It is an honor to address you to discuss a series of practices I believe can help universities prepare our students for engaged citizenship during these times of intense polarization.
A vital step to helping campus communities “disagree better” is to promote what NYU Professor Carol Gilligan calls a spirit of “radical listening.” [1] This involves a deep commitment to respectful exchange of ideas while embracing differences, with more empathy and listening, and less judgment and demonization.
Free Speech and Counter-speech
Let me begin with Justice Louis Brandeis. He famously wrote, in Whitney v. California, that “[i]f there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies . . . the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” Over time, Brandeis’ dictum became known as the “counter-speech doctrine.”
Creating room for peaceful protest and counter-speech is a critical step to establishing free speech norms on campus. Consider how Colorado College students managed a protest when former U.S. Representative Liz Cheney spoke at her alma matter’s graduation. Some students who objected to Cheney’s policies turned their chairs around when she spoke. This action made their views known while allowing her to communicate hers.
A perennial challenge is how to ensure that speakers may be heard even when some—perhaps many—students disagree with them. At my alma mater, Swarthmore College, a speaker on Israeli security policy, Barak Mendelsohn was effectively drowned out while delivering a talk. As one student reported in the school newspaper, “the actions of the protestors tried to make it so there was no possibility of listening or thinking about what Mendelsohn said.”[2]
A formidable challenge for campuses is to enforce norms that allow for both free speech and an environment where students feel safe. I agree with Harvard University Professor Danielle Allen, who emphasized that this challenge can and must be met.[3] I am not suggesting that the development or enforcement of such a policy is easy; I am suggesting, however, that it is essential.
Rigorous Intellectual Inquiry
Universities must also strive to develop a campus culture devoted to rigorous intellectual inquiry and dialogue.
Rigorous inquiry can be advanced by a three-part process for discourse and decision-making—dialogue; debate; and deliberation. In kicking off Colorado State University’s Year of Democracy, I learned this process from Professor Martín Carcasson, who leads its Center for Public Deliberation.[4]
We can all be better citizens, friends, and colleagues by engaging in dialogue premised on the understanding that “all truth is partial”. This means that no individual can see all truth and all the various viewpoints of that truth. Consequently, the best path towards greater visibility on the whole truth is dialogue. And that type of dialogue—where people genuinely listen to one another—builds trust.
Once people build trust, it is important to engage in rigorous debate and deliberation, beyond viewpoints based on reflexive judgments. Civic engagement starts with dialogue and debate and allows for reflective deliberation where citizens evaluate their views through careful analysis and generate a thoughtful conclusion. That’s exactly how juries work—and that’s a model for how our democratic republic was designed to operate.
Radical Listening and Inclusion
Philosopher Micah Goodman asks a critical question for our age: “What kind of culture would strengthen the muscles that digital technology is atrophying — including the key one that helps us listen to ideas we disagree with?”
One answer to Goodman’s question is the concept that “all truth is partial,” that more than one view can be right. As Goodman explains, radical listening calls on us to not ask “why we think the other person is wrong, [but instead] ask why [they] think [they] are right.”[5] Stated differently, radical listening calls on us to lead with empathy, not judgment.[6]
Being committed to empathy and to inclusion go hand-in-hand. Both require a premise that we should create space that welcomes all views and withholds passing judgment. We rarely know the extent of others’ lived experience and we are well served to start from a place genuine interest. DEI, properly understood, is about empathy for others, true inclusion, and equal opportunity for all. And DEI efforts provide important tools to address the challenges caused by lack of understanding.
Respectful Engagement
The final point I want to discuss is that respectful engagement is an important element of democratic citizenship.
I had the experience of working for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and witnessed her relationship with Justice Antonin Scalia.[7] Their famed friendship was not despite their differences, but because of them. Their model of respectful engagement and dialogue underscores how “steel sharpens steel.” Or, in the words of Justice Ginsburg, when Justice Scalia gave her an early copy of his dissent in the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) case, “it ruined her weekend, but made the opinion stronger.”[8]
Describing his own ethos for respectful engagement, Scalia explained:
I attack ideas. I don’t attack people. Some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can’t separate the two, you gotta get another day job.[9]
In that spirit, our department launched the Ginsburg-Scalia initiative. We hosted conferences and facilitated programs exploring lessons from their constructive relationship and worked with former Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams to promote this work across the state. [10] [11] I encourage us all to find ways to invest in civic education and develop the critical virtues necessary to practice democratic citizenship.
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One of the great questions for our educational system is how we can foster norms that develop empathy, radical listening, and humility for students, faculty, and the greater community. Fred Rogers (of the beloved children’s television series, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood), was a great teacher of these virtues and was described by Tom Junod as taking the following view about public discourse:
Fred was a man with a vision, and his vision was of the public square, a place full of strangers, transformed by love and kindness into something like a neighborhood. That vision depended on civility, on strangers feeling welcome in the public square, and so civility couldn’t be debatable. It couldn’t be subject to politics but rather had to be the very basis of politics, along with everything else worthwhile.[12]
For us to remain a great democratic republic, heeding this lesson is essential. As university general counsels, you play a critical role in helping to craft policies and cultures that strengthen and protect those norms. Thank you all for taking that work seriously.
[1] https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2021-84531-001.html
[2] https://swarthmorephoenix.com/2023/10/26/our-protests-should-be-more-thoughtful/
[3] Danielle Allen, We’ve Lost Our Way on Campus. Here’s How We Can Find Our Way Back (December 10, 2023), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/10/antisemitism-campus-culture-harvard-penn-mit-hearing-path-forward/
[4] For more information on this program, see https://cpd.colostate.edu/.
[5] https://sapirjournal.org/technology/2023/12/the-talmudic-cure-for-our-technology-sickness/
[6] https://cl.cobar.org/departments/leading-with-empathy/
[7] I have previously written about that experience. https://coloradosun.com/2020/09/23/phil-weiser-ruth-bader-ginsburg-supreme-court-opinion/
[8] https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/speeches/remarks%20for%20the%20second%20circuit%20judicial%20conference%20may%2025%202016.pdf.
[9] https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/speeches/remarks%20for%20the%20second%20circuit%20judicial%20conference%20may%2025%202016.pdf.
[10] https://coag.gov/blog-post/the-ginsburg-scalia-initiative; https://gazette.com/denver-gazette/perspective-2-colorado-politicians-want-to-heal-the-divided-states-of-america/article_7705c2cc-a637-11ec-ab1d-f716dc77cc04.html;
[12] Tom Junod, My Friend Mister Rogers, Atlantic (Dec. 2019), https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/what-would-mister-rogers-do/600772.
Original source can be found here.