More than 150 students, academics, and state and local government practitioners recently gathered at UMass Amherst and online to discuss the past, present and future of the New England Town Meeting, a tradition dating back to the 1600s.

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The Department of Political Science hosted Deliberation and Division: Making Change at the New England Town Meeting, a symposium focusing on the history and contemporary issues surrounding local community governance, on March 11 in Old Chapel.

Chancellor Javier Reyes opened the event with remarks about local democracy and the role of higher education working for the common good. Jane Mansbridge, emerita professor of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, delivered the keynote speech, encouraging a dialogue between academics and practitioners, while Mark DiSalvo of the Massachusetts Moderators Association led case studies on how to face difficult deliberative situations. 

A panel on town meeting history included scholars from the fields of history, political science and indigenous studies, as well as public historians from Revolution 250 and practitioners who draw upon history in their work.

On the state of the contemporary town meeting, experts from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont shared how local direct democracy works in each of their states and offered creative strategies to engage the public; the event was likely the first time in recent memory that representatives of each state practicing town meeting came together to discuss its operation.

Looking to the future, scholars who specialize in legal studies, digitization, public administration, public policy and political science guided the audience through contemporary challenges and possibilities for the town meeting.

The symposium sparked new collaborations, future research plans and improvements in practice. The organizing team—Sawyer Rogers, a doctoral student in political science at UMass Amherst and the project’s principal investigator, along with Rebecca Townsend and Daniel Santos—has already begun advancing these efforts with support from a growing network of symposium participants.

The event was supported by UMass Amherst’s Community, Democracy, and Dialogue (CDD) initiative, which was established to promote dialogue, academic inquiry and respect for difference in addressing challenging topics.

More information about the symposium is available on the event website or by contacting Sawyer Rogers at [email protected].