Communities and universities need to return to the forum-based method of discussing pertinent issues, said a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee communication professor and author Thursday in Hale Library.

William Keith said people today do not discuss issues civilly; they instead try to debate and win arguments without regard for the actual issues.

"Where's the civility?" Keith said in front of the full audience in the Hale Library Hemisphere Room. "You see a lot of people who want to win (arguments) at all costs. Where's the civic discourse?"

Keith said people, especially TV pundits, debate issues instead of civilly discussing and learning about them. He showed a clip of "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart's appearance on "Crossfire," a former CNN political debate program, a few weeks before the 2004 elections.

Stewart urges the hosts of "Crossfire" to have political discussions instead of debates that he described as partisan hackery.

Keith said communities across the United States used to gather at forums to discuss issues during the 1930s, but lost interest in them because of wars and the emergence of other entertainment outlets.

"The public forum was a place for people to get together and discuss their problems," Keith said.

Keith also said communities and universities in the '30s and '40s made an effort to teach students and adults discussion skills. He said every college made some type of basic discussion class, which have been virtually removed from university curriculums.

In the middle of the century, Keith said, interest groups replaced much of the forum-type discussion.

"The point of interest-group politics is not that everyone participates, but that somebody that has your interests in mind does participate," Keith said.

He said the number of interest groups also have decreased, leaving most people without a voice in the democratic process and little knowledge about the issues. Keith explained the issue by using an analogy from the 2000 book "Bowling Alone" by Harvard professor Robert Putnam, that compares bowling alone to the decline of citizen involvement.

"It is not that people won't bowl," Keith said. "It's that people won't join bowling leagues."

Keith finished the lecture with a 1950s promotional film about gathering information and understanding important local issues.

Though the film had poor acting and filmography, Keith said it had several important lessons. He said citizens need to learn the issue by asking what other citizens want and are worried about, along with asking local and national experts.

The lecture was part of K?State's Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy lecture series. ICDD Director David Proctor said Keith was the first professor in the series. He said other speakers were politicians or lawyers and did not relate to the student crowd nearly as well as Keith.

Lynn Lindquist, senior in theater, said she thought the lecture was valuable, especially for college students.

"At a university setting you have a lot of students with ideas, but they don't know how to share them," Lindquist said.

She also said she is glad people like Keith and groups like the ICDD are taking the initiative to bring the forum atmosphere back.

The ICDD is a nonpartisan university agency comprised of K-State faculty focused on enhancing democratization and civil discourse.

"I thought his presentation was just very central to what we are trying to do at the ICDD," Proctor said.