy and is an integral part of a properly functioning democracy.

21:09But I think we're seeing in the United States and what has been laid bare over the last, let's say 12 years, you know, and you can figure out that timeframe on your own, you can do the math on your own. But, you know, over the last few years, is that actually a lot of these systems have, in fact, been fragile. We're designed to be fragile because there was an assumption that nobody would challenge those power structures. I don't think that the assumption would be that the logical extension of maintaining those power structures is that when those people in power reached a point of absurdium, that that's what would actually break the system, but that's the point we're at right now, is that this is not actually what's breaking the system is actually not the push for quality, but is the desire to make the inequality hyper-realized. And it is the statement, opulion, violence that we're seeing exercise both internationally and domestically. Because we've never addressed in this country the underlying issues of power and discrimination

22:09from indigenous genocide to enslavement, to, again, questions of gender or sexuality class that underlies so much of the founding of this nation, all those structures now have been weaponized to maintain that power structure for a very, very small set of people who sit at the top of that power structure. And there is no ability for civility, right? The ability to say, I am sorry for enslaving generations of people, or I am sorry for wounded me. The inability to do that civil act means we are inherently founded on in civility. And so it's odd to me that we keep talking about civility. Interesting. Very interesting. And it goes back. I'm, you know, I hadn't thought about this much before, but been listening to a great podcast by the journalist Rebecca Nagel on sort of the history of 250th anniversary of America, but through indigenous eyes and going back to the declaration of independence.

23:16That's the America first podcast you're talking about, right? I have to double check. I will put it in the show notes. Michael, you will give it to me and I will put it in the show notes. So going back to the declaration of independence, which we're all celebrating this year without actually reading it, but going back and reading it and seeing the final grievance was about the against King George was that he was inciting the native savages who did not, who do not follow our rules of war. So it's sort of going back to that, you know, our founding document of determining, again, keep saying this, but it's determining the in group and the out group. We have one set of rules for the in group and we've all imposed rules on the out group or they do not deserve the same benefits and rights and rules and engagement that we keep

24:17for our in group. So on the one hand, its civility is right there from the very start. On, you know, I come at this as do several of the writers who are political scientists, like Julia Zari and Norm Ornstein, but also Mickey Edwards, who is a member of Congress. I always go back to in syntax. What are the incentives that our systems create? And in some ways we've had systems in place that have encouraged civility in one of its forms, but we're now, for me, what's most worrying is we're reaching a point where our systems are incentivizing sort of this complete breakdown in civility. So for me, I did a chapter for the book on sort of the rise of the politics of performance in Congress. And so my particular hobby horses, we do not have enough private space for legislatures,

25:23legislators to actually do legislating that because everything is in the public, it disincentivizes legislating and compromise and it incentivizes conflict and for the sake of conflict. I mean, you can look at this from everything from the end of teller votes in the 1970s so that every amendment vote is now recorded so that members of the minority party only have an incentive to put poison pills to force the majority party to take a tough vote, to cease ban which new language, new how to weaponize, really very start. So he would stand on the floor of the house denouncing individual Democrats by name for being corrupt and terrible on all these horrible phrases and then Democrats were never there. But if you were watching from home, he thought, wow, he really cowed them into silence.

26:25He must be, you know, onto something. So I look at the incentives in our system and see, I mean, you just have to see what gets rewarded to see where the problems are lying today. It's a fascinating example you bring up. In a digital record, a negligence, an address savage has a new article out in BYU's law review on how the constitution excluded black people and what has been formally and not formally repealed and what is still operative, which is a fascinating read. But Newt Gengrich is a really interesting example because he's actually the member of Congress responsible for getting a Muslim prayer space in the house. And so, you know, he has this real history of publicly divisive work and then doing all this work behind the scenes, doing stuff to bring, you know, in the service of staffers.

27:26It's a fascinating question of civility. And I think this incentivization makes a lot of sense then if you think about public first private. It's interesting. Well, sometimes in his private, he was even worse in other examples. So just with the Bradham Center, so here's where we were doing a congressional oral history project. And there if there is one villain among both Democrats and Republicans, it is Newt Gengrich. I've heard Republican former members like Congressman Orchard of Texas have worse things to say about Gengrich because he would not keep his word. He was someone for whom everything was tactical and a advantage that he could get. And he would break his word, which for many years, you trust in one's word in Congress was the coin of the realm there. Again, this is Gengrich breaking, breaking the rules of civility in some ways irrevocably.

