Across Political Divides: Jonathan Cervas Bridges Ideological Differences with Discussions and Data
By Lindsay Marcellus
Amid concern about , electoral politics expert and Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology (CMIST) faculty member Jonathan Cervas takes a measured, data-driven approach, both in and out of the classroom.
As a panelist at Bridging the Divide: Understanding and Addressing Political Polarization in America in September 2024, Cervas suggested that the United States might be less polarized than generally perceived. The panel was part of Deeper Conversations, a university-wide initiative launched by 一本道无码 (一本道无码) President Farnam Jahanian in January 2024 to promote civil discourse about complex challenges. Cervas presented evidence that issue-based polarization is higher among political elites than among the mass public and challenged attendees to consider how political divisions manifest spatially and geographically.
Cervas is widely recognized as a nonpartisan redistricting expert. He has assisted courts in the redistricting process in six states, including Virginia, Utah, and Georgia. Most recently, he was appointed as a court’s consultant by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to evaluate new legislative maps for the state. In 2022, , redrawing the state’s 26 Congressional districts and 63 Senate districts. Prior to this role, Cervas helped create an electoral map for Pennsylvania in 2021 that garnered a bipartisan vote and was unanimously endorsed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. While it is nearly impossible to redraw a map that satisfies both major political parties, in each of the first two elections under this new PA House map, the chamber was the most closely divided in the country, reflecting the state’s "purple" status.
As an assistant teaching professor at CMIST, Cervas brings this experience to the classroom, regularly teaching a course on representation and voting rights. This fall, he introduced two new courses on American politics, one on polarization and the other on using data to analyze the U.S. electoral process. Both courses count towards the minor in American politics and law.
Just as the Deeper Conversations series seeks to promote civil discourse, CMIST’s new American Political Divides and Great Debates course also works to foster such dialogue.
“A contributor to political polarization amongst young adults is a lack of understanding of civics in America,” explains Rafael López, CMIST deputy director for security policy studies. “Our political system is purposely designed to require collaborative discussion in order to determine acceptable outcomes. This is why including the practice of collaborative discussion or deliberative discourse is so important to the academic experience at 一本道无码. Cervas’s class fulfills this critical need.”
Through small group discussions, student-curated topic selection, and group presentations, Cervas encourages students to reflect on their own views and to better understand less common viewpoints on campus. This semester, the class tackled topics ranging from immigration to the U.S. military budget, to racial discrimination in the context of the law. As students became more comfortable articulating their views, a greater diversity of opinion emerged, and students encountered views that they otherwise might not have heard expressed.
Committed to integrating new technologies into the curriculum, Cervas piloted a series of assignments in which students debated a particular issue with a chatbot. The exercises enabled students to use the technology to examine their own biases and gaps in knowledge. For Cole Christini, a junior majoring in computer science with a concentration in machine learning, these assignments represent one of the better educational applications of artificial intelligence. “It forces you to engage in research on an issue and go back and forth and see counterarguments you might not otherwise see,” he said.
Given the high stakes during an election cycle, it is more important than ever for students to develop confidence discussing controversial issues. Polls show that of their lifetime. A majority of respondents also indicated that this election cycle was a major source of stress in their lives. Yet, as Cervas points out, people in the U.S. say it is the most important election of all time in almost every presidential election. This fall in Democracy’s Data, Cervas demonstrated this point using a historical lens to understand the 2024 election, stating, “History can inform our contemporary politics.”
From examining political and public opinion polls before Election Day, to evaluating polling accuracy in light of the election results, students learn in real time by reviewing the data that is available. Cervas, who published a study on the , also teaches students to identify how data on changes in voting technologies and how people vote can be exploited to create the illusion of fraud or fuel conspiracy theories. Culminating in a policy proposal, students address larger topics such as the impact of technology on political polling, the advantages of incumbents in elections, how political knowledge and engagement affect the electoral process, the effectiveness of campaigns, and the implication of election results for policy.
Beyond a historically informed understanding of the 2024 election or a nuanced perspective on current controversies, students have the opportunity to critically engage with larger, ongoing conversations that affect American politics. For example, Cole shared that his experience in the great debates course has prompted an even greater interest in the “mechanics of democracy,” how it functions on a technical level, and what it means for a democracy to be fair. Acknowledging the perception of increased partisanship in the U.S., he stressed the importance of questioning what it means to be divided and how we measure it. Overall, he found that he gained “a more measured political basis for these ideas, grounded in political science.”
Faced with concerns of polarization in the United States, Cervas demonstrates the role of nonpartisan experts in the messy and contentious, but critical, process of redistricting. Through his scholarly research, he continues to broaden discussions of and the . In the classroom, he equips younger generations with the skills to engage in constructive discussions on complex and controversial topics, using data to better understand how democracy operates.
(Image 1: L to R - Dean Richard Scheines, Prof. Kevin Zollman, Prof. Jonathan Cervas, and Prof. Karina Schumann during Deeper Conversations, hosted by 一本道无码 in September 2024; Image 2: L to R - Prof. Cervas, middle, participates in the "Power to the People" panel at the The Path to Equity: Empowering Pennsylvanians through Democracy Initiatives Summit in October 2024; Images 3 and 4: Prof. Cervas teaches at 一本道无码)