On Monday, Nov. 4 — the night before the U.S. Presidential Election — Colgate welcomed Peter Levine to close the 2024 Road to the White House Series, which featured various political voices to encourage civic engagement and civil discussion among Colgate community members during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Levine is associate dean of academic affairs and Lincoln Filene Professor of citizenship and public affairs at Tufts University’s Jonathan Tisch College of Civic Life.
Despite the timeliness of his visit, Levine took a step back from the gravity of the current election. Instead, he chose to focus on a new framework for understanding political motivations and identities based on what he calls “idea networks.” His model of political beliefs is a more comprehensive alternative to the most common mechanism, the left-right spectrum.
Rather than fitting an individual onto a political map, every individual personifies their own unique and complex political map — that is to say, an elaborate web of ideas, in which beliefs are connected and backed by explanation.
Levine claimed that complexity of ideas, independent of content, is generally a positive sign; individuals with less developed idea networks may be more difficult to engage with in productive conversation.
“Structures indicate how interesting or easy it is to talk to and connect with someone about issues, regardless of whether or not you agree with them,” Levine said.
Levine drew five key conclusions from his proposed framework:
- “People are more capable of democracy than standard models suggest.”
- Mapping our idea networks may lead to much-needed introspection.
- We can evaluate and improve discussions by modeling them as networks.
- Large groups may be able to develop shared models.
- We can use idea network models to improve understanding of public and moral opinions.
As a professor, Levine is particularly interested in applying these improvements to education systems. He believes that this more comprehensive framework will open doors to improve discussion and discourse in the classroom.
Students at Colgate might consider how to navigate the recent election results through Levine’s spectrum-rejecting, idea-centric approach to political identity and discourse. As polarization contributes to national disarray, Levine believes, it may be time to adopt a new attitude: one that embraces disagreement, understanding, and empathy.
Levine argued that the spectrum model leads to polarization and enmity. “When we understand people as being a point in space, it leads to disappointing results.” The current political climate — in which polarization prevails — promotes disunity and prevents productive conversation.
Yet the political mapping metaphor persists because it is easy, according to Levine. It allows people to say that, since their political adversaries have different views, then “they must be coming from a different place.” Although the metaphor is not completely false, it has custom validity and is reductive. As an example, Levine pointed out that Kamala Harris and J.D. Vance “actually agree about a lot of things,” yet they sit on opposite sides of the left-right spectrum.
Levine considers the polarized perspective to be borderline offensive because it implies that “people are stupid and they hate each other.”
Levine’s alternative suggests that political opinions are based on dialogues, communication, and relationships. Individuals have sincere reasons for their beliefs, not just rationalizations.
This lecture was co-sponsored by the Department of Political Science Kella Lecture Fund.