CAS Inquire Panel

CAS MarComm Author

03/31/2023 Added

7 Plays

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Panel discussion for the 2022-2023 CAS Inquire theme "Searching for Common Ground in a Polarized World".

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[00:00:03.240]Good evening.
[00:00:04.200]I'm Dr.
[00:00:04.920]Taylor Livingston,
[00:00:05.880]the director of the College of Arts and Sciences Inquire Program.
[00:00:09.520]Thank you all for coming tonight in person.
[00:00:12.040]And those of us join on Zoom
[00:00:14.400]for the final event of this year's Inquire series on the topic
[00:00:18.000]of Searching for Common Ground in an increasingly polarized world.
[00:00:22.920]The Inquire program is structured around five individual lectures
[00:00:27.400]and panel discussion at the end,
[00:00:30.200]which allows students, faculty, staff and the wider public the opportunity
[00:00:35.160]to understand and engage with how we as individuals and society
[00:00:40.840]understand polarization and maybe the need
[00:00:44.880]for common ground against that
[00:00:48.000]threat as well as it creates an opportunity
[00:00:52.280]to learn about the fascinating research that faculty members
[00:00:55.840]in the College of Arts and Sciences are conducting and enables students
[00:00:59.880]to see various disciplinary approaches to the study of a topic,
[00:01:04.560]as well as the necessity of multi-track and interdisciplinary insights
[00:01:10.440]to truly understand the human actions, behavior and behaviors.
[00:01:15.200]Tonight's panel features all of our speakers Dr.
[00:01:18.480]Julia Schleck, who is the associate professor and vice chair of English,
[00:01:22.800]who began our discussion of polarization and common ground
[00:01:26.280]with her lecture on academic freedom.
[00:01:29.320]Dr. Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Willa Cather professor of political Science,
[00:01:34.480]who discusses the need for civic respect in partizan politics.
[00:01:38.840]Dr. Regina Werum, a professor of Sociology.
[00:01:42.120]On the correlation between climate extremes and social unrest.
[00:01:46.920]Dr. Geoff Lorenz, Assistant Professor of Political Science.
[00:01:50.840]On the best ways to get your agenda accomplished in Congress.
[00:01:54.760]And Dr.
[00:01:55.560]Margaret Jacobs, Charles Mach, Professor of history
[00:01:58.840]and director of the Center for Great Plains Studies.
[00:02:01.920]His lecture on how settlers and indigenous nations can work together to achieve
[00:02:07.040]common ground on indigenous land rights while
[00:02:10.080]acknowledging a traumatic and painful history.
[00:02:13.160]Please join me in welcoming the panel.
[00:02:21.520]So the scheduled for tonight.
[00:02:22.800]It's about the students and the Inquire program has prepared
[00:02:27.080]some sort of overall questions that are organized,
[00:02:31.040]looking at themes that they saw
[00:02:33.720]and connected between the panelists talks.
[00:02:37.920]And I have some of those questions.
[00:02:39.960]And then we I will turn it over to you so you can ask questions of the panelists
[00:02:45.480]and if you are via Zoom, you're welcome to ask questions
[00:02:49.480]with the Q&A function and I'll ask them on your behalf.
[00:02:54.520]And don't worry, the panelists were given the questions beforehand.
[00:02:58.600]We're not totally catch them off guard.
[00:03:03.320]So is common ground always good?
[00:03:07.360]So the topic of the series was searching
[00:03:11.160]for common ground, an increasingly polarized world.
[00:03:14.400]But is common ground something that we should always strive
[00:03:18.120]for in our society?
[00:03:26.840]But don't all speak at once.
[00:03:30.840]Whoever feels so moved
[00:03:34.440]and it's just a flip.
[00:03:38.480]It. That's what I'm here.
[00:03:52.120]That makes a so
[00:03:56.360]you know the question should is to find
[00:04:01.320]I think that diversity views are very important.
[00:04:05.560]I think we need to have a lot of,
[00:04:11.520]you know, this notion of this point of ideas
[00:04:15.360]and the more ideas we have also, because I think that the marketplace is
[00:04:21.760]also finding what the common ground here.
[00:04:24.600]I also think that I,
[00:04:27.920]I believe in intellectual humility.
[00:04:31.440]I think that we need to accept that we might not be right about everything.
[00:04:36.000]We work very well.
[00:04:37.280]I think that's fair, but we might be right about absolutely everything
[00:04:41.640]that I think we need to be willing to hear a positive difference.
[00:04:46.920]So I so I agree with all of that.
[00:04:50.680]Know, we have to find common ground.
[00:04:53.800]We just all we want
[00:04:56.920]something done.
[00:04:57.960]So but I think you know, forward is time to find places
[00:05:02.360]where we can have some.
[00:05:05.760]So as someone who just came from a classroom, I'm
[00:05:09.640]reflecting on this as a teacher, which is the worst
[00:05:12.080]classes are the ones where you say, What do you think about this?
[00:05:14.800]And someone says something and everyone goes, Yeah,
