Back in November 2017, I was invited to a national convening titled Civil Discourse in a Fractured Age. The invitation promised an urgent conversation about how to teach young people to engage in meaningful, civil dialogue in a time of growing polarization. The speakers? A who’s-who of Ivy League professors, political operatives, best-selling authors, and think tank fellows. The setting? A beautiful conference space filled with polished panels and curated coffee breaks.
At the time, I was leading a youth arts organization grounded in civil and civic discourse. We worked with young people from across the country—those pushed to the margins, rich with story and resilience—supporting them to develop and publicly present their voices, to explore identity, to grapple with systems, to write and perform their experiential knowledge, and to hope to define - if not shape - the world around them. It was real work, grounded in relationships and rigor. You couldn’t phone it in from a podium.
Now, the title of the convening may have gestured toward the right diagnosis—yes, it was a fractured age—but it treated that fracturing as a neutral phenomenon. As if it just happened. As if it wasn’t the result of deliberate rhetoric and policy aimed at silencing, dividing, and dehumanizing. The truth is, someone did the fracturing, including several of those invited to speak. Through campaigns that labeled dissent as disloyalty. Through media ecosystems built on outrage and erasure. Through decades of disinvestment from communities and institutions meant to serve the public.
But even with that context, the content of the convening was disconnected from reality. The panels were dominated by elite voices musing about the decline of “polite conversation” and how to model “respectful disagreement” for youth. What they failed to see—or refused to reckon with—was that the young people we worked with were already navigating far more complicated conversations every single day. About justice, identity, power, survival. Not hypothetically. Not theoretically. But in their schools, families, stages, and neighborhoods.
And the people supporting that work—youth workers, organizers, artists, administrators, educators—were in the room. But not on the stage.
This is the familiar pattern.
Too often, we identify the right conversation—about justice, belonging, democracy, equity—but elevate too narrow a slice of expertise to lead it. We value proximity to power, not proximity to community. We reward credentials, not lived experience. We treat knowledge as something that flows from a university press or a policy memo, not from the insights forged through a decade of building trust in overlooked neighborhoods or creating cultural programming in forgotten corners of our media landscape.
This is not an indictment of everyone in philanthropy or of academia. In fact, many program officers (and even foundation leaders) are questioning the systems they operate in. They are asking better questions, taking real risks, and working with humility to shift how decisions are made. That work matters.
But even as that change is underway, we still need to widen the lens. We need to better understand and value the expertise that exists outside of foundation walls—outside of networks, alma maters, and familiar reference points.
Because the stakes are too high for us to rely on an echo chamber of good intentions, or continue to have funder-only convenings.
Take media and public discourse as one example. In this moment of political polarization, declining local news, and rampant misinformation, many funders are turning their attention toward journalism and narrative strategy. That’s a good thing. But in many of the rooms where decisions are being made—about where to invest, who to support, and what counts as impact—I fear the expertise being consulted is overwhelmingly from national outlets, large digital media firms, or NY and D.C.-based policy organizations. I’m worried that once again, the solutions being elevated will reflect their realities, their reach, and their metrics. And those of us with a different kind of expertise will forever be in the audience, asked to watch but not participate.
Meanwhile, places like KALW Public Media—a community-rooted public radio station in San Francisco—are training new journalists, producing original stories, and building durable infrastructure for civic (and civil) discourse at the local level. We are working with incarcerated storytellers, engaging teenagers and new journalists who never went to journalism school but are committed to helping Bay Area communities hear themselves in the media they consume. And yes, it comes from a theory of change, but it reflects real change, happening in real time. And our theory of change was informed first and foremost by the everyday work we do and the communities the people doing the work come from.
So who gets to define the narrative? Who gets to drive the strategy? And what might be possible if philanthropy treated that kind of community-rooted, lived-in, long-view expertise as central rather than peripheral?
And here we are again, in the same (albeit worse) fractured time. But this moment demands more than civility. It demands clarity, courage, and a recalibration of what—and who—we consider expert.
We’re not failing because the people in charge are bad or the dominant narrative is inherently evil. We’re failing because the story is incomplete. The perspective is too narrow. The circle of trusted voices is too small.
Because too often we confuse visibility with value. But some of the most transformative work happens in places philanthropy hasn’t yet learned to look.
So here is my challenge to the experts who have access to resource and opportunity right now:
Expand your definition of expertise. Widen the circle. Listen harder. Invest deeper.
Not just in new ideas, but in the people who’ve been doing the work—quietly, persistently, and with brilliance—for decades.
You may find that the answers you’re seeking have been there all along.
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This piece was brought to you by KALW Speaks, a monthly series of essays from KALW staff and contributors, exploring the ideas that drive our work. Each of these essays reflect our commitment to innovation and invites you into a deeper conversation about the future of public media.
Learn more: From A Whisper To A Roar.
