Reflecting on Civic Learning Week (CLW), an annual event hosted by iCivics highlighting the importance of civic education in sustaining and strengthening constitutional democracy in the United States. Cecily Mooney, a 2024-25 marketing and communications intern with the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, sat down with two of the 2024-25 Government Ethics Fellows to talk about how their civic experiences, ethics, and educational opportunities have shaped their civic interest and involvement.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Cecily Mooney: In what ways does ethics shape your approach to civic engagement?
Christian Barnard: Ethics is the framework that I always work in. It's the base in how I assess situations, especially in my fellowship. My research explores alternative electoral procedures and the benefits of ranked-choice voting. I'm having to assess a lot of factors based on ethical implications and ethical incentives. One of the things I've found alongside it is how it changes campaign behavior in a way that seems more ethical at least to constituents and voters. That's very much like a basis of how I think, at least civically, it's efficacy first and then effectiveness.
Bailey Black: For me, ethics and civic engagement are very closely linked. I think about it as I'm a Political Science major and an Economics major. In those two majors, I feel like I get two different perspectives. Economics focuses on efficiency—evaluating whether benefits outweigh costs. But in political science, there is philosophy and ethics. Decisions are much more complex. Especially when you're talking about civics, and you're talking about government as something that's supposed to represent and serve everyone. Being able to come at it from an ethical framework where you're not just talking about pure benefits and costs, but a more nuanced approach shows the importance of government. It is really crucial to appreciate how important all these organizations are.
Ainsley Zapata: I think a lot more about the ways in which the work I do affects people. Are we working with care for all in mind? With justice in mind? With the common good in mind? There are so many different ways that we can think about ethics in our work, and sometimes it can be exhausting but it can also help us to think of solutions and approach conversations in the best way possible.
Mooney: What is your experience with civic learning, whether in high school or at Santa Clara? How have those experiences inspired your major, internships, fellowship focus, or career?
Barnard: Regarding previous civic learning, it was limited before Santa Clara. I wasn't someone that was gung-ho for politics because I saw it as polarizing and as a way that people vilified each other. I was dissuaded by the ethics of politics pretty starkly until I started learning that institutions are what frame people's benefits or behaviors. If you have the incentives to act a certain way, you likely will. Now, I have taken that approach of making civic learning more accessible. What needs to be changed in order to make this easier for the average constituent? Because a lot of the time, the average constituent and voter are not going to be as interested in this as me or Bailey or anyone. You'd be surprised as to how many people do not watch the news! How do we make it accessible? How do we make civic learning accessible beyond the classroom as well? Because in order to stay educated, it's more than just going to class and taking notes. You have to stay up to date on what's currently in the news, and what is currently happening.
Mooney: Could you point to any experiences that you've had that really inspired you to get into government or politics?
Barnard: Absolutely, I wouldn't say it's exactly one event, but finding what worked for me. I'm someone who's visually stimulated by maps, I love maps. And by finding mediums that used maps to convey information geopolitically and domestically, I was immediately engaged. If this works for me, what works for someone else?
Black: Getting people interested in civics is like any education—you have to show why it matters to their lives. It’s easy to learn about civics in a generic way, but that does not always draw people in. So I think about the times that that really got me into it. I took a constitutional law class in high school as a primer to the Supreme Court and how constitutional law is made. I can also point to the classes I've taken at Santa Clara in political philosophy, law, and policy-making. In those contexts, I felt like I was understanding civics. I wasn’t just getting an understanding of how the government works, but also why it works and why it's set up the way it is. I think that why is really crucial as having an understanding why something is the way it is. Part of the reason I worry that people aren't as interested in civics or kind of cynical about the government is that they don't understand why things are happening the way they are. You need to show people the way of the government. And so one of my favorite books we read in this class was Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, which is dense and super philosophical, but it shows the direct throughlines from 17th-century thought to our modern government. Reading it makes you understand, wow, the way we do this is meaningful.
Zapata: Watching The West Wing with my family during lockdown. I know it sounds cheesy, but it showed me what a caring government could look like. It was everyday public servants just trying to make the world better for the people around them. That’s always been my approach to public service: doing what you can everyday to make the world just a little bit better for future generations.
Mooney: Has your government ethics fellowship changed the way you think about government and civic responsibility?