28:28And Julian Zelliz is book on him as a masterful bead in terms of really digging into the historical context that was part of his rise. But you mentioned Michael, essentially the strategic and tactical dimensions of politics, which puts it into the realm of war fighting. And at the same time, it's very difficult to sort of hold on one side that we have politics that is akin to war, particularly in a highly polarized country. And then at the same time, we are searching for possibly the capacity to take that and move it into this realm of engagement, of community, of people sort of being in contact with each

29:31other in order to function in some form of a democracy. And to say, and I certainly take your point with regard to the broader schematic that the United States may never have been a fully representative democracy. But the book goes into a whole bunch of different realms. And so I just wanted to talk a little bit about the sections themselves. We've talked sort of a great deal now about the voices of the political scientists who are in the book, which is to some degree part two, the role of civility in politics, political institutions and democracy. And we've talked a little bit about who sayings, work, and others work in terms of what we see in arts and culture a bit. But I wanted to also, and you've mentioned, both of you have mentioned some of the other

30:32contributors, but you start out the book essentially with essays from philosophers. And so we're getting into at the very start of the book, the top, the sort of this idea of interrogating civility and coming at it to understand what does this word mean. And who say you talk about that in your essay as well. But it's sort of generated from Greek and from Latin. And it's connected to a citizen civilization and the philosophers sort of take that up as well. Can you just talk a little bit about that first part and then we'll move through some of the other parts? Sure. Well, first I always think it's great to start with the philosophers, get to the meaning. And I think the benefit of that with this particular book was that it laid bare that we come into this with a lot of assumptions.

31:34And it laid out those assumptions and sometimes it would back up those assumptions. So Anthony, happy it was just brilliant. This is always looking for ways that we can sort of keep moving along. But nothing will ever be perfect. But one of the examples he used from a British TV show was just a dad and his son's friend just like, okay, we're not going to agree, but it's okay. Let's just move on. That's fine. So part of it is what are the assumptions and are some of them valid, but also by laying bare those assumptions, it enabled our leader contributors because the sections of the book are laid out in the series of panels that we did. So it enabled a leader contributors to challenge those assumptions, which I think worked

32:36pretty well. And who's saying you're certainly one of those challengers. I think Michael, this is now having done two volumes with you. I think this is. And somebody, I am a scholar of religion, but I consider myself a more broadly humanities scholar. The ability to bring people from such different disciplines, even if conceptually we might be starting from the same place or ending at the same place, the ways in which we get there or where we go from. Really in both volumes has just been astounding to behold. And I think it really gives. You can see people talking to each other, even though we haven't read each other. And also, I don't want to say disagreeing, but really, yeah, why not? At some point we really are disagreeing. Again, not directly talking to each other, but conceptually. And I think that's really one of the things that gives strength to the volumes is these multiple perspectives where I think there is a bit of alignment, but that doesn't mean

33:37agreement. And I actually think for this volume in particular, it really demonstrates what could be possible on questions of civility. Which I think is really useful as we sort of find ourselves in the current moment as well. So we did talk about the role of civility in political institutions in democracy. But chapter three or part three, sorry, part three civility, social justice, civil disobedience and protest is really interesting in terms of taking up the question of who gets to be civil and who gets to be sort of civilly disobedient or disobedient in some way that is considered not civil. Can you talk a little bit about that section? Sure. Well, I'll be in with just a quick anecdote. One, it's just for this kind of a topic that's not that commonly addressed.

34:41I think in academia, outside of communication scholars, it's just woefully understudied it and I think in political science and history. But part of it's both fun, but serious is asking so many different people if they would be willing to tackle this. Folks who didn't, you know, haven't been studying civility per se. So one of them is my NYU colleague, Charlton McElwain, who studies social media and social justice movements, particularly Black Lives Matter. And when we ask Charlton, as it writes in his essay, his first reaction was, wait, civility is for suckers. Why would I want to talk about something like this? So, and then he took it seriously. Again, I think he is like Leonard Gauke and yourself who's saying mainly comes down on the side of this has been, you know, a weapon for those with power in that unequal power

35:47dynamic to prevent change, to prevent social justice. But like everyone else tries to see where is it redeemable. Is there, you know, something that we can move forward with the concept of civility? So part of it was just the folks in that section really sort of important challenging them is civility of value worth preserving, redeeming. But also they had some of the in some ways more fun essays to work on this to really take the folks who are who have been challenging power, who've been challenging the status quo and how they've sometimes subversively used civility in that struggle. So like Larry Cohen is a former head of the Communication Workers Association. So he talks about his own, you know, youthful protests that he funded in Philadelphia.