[00:05:18.720]and just looks at each other and like, Yeah, we're all on the same page.
[00:05:21.840]We all agree with everything that the other person just said.
[00:05:25.040]And I as a teacher, it ends up, I end up walking in and saying like,
[00:05:29.440]All right, well what terrible opinion can I express here
[00:05:33.280]just to try to break this up a little bit, you know?
[00:05:35.520]And so I'm always advocating for things that I don't believe
[00:05:38.760]in the classroom, in part just to try to kind of push people
[00:05:42.280]to consider opinions that are not theirs and
[00:05:45.240]and I'm doing that, you know, not because
[00:05:47.840]I want them to adopt these things, but because I really want them to think
[00:05:51.080]through their positions, you know, like if they're my allies on the
[00:05:55.000]in the arguments that we're having, I want them to be good ones.
[00:05:57.920]I want them to have well-considered opinions.
[00:06:00.280]And they're not going to reach that place unless they're
[00:06:04.040]truly considered alternatives.
[00:06:05.520]And so, you know, there are reasons for having debates from multiple sides.
[00:06:12.760]Even if you start from a place of common ground.
[00:06:15.320]So I don't actually think that it's, you know, a good thing to
[00:06:19.200]have everybody agreeing all the time, because I think that we reach new places
[00:06:22.840]by pushing each other in order to get there.
[00:06:26.600]And I'm going to push back from the marketplace of ideas notion
[00:06:30.120]because I hate the idea that somehow we're all purchasing these ideas and that it's
[00:06:34.160]all about the kind of material that's.
[00:06:38.400]But I think that the you know,
[00:06:40.000]it makes the point that there are reasons to have these debates
[00:06:44.120]that are
[00:06:45.600]that weigh in on moral or religious issues or, you know, that
[00:06:49.280]bring up the idea that there are multiple grounds on which one
[00:06:52.920]can make a case and financial grounds are really important ones.
[00:06:56.840]But also there are other reasons
[00:06:58.960]to make decisions that might push back against those economic growth.
[00:07:02.720]And it's important to have those out as well as thinking of this in relation
[00:07:06.520]to Margaret's talk, when we were discussing kind of the value
[00:07:11.200]of symbolic agreement versus materially instantiated commitments.
[00:07:17.000]You know, when you you say you agree
[00:07:18.960]and you actually put your money behind that, that's different,
[00:07:21.960]but that there might be a value to both and that you're
[00:07:24.440]not going to get there without kind of pushing through that.
[00:07:27.440]The fact that both of those things need to be considered.
[00:07:31.200]So my own
[00:07:31.680]experience in the classroom very much
[00:07:35.840]and my concern over the past few years has been
[00:07:39.000]that is, I'm not one to engage in difficult conversations.
[00:07:44.400]So there's more criticism
[00:07:46.920]and I can't predict when something
[00:07:49.800]that uncomfortable position of having some sources of that.
[00:07:52.960]That's right.
[00:07:54.280]But it also means
[00:07:57.560]it will not make itself,
[00:08:00.440]which is fear itself or something.
[00:08:07.320]And that's a really difficult
[00:08:11.000]thing and sometimes
[00:08:13.320]easier to figure out in one on one conversations.
[00:08:17.760]But what I have
[00:08:19.800]tried to do with our most
[00:08:23.080]important prototype of the quality of the sociologist
[00:08:26.760]and the fact that the quality
[00:08:31.040]of a level right
[00:08:34.760]and that's going to be loud now.
[00:08:39.280]And what I have them do is I say, okay, so you all agree there is a problem.
[00:08:45.000]What's the solution?
[00:08:47.360]And I try to have them in small groups come up with a policy based solution.
[00:08:51.400]I'm a social scientist, so of course it's policy based, right?
[00:08:54.560]We don't burn the place down yet.
[00:08:57.080]So we we try to get them to formulate a policy solution to the problem.
[00:09:02.840]And I designate them to be from different interest groups
[00:09:06.000]that are going to be conflicting with one another.
[00:09:08.480]They have to represent somebody that's not their own it.
[00:09:12.240]It makes them feel very uncomfortable, which is okay.
[00:09:15.480]And then I ask them,
[00:09:17.240]okay, so now you have developed a policy solution.
[00:09:21.160]Where is your opposition?
[00:09:22.440]You have come together on common ground.
[00:09:24.960]You figured out something you all can agree on.
[00:09:27.960]Where is the opposition going to come from?
[00:09:30.960]Whom have you failed to include
[00:09:32.800]in your conversation?
[00:09:36.400]And that ends up being even harder than finding consensus on the solution
[00:09:41.080]because they can't imagine what's missing.
[00:09:45.120]So I would urge those of you who are listening to this,
[00:09:50.960]however you are engaged to think of think really,
[00:09:54.560]really hard about who is not present at the table.
