Jeremi and Zachary have a conversation with Gryffin Wilkens-Plumley about his work designing assemblies of independent citizen governance. They have an in-depth discussion of deliberative democracy, a practice that is about citizen’s individual participation, reasoning, and sense of duty to vote and make decisions in society, and how it could apply to our democracy today.
Jeremi sets the stage with some words by William James from 1897.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nGryffin Wilkens-Plumley is a senior at Yale University and a deliberative-democracy designer. He currently works as Project Manager and Design Lead for the Connecticut Citizens\u2019 Assembly initiative at the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities — an initiative to hold the first ever official State-level citizens\u2019 assembly in America. Gryffin’s work focuses on citizen governance, designing assemblies for independent citizen governance, and working with funders and elected officials to turn designs into reality.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeremi and Zachary have a conversation with Gryffin Wilkens-Plumley about his work designing assemblies of independent citizen governance. They have an in-depth discussion of deliberative democracy, a practice that is about citizen’s individual participation, reasoning, and sense of duty to vote and make decisions in society, and how it could apply to our democracy today. […]","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2025\/09\/2025-09-18_tid_master.mp3","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"36:31","filesize":"50.14M","filesize_raw":"52572234","date_recorded":"2025-09-18 15:48:55","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":""},"tags":[],"categories":[],"series":[2,891],"class_list":["post-3927","podcast","type-podcast","status-publish","series-this-is-democracy","series-default-podcast","entry"],"acf":{"related_episodes":"","hosts":[{"ID":301,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2019-01-15 11:25:23","post_date_gmt":"2019-01-15 17:25:23","post_content":"I am a child of the global transformations that re-made societies in the last century\u2013war, migration, nation-building, and mobility through higher education. All of my research, writing, and teaching seeks to explain these transformations\u2013their diverse origins, their contradictory contours, and their long-lasting effects. My scholarship is therefore an extended inquiry into the workings of power at local and international levels, and the interactions across these levels. Like other historians, I treat power as contingent, context-dependent, and often quite elusive. Like practitioners of politics, I view power as essential for any meaningful achievement, especially in the realms of social justice and democratization.\n\nMy hope is that my work will reach a broad and diverse audience of citizens. Scholarship cannot substitute for real-lived experience, but I believe it can enhance our contemporary understanding of the choices we confront in the allocation of our resources, the structuring of our communities, and the judgment of merit. In this framework, international, transnational, and global history should contribute to better thinking about current international, transnational, and global problems. I am a proponent of historical and political studies that are broad, compelling, creative, and, ultimately, useful. We should research with Monkish rigor, as we write (and lecture) with novelistic flair.\n\nResearch interests\nThe formation and spread of nation-states; the emergence of modern international relations; the connections between foreign policy and domestic politics; the rise of knowledge institutions as global actors.\n\nCourses taught\nInternational History since 1898; The Past and Future of Global Strategy; American Foreign Relations\n\nAwards, Honors\nRecognized as one of \"America's Top Young Innovators\" by Smithsonian Magazine; Class of 1955 Distinguished Teaching Award, University of Wisconsin","post_title":"Jeremi Suri","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"jeremi-suri","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2022-06-02 13:27:50","post_modified_gmt":"2022-06-02 18:27:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/?post_type=speaker&p=301","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":820,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2019-08-19 13:47:33","post_date_gmt":"2019-08-19 18:47:33","post_content":"\n
Zachary Suri is a host, co-producer, and poet-in-residence for This is Democracy.\u00a0Zachary is an undergraduate at Yale University, where he studies languages, history, and literature. He writes regularly for the Yale Daily News.\u00a0Zachary\u2019s poetry has been published by numerous publications, including\u00a0CNN.com<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Urbanitus.com<\/a>. He was the 2022-2023 Austin Youth Poet Laureate and a recipient of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Silver Key and AISD Trustees\u2019 Scholar Award. You can hear him discuss his poetry on\u00a0public radio<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","post_title":"Zachary Suri","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"zachary-suri","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-09-09 12:12:36","post_modified_gmt":"2025-09-09 17:12:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/?post_type=speaker&p=820","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"guests":[{"ID":3929,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2025-09-18 15:59:16","post_date_gmt":"2025-09-18 20:59:16","post_content":"\n
\nGryffin Wilkens-Plumley is a senior at Yale University and a deliberative-democracy designer. He currently works as Project Manager and Design Lead for the Connecticut Citizens\u2019 Assembly initiative at the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities -- an initiative to hold the first ever official State-level citizens\u2019 assembly in America. Gryffin's work focuses on citizen governance, designing assemblies for independent citizen governance, and working with funders and elected officials to turn designs into reality.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","post_title":"Gryffin Wilkens-Plumley","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"gryffin-wilkens-plumley","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-09-18 15:59:16","post_modified_gmt":"2025-09-18 20:59:16","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/?post_type=speaker&p=3929","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"transcript":""},"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2021\/03\/This-Is-Democracy-Logo-TPN-Update-2021.png","download_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/podcast-download\/3927\/this-is-democracy-episode-307-deliberative-democracy.mp3","player_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/podcast-player\/3927\/this-is-democracy-episode-307-deliberative-democracy.mp3","audio_player":"