Book Review| June 01 2018 Democracy, Deliberation, and Education Democracy, Deliberation, and Education. By Robert Asen. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015; pp. ix + 233. $34.95 paper. Mark Hlavacik Mark Hlavacik University of North Texas Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2018) 21 (2): 365–368. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.21.2.0365 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Mark Hlavacik; Democracy, Deliberation, and Education. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 June 2018; 21 (2): 365–368. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.21.2.0365 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2018 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract This essay continues the ongoing discussion Robert Terrill began and Joshua Reeves and Matthew May joined regarding the moral, philosophical, and rhetorical choices made in Barack Obama’s 2009 Nobel lecture. We argue that Obama’s address is best understood as an articulation of Reinhold Niebuhr’s rhetoric of Christian Realism—Obama wrote the lecture himself and prepared for it by studying the influential theologian’s works. Importantly, Obama is not the first rhetor to use the moral and political thought of Niebuhr to situate his or her public address; the list includes Martin Luther King Jr., Saul Alinsky, Jimmy Carter, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton. Yet Niebuhr’s vocabulary remains largely unstudied by public address scholars and rhetorical theorists. We argue that criticizing the moral and political judgments made in Obama’s address by the Niebuhrian standards the president sets for it provides an alternative method by which to evaluate the speech’s successes and failures. In so doing, we also provide the field of public address with its first account of the rhetorical possibilities and limitations of Reinhold Niebuhr’s work, specifically his vision of a “spiritualized-technician”—a rhetor who speaks the language of realism, idealism, and irony, to expand an audience’s moral imagination.

Abstract This essay recovers the emergence of teachers’ union rhetoric through an analysis of Margaret Haley’s address to the National Education Association convention of 1904. Entitled "Why Teachers Should Organize," Haley’s speech was the first call for a national effort to unionize U.S. classroom teachers. Promising not just material but also professional advancement, Haley broke new rhetorical ground in St. Louis by advocating unionism as a professional duty. Through a close reading of her argumentation, I contend that Haley positioned democracy at the center of teachers’ union rhetoric. To make unionism appealing for her audience of schoolteachers and administrators, Haley paired the democratic goals of progressivism with the democratic potential of labor. Appealing to the commitment to democracy shared by educators, progressives, and labor activists, Haley’s speech was the first to outline the union rhetoric that would transform public education over the course of the twentieth century.