The South has come a long way in the 60 years since President Roosevelt’s National Emergency Council reported that even the richest Southern state was poorer than the poorest non-Southern state. The region has come a long way, too, from the one-party, whites-only, out-of-the mainstream politics of the first half of this century.

In its weakness, the South was studied for its distinctiveness. Now, muscled-up, the South needs sustained nourishing of its electoral, journalistic and civic spheres precisely because the region has grown so strong. How well democracy functions in the South — and how well the region generates leadership — will matter not only regionally but also nationally.

"As it has been in presidential politics for some time, the South is now at the epicenter of Republican and Democratic strategies to control Congress," Earl Black wrote last year in The Journal of Politics. "In order to comprehend the dynamics of national politics, it is more important than ever to understand the South."

At a time when the university has set out to ignite anew its historic mission of service, the South can be a laboratory for the melding of its scholarly strength and civic tradition. As UNC acted powerfully to lift the South out of its economic and social distress earlier this century, so the university again has a chance to assume a leading role in explaining what the South has become, in thinking about where it is going and in building the leadership that it must have to flourish.

What the South needs is a patch of common ground where opinion leaders in business, nonprofits, academia, civic and community organizations, the media, the political parties and government, along with UNC faculty and students, can gather to learn from each other, debate issues with civility and search for practical solutions to real-world social and economic problems.

And where can you find any more congenial spot for common ground than Chapel Hill?

A quick scan of the Southern civic landscape suggests the opportunity at hand for the university as the host of the South’s common ground.

The contemporary political and media culture produces debate-by-sound bite, abets ethnic and class division and encourages negative campaigns. Meanwhile, shifts in federal policy, known collectively as devolution, have resulted in additional pressures and responsibilities on state and local policymakers.

Even at its current height of economic prowess, the South is nervously facing new crossroads in the evolution of its economy, culture and democracy:

In the face of these trends and more, the region needs a strong institution dedicated to nurturing creative leadership, infusing debate with light rather than heat, providing learning opportunities for faculty and students, informing public opinion and helping democracy solve problems. In recent years, UNC has assembled vehicles by which to demonstrate that it can serve as a national model for stimulating regional political, journalistic and civic advancement.

The Center for the Study of the American South, established in 1992, publishes Southern Cultures and cosponsors the Southern Focus Poll. In addition to conducting a regional literary festival, the center also coordinated, in partnership with the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, a year-long, South-wide dialogue on race that began with a forum in Chapel Hill and culminated in the "Unfinished Business" conference in Birmingham.

Associated with the center and based in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life was launched in 1997 with a grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

Through this program, the university attracted one of the national series of forums on the state of American Journalism initiated by the Committee of Concerned Journalists. The Chapel Hill forum explored the decline in coverage of state government and politics.

The program followed up by organizing the Southern Journalists Roundtable as a means of offering intellectual sustenance and professional reinforcement columnists, editorial writers and correspondents who write about trends and issues in the South.

The two roundtables held so far have attracted journalists from eight states and the District of Columbia for discussions that included UNC deans, professors and graduate and undergraduate students. This fall, the Program on Southern Pines, Media and Public Life and the Program on the Humanities and Human Values will conduct a four-day seminar for state legislators from across the South, featuring UNC faculty.

Despite sweeping political as well as economic change, the modern two-party South has failed to fulfill its promise in both generating leadership and addressing enduring and emerging issues. Often, the Democratic and Republican parties engage in ideological and partisan combat, but their struggles seem disconnected from the real lives of Southerners and from the fundamental forces at work in the economy and society of the South.

But, of course, all leadership is not exclusively elected leadership. States, cities, towns, and counties require skillful leadership from the private sector, in the news media, in grassroots organizations and civic institutions to meet the public policy and human-relations issues of the 21st century. The South will need leaders with wisdom and vision to tackle an array of pressing concerns: coping with the environmental consequences of growth, assuring access to health care amid rising costs, enhancing opportunities to lift poor people and poor places left behind in an era of prosperity, building stronger communities and families amid a drift toward isolation, furthering racial reconciliation and easing the transition to greater ethnic diversity.