In recent years, deliberation has attracted the interest of political theorists, rhetorical scholars, policy advocates, linguists, and ethicists, making its examination a truly multidisciplinary affair. Outside the university, deliberation and its allied practices have become the focus of citizen groups, non-profit organizations, and community activists. Deliberation has also been of interest to educators who sponsor disagreement and debate in their classrooms both as a way to promote reasoned critical exchange and to teach writing and argument as core academic and civic practices.

While different scholars and practitioners conceive deliberation differently, this website seeks to offer a synthesis of various views and approaches and to highlight both shared features and key differences.

As an alternative to crossfire style, “winner take all,” “pro-con” debate, deliberation offers a framework for understanding and engaging in reasoned argument as an ethical, civic, and academic practice. It treats vigorous and robust disagreement as a persistent and productive feature of intellectual life and democratic participation.

Deliberation emphasizes:

•	A commitment to dialogue in the face of important differences and disagreements;
•	A willingness to negotiate over time, to accept ambiguity, and to acknowledge both partial agreements and incommensurable beliefs and positions;
•	A commitment to clarifying the underlying assumptions that shape judgments;
•	A willingness to explore the unanticipated consequences both of one’s own positions and those of others;
•	An effort to offer mutually justifiable or recognizable reasons;
•	A commitment to reciprocity and an ethos of accountability;
•	A preference for participatory and inclusive approaches to political decision-making;
•	An ethic of civility in interpersonal interactions, even in the face of heated and passionate disagreement.

Over the past five years, we have been engaged in a project on “Moral Deliberation, Disagreement, and Community,” a multidisciplinary effort at Duke University funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The project’s primary goal was to develop new models for teaching undergraduates in first-year writing courses the complex arts of argument and disagreement. Our website builds on this work and seeks to provide resources for scholars, teachers, students, and citizens interested in exploring and practicing deliberation.

For more information about the history of our project, click here.