36:54But then, you know, uses that to pivot to talking about leading a social, leading a mass movement. So a union is a mass movement politics. And what civility means within that union in terms of members engaging with each other. But then how do you deploy the power that that union has to make change? Also, you know, the rules that can strain us in the Senate, which is one of his hobby, particular hobby horses. So I think, you know, that was sort of the fun section again, Carried Jackson Weaver, who have discussed before with the civil rights women. What, I mean, it's incredible trying to put yourself in their minds of what they were, you know, strategy tactics, what they were going through, how they came up with this on the ground and how they committed, how they were committed to it in the face of such brutality and such

38:01instability deployed against them. So it's, you know, that sort of, those chap, those essays are often the heart of this book. Who's in you? You get into that in your own, I think. Yeah, I wish, I think we've just said it's just brilliant. I wish I had the ability to include the movie sinners in my, I say this movie that came out in 2025, which is ostensibly a vampire movie, but it's really about questions of race and racial making in the US, told through the lens of horror. But there's a scene where the two brothers, the smokestack brothers who are played by Michael B. Jordan are buying a property that would become the club. That's the sort of the main setting for the movie. And they're dealing with this white banker, landowner. I'm not quite sure what professionally what he is. And it's all very polite and it's all very civil and you find out over the course of the movie.

39:04So they're doing it the morning of one day, the most of the movie happens at night. And you find out that the white guy is going to come back, he's the head of the clan, and he's going to come back with the clan and burn the place down in the morning. And you're like, yes, this is what civility is. You know, it's what's the attitude to diplomacy, the, the order to plummet is saying nice doggy until you can find a big enough rock to hit the person over the head with. It feels like that's what civility is in, like that moment sort of encapsulates this question of power and niceness as a way to expropriate wealth and steal from people or continue to steal from people. And who say, and I, I do a lot of work in popular culture. And so I was really, really delighted to read your examples. Not only I thought the Colin Kaepernack example was, was fantastic in terms of, you know, sort of who gets to be civilly disobedient and who doesn't, as you compare it to Nazis marching.

40:05And I'm originally from Chicago and I remember the Nazis in Skokie. And how that was, you know, again, there was a discussion about civility and, you know, calmness and manners and first amendment protections, obviously, and this was in the 70s or the 80s. But I did want to sort of ask you a little bit about the final section, lessons for civility from arts and culture. Because not only do we have it in popular culture all over the place, you have great examples from the MCU as well. But you also include not only in the panels, but also in the book poetry itself. And who's saying you, you quote also poets. But, you know, what is the role of the arts and humanities in this realm?

41:05So going back to who's ends of my mutual friend, Zabir Rahman, who worked at the Duke Foundation. Zabir would always say arts and culture are always put at the little kids table. They're not at the big adults table when it comes to these discussions about democracy and conflict resolution and community development. So because of the work that John Bridemast did, we are very committed to bringing the arts and the humanities to the adults table for these discussions. It's a waste not to include them when they have so much to contribute. So, for example, in that final section, we have Katie Borum from American University, who was a producer with not only her as a communications scholar and expert on comedy. And I, again, trying to think of hopeful ways to redeem civility, I think her discussions of that

42:06human connection that comedy makes, that, for example, how one of her, one of the comedians, she's studied from the South himself, she describes an sounding like a good old boy. So you can have, you know, you can work a crowd, you know, they're enjoying his comedy. It's got, you know, all the right common cultural references everyone's having good time. And then he can bring in subjects that they may not otherwise want to discuss when it comes to race, or LGBT, Q issues. But he's already made that connection, that human connection with them, that makes them less likely to shut him out. So I just think it's super, important. I think particularly the arts and humanities are more adept in some ways at understanding

43:09the human connection, and again, throughout the book, the essays all touch on sort of civility and its relationship to respect and to humanness. And I think, McCord Amel, Maldonado, the poet, his piece, and Katie's, and who's saying, you, you, through the arts and humanities, you get to that kind of a connection. I think I'm going to echo everything Michael said, and I'm just going to add on to it is, you know, when you think about what we as people do, the first thing we do is art. The first thing we do is a hand print. The first thing we do is, you know, scribble, or we hum, or we make a noise, right? This is, this is what it means to be human. We are creative beings first. I think the reason that art has always been a target of fascist regimes is because it is representative of the will, it is often representative of the will of the people,