Black: My research topic that I'm working on is presidential immunity. I'm specifically focusing on the Supreme Court's decision in Trump vs the United States last year. What I do in my research is look at how we apply ethics to the idea of Presidential immunity. Every law professional who does anything on constitutional law has looked at it from a legal and historical background. The Supreme Court is very good at looking at history and they're good at analyzing law, but I think ethics is an angle they have not interpreted. It's important to look at it as, what is going to affect people. What are the ethics behind those kinds of decisions? It’s something I want to focus on in my research. And then, as far as the internship placement goes, I'm going to be working with the Santa Clara County DA's office in spring, so it hasn't started yet. This will be very interesting from an ethical standpoint because prosecutors make critical decisions about charges and sentencing, making ethics central to criminal justice. If we want real change in the system, it has to start at these offices.
Barnard: My research is in alternative voting methods, particularly a case study on why Colorado's statewide ballot measure to institute ranked choice voting statewide failed. I am also placed in my fellowship that is having me assess rank choice voting for the City of Santa Clara. The more that I work on this, the more I realize that everything is down to institutions, and a potential change in the way we elect people, potentially in a more fair way, is a partisan divide. Everything is politicized. There is no decision that I'm learning that is made on the government scale, even bureaucratically, that isn't influenced by partisan politics. For me, that's a little bit depressing, I'm incredibly exhausted by two-party politics, and to see everything along that partisan split makes it a little bit difficult. Maybe that affects my own engagement or my own hopefulness. But at the same time it's showing me that if you want to be engaged, you kind of have to have an opinion on the parties.
Black: I'll add to my answer, that my research is on the Trump vs U.S. Presidential immunity case. And if you look at it, it is a 6-3 decision. All the Republican-appointed justices voted to uphold this broad immunity and all the Democratic-appointed justices chose not to. It's very easy to look at that and say, clearly their political party is part of the decision. It's this idea of politics and promoting the interests of people in your party that is a problem. I think from an ethical perspective, the court really needs to be able to try their best to draw a line between these 2 things. So for me, I think as far as looking at the case, I think, my thought process has changed, especially when thinking of the efficacies of the Supreme Court. It is inherently a political entity, in some ways, but also unlike the other branches of government, it needs to try to be more than that.
Zapata: I think about it specifically from what we would call the “common good lense”, where you look at something based on the good it would do for the entire community. I think about that a lot when I approach the work that I do. I think that this is one of the most important things that a public servant can do is to think about the common good of the community as a whole. You can’t please everyone, and that’s ok. What matters is that you think about what we can do for the community as a whole to make it better for everyone.
Mooney: My last question is, what advice would you give to students who want to be more engaged in civic life?
Barnard: I would say, find an issue that interests you. Find one cause that you're passionate about rather than trying to take on politics as a whole, and being like I'm going to be the next one to save America. Find something that you can act on effectively, even if it is local, because local is typically where ideology and ideas disseminate from, it's our laboratories for democracy, if you still believe in that.
Zapata: Start small! Engaging in civic life doesn’t always have to mean working for a congressman or a senator, it can be volunteering to phone bank or knock on doors for a small campaign. Anything that you do to make a difference in your community counts!
Black: The government is very unique in that it is one of the only organizations in our society that is responsible for everyone. It isn't responsible for certain groups or isn't just looking out for the interest of single persons. It's a little bit idealistic, I'll admit, but the ideal government is supposed to be a place that serves everyone's rights. And so it's unique in that way.
There are a lot of difficult problems that will only get solved through that sense of we're going to try to serve the interest of the common good. We have some sort of higher purpose here. We don't always do a great job of it. I mean, the government is flawed. It is important for people to see that the government, ideally, works towards the common good and rights of everyone. This is one of the ways we can make a difference on things that affect us.
Again, like Christian was saying, I think the best place to start on that is, at the local level. People say all politics are local and there's truth to that. The way you can most directly make an impact on the things you care about is by engaging at the local level. It's not a high bar of entry, they want people to be involved. If you're passionate about something, recognize that that's how you can make a difference. You can make positive changes in things you care about, you have that power.
Cecily Mooney ’25 marketing major and marketing and communications intern at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, contributed to this story.
