[This website is under construction.....]

At a time when America faces enormous challenges at home and dangers abroad, our ability to work together, trust each other, and compromise for the common good  is declining. Surveys show that Americans are not moving further apart in their attitudes about specific policy issues. Instead our leaders, our political parties, and our media outlets are becoming more polarized, strident, and moralistic (i.e., excessively concerned with morality and certain of their own virtue). When political opponents are demonized rather than debated, compromise and cooperation become moral failings and political actors begin to believe that their ends justify the use of any means. The disturbing image that many Americans have is that their leaders are more interested in fighting each other and scoring political points than in steering the ship of state.

This website is a collaborative effort launched at a bipartisan interdisciplinary workshop on "moralistic politics" held at Princeton University on May 19, 2007. Our goal is to promote "civil politics," by which we mean politics in which power and ideas are hotly contested but opponents are respected as fellow citizens who are assumed to be sincere in their beliefs. We hope to publicize the lastest research in moral psychology and political science to help Americans understand why people are so prone to demonize others and form hostile, self-righteous coalitions. If you agree with us that America needs more civil politics, we urge you to sign the pledge, learn more about moral and political psychology on our resources page, and then take further action to model and promote civil politics in your own community.

Who we are:

This website is run by Jonathan Haidt, at the University of Virginia

Advisory committee:

James Ault, documentary filmmaker
David Pizarro, Dept. of Psychology, Cornell University
Richard Redding, Villanova Law School

[names to follow]