44:13which is not aligned with the will of the state or the fascist power structure. And here I'm using fascist not as an attackable sense, but an abrupt or oppressive sense. And you know, this is why the NEA always gets attacked, or this is why why do we need art? The first thing we cut is arts and music in schools, because God forbid our students become individual human beings rather than worker cogs for some corporate entity, right? Because that's not the purpose of a creation. And so thinking about arts also is something that's very accessible, right? It's on the, the sides of buildings, it's in the soundscapes around us, right? We all have that favorite lyric or that favorite couplet, or we all know, you know, the persistence of memory by Dolly, right? We all know that one, whether we, you know, I don't mean that pejoratively, but like we have these images that stick with us. And so the arts are dangerous for that reason. And they are the ones that push us towards democracy. The other thing I will say is that I think one of the things we tend

45:15to do as academics is think that theory happens in the academy, and I strongly disagree with that. I think we structure theory in ways that other places don't. Theory comes from people, right? And I often use my own personal example. When I first started reading Marx in college, I had a really hard time with Marx, where I understood Marx is when Chuck D from public enemy, I read his memoir called Fight the Power, where I was like, oh, this is the material needs of a people who owns the means of product. I got you now, right? But it's Chuck D from public enemy who's making it a parent to me. It's not Marx. It's not my instructor Marx who understands Marx and things we should all understand Marx. And I get on me that in a bad way as an instructor, we all have those blind spots, right? I get it. Why don't you get it? And so thinking about art as a way to express these deep theories, again, I'll come back to sinners. I taught that in my original popular culture course last year, and we were going to talk about racial formation. We were able to talk about class. We were able to talk about the intersection of race and religion of this country. This is pure

46:19popular culture, right? Indigeneity, colonization, like all of this you get from this two-hour movie, because Ryan Cougler's got the theory because he's lived it. His writers have lived it, right? Ruthie Carter, whose design of the costumes has lived it. It is on screen for you to visualize and experience and ways that if you're willing to put in the effort to think about, that's what art does is it allows you to be broken if you're willing to be attention. The last example I'll give is who ran a series called Reservation Dogs about an indigenous community for 14 years, but the group sort of expands. It starts out as 14-agers in Oklahoma. And there's a scene at the beginning of one of the episodes, and I use it to teach this older white couple is driving through. They see this road sign and somebody's profited on the road sign land back. And the older gentleman says to presumably his wife says, well, they say land back. Do you mean

47:20they want it back? And she's like, what do you want about? She's like, do you think they want the land back? And she says, well, you know, we did kind of steal it from them. I mean, it seems like maybe we should give it back. And she's like, and he's like, so they want the land back. And she's like, why are you such a dumbass? And I just love this scene. It's just like a 42nd scene. I should have checked. I might do your PG 13 podcast, right? I can say dumbass. Okay. You know, what's cool? But I love to use that to teach about decolonization versus decoloniality. Right? So, you know, tuck in when you have the famous article, decolonization is not a metaphor. Right? The idea that we should actually be doing reparations, restitution, physically giving land versus decoloniality, which is, well, what are the ways in which we change our thinking to break these models and be respectful of land that thinks about the ways in which I'm on Lenape land in New York City right now, in which the Lenape were aware of what this land was and

48:20how to shepherd it and and steward it in ways of partnership, right? The land as part of our community, not as something we dominate, but as ancestral as healing as talking to us in meaningful ways, how do we change our relationship to land to think about it in those ways? And for me, that's what popular culture does is that it's a great way and art. It's a great way to interrogate theory as it is lived before we get into academic structure theory. Can I just add, I think, who's saying you brilliantly illustrated one of our goals with this book, which is we want both general audience to be able to pick it up. So if you're just, you know, seeing it at Barnes and Noble and we're interested in the topic of civility, pick it up, find it interesting, but also particularly for undergrads. One of the peer reviews was this would make a great core text for a freshman seminar and the idea is it's tackling really difficult subjects,

49:25but in an accessible way and that arts and culture are that point of access in many ways. And I would totally agree with that as somebody who tries to understand politics through popular culture of all kinds, be it Shakespeare, Sophocles, or of course, the MCU. So I wanted to sort of bring this a little bit to a conclusion and Michael asked you about this book in context of there's a previous book, there's a previous undertaking and now there is a next undertaking. So just a little bit of an overview of the center and to some degree what you're doing now. Sure. As I mentioned, we sort of tap all these big questions within sort of the border context of these were where John Bratimer's or founder was areas where he was active and ones that we feel

