American Public Square at Jewell is a community-based organization that works to establish civil public discourse through convening, education, and engagement. Since 2013, the organization has been a leader in the Kansas City area in thoughtful and meaningful political conversations. 

In 2019 American Public Square partnered with William Jewell College to work in and with the College community. One topic of significance, especially for college students, is the cost of higher education. American Public Square dedicated the month of April to host four events that are designed to help prospective and current college students handle this issue. 

All of the events are free of charge, and the only requirement for students is to register for each event they want to attend. The events are planned and organized by college and high school students in the Kansas City area. They will include policy experts and those that dealt with the issue explaining the nuances and facts about the cost of college in the U.S.

Students that attend two or more programs will be eligible to win an Apple Watch through a drawing at the end of the month. Students that go to one event will be eligible to receive a Door Dash or QuikTrip gift card. 

The first event was April 6. Coffee and Politics with Congressman Don Beyer will be a Zoom forum where students can ask about and learn about student loan forgiveness from a legislator’s perspective. Congressman Beyer is a four-term congressman from Virginia’s 8th district. Beyer is currently the Chair of the Joint Committee on Economics and serves on the House Committees on Ways and Means and Science Space and Technology. He also served as the Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein under President Obama.

The next event, Student Debt: Where Do We Go From Here?, will be held April 8. The program will address student loan debt. In the U.S., student loans total $1.7 trillion of debt and grow six times faster than the U.S. economy. A panel of experts from both sides will explain and argue key points on the issue. 

Panelists include Dr. Beth Vonnahme and Preston Cooper. Vonnahme is an Associate Professor in Political Science and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at UMKC. Her research and teaching focus on political behavior and public opinion. 

Cooper is a Visiting Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. His writings have been published by the Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report, and The Washington Post, among others. Register for the event here.

The final two events hosted by American Public Square are April 28 and 29 over Zoom. The first of the two is the APS Community Discussion Group. During the event, all students will have the opportunity to share their opinion on student debt with people from all over the political spectrum. 

Finally, the organization will host the APS High School Signature Student Program. It is a panel discussion about whether or not college should cost money.  Details on the panelists have not yet been released, but that information is forthcoming. Registration is not yet open for these two events, but those interested can sign up through the American Public Square website when the link is live. 

American Public Square at Jewell will gather panelists and audience members virtually Feb. 17 to discuss solutions to the gun violence epidemic in Missouri. “Gun Violence in Missouri: Seeking Solutions” will start at 12:30 p.m. and is co-hosted by the Kansas City Star. 

The event is a part of American Public Square’s series on gun violence. Denesha Snell, program director for American Public Square, said the organization’s goal with these events is to help people understand the root causes of gun violence. 

“With the first three programs, we’ve really talked about what was going on in Kansas City, the things that were happening in Springfield, as well as St. Louis,” Snell said. “That’s probably one of the biggest things is really just helping people understand that there is a gun violence issue and depending on where you are in the state it may look different.”

The event will feature panelists with a variety of expertise. One panelist will be Missouri Rep. Ashley Bland Manlove. Bland Manlove, who is from Kansas City, will help discuss state laws and policies surrounding gun control and gun violence. 

Another panelist is Dr. Marvia Jones, head of violence prevention and policy for the Kansas City Health Department. Snell said she thinks it is important for people to understand gun violence as a public health issue. 

American Public Square hopes to put the social determinants of health at the center of their conversation on gun violence. Social determinants of health are the different factors that make a community healthy.

These determinates include education, access to healthcare, discrimination, incarceration housing, economic stability and access to transportation. All of these factors impact the health of members of a community. 

Violence also makes an impact on the health of a community. In 2018, there were 249 arrests per every 100,000 adolescents for violent crimes. Kids who enter the justice system are more likely to struggle in school, deal with mental health issues and have problems with substance abuse.

“Something as simple as a high school diploma can help make for a healthy community,” Snell said.

American Public Square is working with the Kansas City Star on its gun violence initiative. Snell said the Kansas City Star recently received grants from the Missouri Foundation for Health and Report for America. They are using these grants to report on gun violence in Missouri and to uncover what gun violence looks like across the state.

The Kansas City Star’s gun violence investigation articles have been running for the past year. These articles have also been printed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Springfield Newsleader.  The goal is to both bring attention to the state of violent crime in Missouri and brainstorm practical solutions.

“They’re writing the articles, we’re putting in the programs to support those articles and to support that gun violence prevention,” Snell said. 

Recordings of American Public Square’s past programming on gun violence in Missouri can be found on their website. Registration for the upcoming event is free and also available on the American Public Square website.

The panel featured Kansas Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, Kansas Secretary of Health and the Environment Dr. Lee Norman, researcher and professor at the University of Kansas Dr. David Slusky, and president of the Bluford Healthcare Leadership Institute Dr. John Bluford. The discussion was moderated by William Jewell College’s Dr. Gary Armstrong.

American Public Square provided a program and a basic facts sheet to inform the audience. The panelists often referred to information provided on the fact sheet during the discussion. 

