Emeritus Teaching Professor of Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University
Robert Cavalier
Robert Cavalier, PhD is a member of Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Ethics and Policy and Director of the Program for Deliberative Democracy, which won a 2008 Good Government Award from the Pittsburgh League of Women Voters. He is author of Democracy for Beginners (For Beginners LLC, 2009) and Editor of Approaching Deliberative Democracy: Theory and Practice (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2011). In 2013 he co-authored the Pittsburgh Civic Health Index for the National Conference on Citizenship. In 2014 he worked with The Art of Democracy and the City of Pittsburgh on the selection process for the new Chief of Police. In 2015 this work continued on a number of ‘public comment’ processes including the 2016 Budget and issues relating to the Route 51 Corridor.
Dr. Cavalier has also given workshops on Deliberative Democracy to visitors from Cuba and is a contributor to INDENTIDADES, a publication of the Plataforma de Integracion Cubana. He serves on their Advisory Board and has been involved in supporting the development of over 500 ‘constitutional roundtables’ in private homes across the island.
Recent Publications
Handbook on Deliberative Community Forums. City of Pittsburgh. Fall 2016.
How Voting Theory and Survey Design Relate to Deliberative Democracy (English and Spanish). IDENTIDADES. Spring 2016.
Pittsburgh Goes to Cuba. Op Ed. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette December 2014, reproduced in Spanish in IDENTIDADES Spring 2015.
From Constitutional Tables to a Constitutional Convention (English and Spanish). IDENTIDADES. Spring 2015.
The Community Speaks: Understanding Ethical Values in Allocation of Scarce Lifesaving Resources During Disasters. Annals of the American Thoracic Society 11(5).
The Pittsburgh Civic Health Index. 2013. (With David Miller)