50:29don't get enough attention. So our first lead project was Or The Arts Essential. So you was one of our contributors there. The answer to the question is yes, but we get we have 25 essays in that book which you know are you for the essentiality of the arts both instrumental and in other ways. Our work as we've discussed is bring folks together. So that was a fun project we had conferences at Ruck for the Brother Fund's Pecanico Center in Tarrytown, New York and at NYU's Florence campus in a former 16th century Florence in Villa. It's the old joke, it's not the theory of the leisure class, it's the leisure of the theory class. That put these together but we joke but there is something to be said about bring folks out of the demands of day-to-day work,

51:38the pressures of you know being in, if you're coming from New York or from your university and having you know a chance to think about these things particularly the folks that are practitioners who don't who are so busy doing the work especially if they're leading a non-profit or if they're working at a cultural organization they are just doing the work not having a time to think through the why and the how they know it intuitively but there is a real benefit I think in being able to draw that out in communion with other folks. So we did that through orthodox central. So the Lennie-On-Bound is the book that came out this year and that was through a series of online panels it started in 2021 so it was the COVID era so we weren't able to bring folks together the way that we normally do but our new project and in many ways they're building on each other. So as I you know illustrated with civility on bound we brought the artists and the humanists

52:44into that book fully in communion with the political scientists and the historians and the other practitioners. The new project that we're doing it's called Foundations of Democracy, the Arts and Humanities. Again looking at how the Arts and Humanities build democratic values what they contribute again under undervalued underrepresented and bring the folks that are that are working together with the folks who are thinking about this. It's you know some of the themes are in that project or so it's building democratic narratives how artists help us imagine the future both good and bad to inspire change but also to give us warnings. I don't think we had nearly the imagination of what the last year and a half would be like so I think we do suffer from a lack of imagination.

53:47Another theme is what the autocrats get about art and culture so Hussein you were talking about that earlier in the podcast. The autocrats they get it they they know the power or culture think small do you Democrats don't appreciate it nearly enough and you know how how the Arts and Humanities help us speak truth to power so it's again this idea of bring folks together who don't normally engage in this with each other. One of the fun thing I mean I'm at NYU which is this giant global research university. One of the fun things I get to do is bring identify and bring folks together at my own university who've never met before even if they've been working on the same project. Same topic. If you say maybe you want to say a few more words about the power of the arts and humanities and democracy. I'm good I think the last thing is I will say I was part of these convenings for the arts or the arts essential and I do remember a session we had in Pekantika

54:52where we were talking about art and the difference between art and propaganda and the role of power in the creation of art you know if it's power creating art is it art or is it propaganda and where that comes in it it was one of my favorite conversations in this because I think it's really helped me understand the rise of fascistic art in this contemporary period and how things like Gen AI starting with thing you know mid-Journey or Dalee the image generator is really being a gateway to fascistic art because it's so narrowed and focused and polls on particular themes that we see coming up in for example DHS Instagram posts which have that particular aesthetic white nationalist almost Soviet it's this really would mix of Soviet white nationalist not see type of imagery but it's it's so very clearly artificial and so very clearly part of a

55:59visual corpus that conveys meaning that it's you know I that that conversation you know thinking about how these convenings actually do generate other ideas and have ramifications you know I want just echo what you're saying about the convening of people thank you both for this this really deep conversation about a fantastic book I really enjoyed the fact that the chapters were brief but deep and and I think Michael you're right this is a this is a really good book that could be used in freshmen seminars first year seminars or even in senior kind of contemplative kinds of seminars as well as well as being very accessible for most readers so I wanted to thank my interviewees today Michael the Nisha and Hussein Rashid Michael is one of the two editors

57:03of civility unbound contesting a democratic value which he edited with Ella Ellen Tosgano and this is published by New York University Press of course came out this past year in 2026 is there a brick and mortar store with an online presence to which either of you would like to give a shout out oh on McNally Jackson is my go to in the city and you can order online from them I know okay and of course from NYU from NYU press and I push bookshop.org so no matter where you are in the country you can still support an independent bookstore yes and the new books network also supports bookshop so we're good I wanted to thank you both for joining me today and this is an excellent text oh thank you so much for having us Lily this was a lot of fun thank you thank you for listening to this episode of the new books network we are an academic podcast network with

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