Among the points discussed were the differences between Medicaid and expanded Medicaid, the Kansas bill for Medicaid expansion and how it would be funded, and how those on Medicaid would be affected by the expansion.

Denning explained that in Kansas, funding for traditional Medicaid comes in a constantly changing ratio of federal and state contributions. At the time of the panel, 60 percent of Medicaid was funded by the federal government and 40 percent was funded by the state. This is revised periodically. 

Funding for Medicaid expansion is different. Ninety percent of funding for the expanded program would come from the federal government, with only 10 percent coming from the state.

Denning also explained the sources of funding for Medicaid within the state. Traditional Medicaid is funded mostly out of the state checking account. About 13 percent comes from a tax on HMO insurance. The Kansas Legislature, specifically Denning, is attempting to find sources of funding for the expansion that would require no further draw upon state checking account funds. This would include a tax or surcharge on hospitals and a greater HMO tax. 

Panelists mentioned that states have already lost millions of dollars that could have been put toward Medicaid and healthcare programs by not expanding. 

Bluford argued that the human element of Medicaid and expansion is often overlooked. Most of the people who are on Medicaid would rather not have to be, and it provides care for those who otherwise could not afford it. However, it can be difficult to find doctors who take Medicaid because the payout is below cost for the treatment and can often come in payments months after treatment happens. This is a problem that needs to be fixed. Medicaid expansion would help narrow the gap and address this. 

American Public Square at Jewell offers some unique opportunities for the William Jewell College community, but its goal of restoring civility to politics is deeply flawed. This is not to say that we need to make vulgarity the norm, nor am I saying that American Public Square isn’t doing good work. There is certainly value to providing forums where issues can be discussed rationally and where, to quote Dr. Alan Holiman, “we can talk about this, and not about you.” These sorts of forums can be very useful for education on pertinent issues and help people gain a better understanding of politics. 

The problem is that the goal of promoting civility in relation to politics is in and of itself woefully misguided. Civility politics fundamentally benefit the powerful, at the expense of the powerless, it emphasizes style and tone, over content and actions, and it overlooks the conflictual nature of politics.

Civility politics assumes that through respectful and rational dialogue we can establish consensus and negotiate a compromise. Agreeing to disagree is the highest form of politics. It is no surprise that support for civility politics is so profound in academia and the media. But politics is not simply discourse where we can agree to disagree. Politics is about power, and it is about people’s lives. Fundamentally a struggle between irreconcilable forces. Hostility is as much a feature of politics as stress is a feature of college. 

Ambassador Allan Katz, founder of American Public Square and a distinguished professor at Jewell, has said that “politics doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game,” but two contradictory groups cannot both win, and for the people impacted by political decisions, especially those without power, politics is, more often than not, a zero-sum game. Political decisions have very real, material impacts and often can mean life or death. Cuts to Medicaid will lead to preventable deaths. Gentrification will force poor people out of their homes. 

There is inherent violence to politics that civility politics chooses to ignore because civility is rooted in norms that reflect the existing order and ideological hegemony. Police violence, systemic poverty, wars for hegemony, union-busting and gentrification are normalized because they are done by or for the benefit of the existing order and the ruling class. 

Resisting injustice and challenging the existing order requires norms to be violated, and thus the ruling class has always used civility to delegitimize and marginalize social justice movements. Protests, strikes, direct action, civil disobedience and other confrontational methods of extra-parliamentary politics are chastised by pundits and politicians for being uncivil, however, they are often the only effective means of combating systemic violence. 

The terms of civility would have people who are marginalized, disadvantaged and oppressed accept the conditions imposed on them by the ruling class. A call for civility is, in effect, a call for the status quo. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was criticized in his time for being uncivil, famously said, “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” This will often require people to be disruptive, confrontation, and even disrespectful.

Civility is also used to mask the ruthlessness of policies enacted by the powerful. A key element of civility is a presumption of good faith, people are entitled to the assumption that they are acting sincerely and with the purest intentions. Racist policies from the war on drugs, to gentrification, to voter suppression, are often justified in a way that is seen as more “civil”, emphasizing ideas like law and order or economic development, and does not appeal to overt racism. Perhaps this was most poignantly illustrated by Republican strategist Lee Atwater in 1981, who stated: 

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N*****, n*****, n*****.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n*****’—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… ‘We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘N*****, n*****.’”

This emphasis on style and tone over content and action allows the powerful to escape scrutiny and for harmful policies, rooted in bad faith, to be enacted. Those who challenge such policies on the grounds that they are racist are stifled and countered by denials which appeal to the assumption of good faith.

This is not to say the answer is vulgarity, as previously stated it is often useful to engage in civil dialogue with people we disagree with and this can even be necessary. But civility politics is deeply problematic. 

Civility for its own sake is fundamentally at odds with the inherently hostile nature of politics, benefits the powerful at the expense of the powerless and values style over substance, allowing ruthlessness to escape scrutiny.