About the Public Deliberation Initiative (PDI)

The Public Deliberation Initiative (PDI) seeks to engage students, staff, faculty, and community members in constructive dialogue and deliberation that addresses important global and local issues and offers new perspectives for participants. Deliberation involves the best parts of dialogue (conversational) and debate (argument) to offer an experience where participants can learn from one another by talking through different perspectives and approaches to local and global issues and working together to come up with community action steps.

Some Goals of the Public Deliberation Initiative include: 

• Enhancing student engagement and retention, academic research and development, as well as community relations and outreach 
• Improving the quality of public discussion and public participation concerning important institutional, local, and national issues 
• Encouraging sustained interest and advocacy from students, faculty, and community members 

PDI Resources 

Baylor PDI has collaborated with the Kettering Foundation and other national partners to produce several resources for clear and guided deliberation. Please use the resources below to host your own Public Deliberation Initiative forum or use them as a reference to create a guide for an issue your community is experiencing. 

• Ground Rules. These ground rules may be shared with participants before a discussion to establish the intended atmosphere for an open and respectful deliberative process. 
• Placemats. PDI events are guided by “placemats” that lay out the three approaches to an issue side-by-side. Note: We are in the process of updating our placemats which will soon be available below. Here you'll find placemats about issues that can often divide communities. By clicking on the links below the title (once available), you'll be able to download the placemat (and issue guide when available) and use it to host a deliberative forum within your own community.  
• Training. If you are interested in hosting a community forum, we strongly recommend going through our facilitation training. Please email intercultural@baylor.edu if you have any questions about these resources, how to use them, or how to get trained.