This annual publication serves as a forum for new ideas and dialogue between scholars and the larger public. Essays explore ways that students, administrators, and faculty can initiate and sustain an ongoing conversation about the public life they share. Following a Foreword by Deborah Witte, this issue of the "Higher Education Exchange" presents the following reports: (1) Inside the Graduate School Mess: An Interview (Leonard Cassuto); (2) Assumptions, Variables, and Ignorance (David Brown); (3) Deliberation and Institutional Political Cultures: A Brazilian Perspective (Telma Gimenez); (4) An Island of Deliberation in an Authoritarian Environment: The Case of Russia (Denis V. Makarov); (5) Publicly Engaged Scholars: Next-Generation Engagement and the Future of Higher Education (Etana Jacobi); and (6) Afterword: Citizens in a Global Society (David Mathews). A list of contributors is included.