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set of skills essential for democracy‐building and as an activity that is fundamentally politically‐

oriented. Second, the practice of civic engagement on campuses is as multi‐form and disparate as

its definition. Even among those campuses engaging in service‐ learning, this model can have

various degrees of intensity, involvement within community, interaction with peers and

community members, and depths of reflection. Third, empirical evidence of the effects of these

practices is largely confined to service‐learning experiences. Aristotle believed “that man is by

nature a political animal.” John Dewey said “the purpose of education [is] to create, in our students

and in ourselves, the capacity for associative living.” The challenge for higher education is how

best to educate students to attain some measure of sensibility for both – the political and the

communal – natures of democratic life. In the methodology section, I describe how WISR can

take a leadership role in this regard by using Community Conversations as a tool for engagement.

In “The Socratic Citizen”, Adolf G. Gundersen addresses leadership in a new way, by

recasting Socrates as a model for the democratic citizen. Gundersen asserts that political

deliberation is best thought of as a two-person affair, or a dyad. He proposes this dyadic theory as

an intriguing alternative to the present American system, where interest groups define the debate

and the average citizen is reduced to simply agreeing or disagreeing with these manufactured

positions. A powerful reclamation of everyday conversation as an integral form of political

discourse, The Socratic Citizen is an original contribution to political philosophy.

Gunderson’s (2000) theory of democracy from the Socratic viewpoint represented an

attempt to reconcile reason and democracy by “combining a theory of rational political process—

dyadic deliberation—with a theory of rational political outcomes –substantive political rationality”

(p. 278). When you define democratic rationality or reason, and dyadic dialogue using a relational

approach, deliberation on this level becomes “a combination of resolve and thoughtful

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