[00:10:00.200]And, you know, I build on that a little.
[00:10:03.960]So so that was kind of my thought about this, too.
[00:10:08.080]In periods of congressional history where there's been that
[00:10:12.440]we now look back on fondly as periods of really good bipartisanship.
[00:10:16.920]The reason that bipartisanship was possible was often because there were
[00:10:20.360]entire categories of people being excluded from the conversation.
[00:10:24.480]And our political institutions can be examined through the lens of
[00:10:28.160]how do they allow Congress to not talk about difficult things.
[00:10:33.960]And so
[00:10:35.760]that started
[00:10:36.320]off as slavery, and it turned into civil rights eventually.
[00:10:39.440]And a lot of the areas that we think of as areas of great
[00:10:42.120]bipartisan cooperation are, in fact, just areas in which the set of people
[00:10:45.920]who were allowed into the room were very small.
[00:10:48.080]Does that mean that, like finding common ground is bad?
[00:10:50.720]You know,
[00:10:51.040]but it highlights the importance of the conditions under
[00:10:54.080]which common ground is all right, which is why I really like that exercise
[00:10:57.960]that you just described.
[00:10:58.880]I think it's something that I might adopt if like if people aren't willing
[00:11:02.280]to express disagreement in a room, then sometimes you have to, like,
[00:11:06.240]get them to imagine what someone who disagrees with them would say.
[00:11:12.200]I'll just that one little thing
[00:11:15.800]because you've all said a lot already.
[00:11:18.000]But I was thinking, what if we took common ground
[00:11:21.640]not as a metaphor, but as a real material thing?
[00:11:25.920]And, you know, coming back to kind of what I have been working on as
[00:11:30.200]a scholar is thinking about land back and land return to native peoples.
[00:11:35.520]And so what would common ground look like in that way
[00:11:38.880]if we really thought about that
[00:11:42.360]and when we're not just engaged in that discussion about hard things,
[00:11:47.480]but actually trying to repair things from the past,
[00:11:52.280]what does common ground look like and how do we get there?
[00:11:56.520]And I think one of the key things I'm taking from
[00:12:01.880]what you all have said in your lectures and here tonight is just
[00:12:06.720]common ground, can't be based on denying
[00:12:10.560]or refusing to look at difficult things.
[00:12:14.400]And especially from from historian's perspective,
[00:12:17.360]it can't be found through denying history and denying the hard
[00:12:21.520]histories that we we share.
[00:12:24.360]So I think about how
[00:12:26.240]if we really are serious about returning land
[00:12:30.440]to native peoples in this country, how do we reach that common ground?
[00:12:34.520]How do we build those conversations and build those meaningful relationships
[00:12:40.000]to to get to that point, to
[00:12:53.960]use our my
[00:12:56.560]right as
[00:13:03.040]your answers sort of indicate.
[00:13:05.760]But polarization
[00:13:09.920]about
[00:13:17.840]these things.
[00:13:19.360]But it's something to look forward to and often
[00:13:23.040]be a result of our
[00:13:26.720]social storyful content.
[00:13:29.040]So what do you think Ryan
[00:13:32.560]Ford's action is in that?
[00:13:35.480]So is your political development exercise.
[00:13:38.640]Is it to making sure there's no in your talks that it's not necessarily
[00:13:44.320]social, it's not race, ethnicity,
[00:13:47.440]gender expression, sexual orientation.
[00:13:51.560]These are incredible.
[00:13:52.920]Identify for our model.
[00:13:56.200]So what do you think is probably
[00:13:58.800]the policies?
[00:14:07.440]Yeah, well, clarify what we mean by polarization.
[00:14:10.000]And like, we just need disagreement or do it.
[00:14:13.360]Or the
[00:14:16.440]or. Well,
[00:14:17.400]I was a committed leftist in the room I'm going to what about material
[00:14:22.040]that all of the things that I think
[00:14:24.160]are going to be categories
[00:14:27.800]or you know
[00:14:29.480]we're we're pretty much the big driver
[00:14:33.040]of reality
[00:14:37.240]distribution
[00:14:38.040]around the ideas about how to do
[00:14:42.360]that are one of the different political preference.
[00:14:45.640]And it is certainly
[00:14:48.840]in some senses a kind of classic definition
[00:14:51.360]of all of that is to say, you know what one good
[00:14:55.720]what to do for everyone and is it possible to reach others?
[00:15:00.400]But I think for for you to helpful
[00:15:05.280]do that we're in an unequal society then there are always going to be
[00:15:09.480]and economically speaking, then there will always be conflict
[00:15:13.160]because there are those who are seeking
[00:15:16.800]to retain their advantageous position and there are those who
[00:15:23.200]were looking to make the more equitable society.
[00:15:26.040]Then we're stuck to some degree in that space.
[00:15:31.680]So the sociological answer to this question would be to counter it
[00:15:36.000]with another question, which is not fair, but we do it all the time.
[00:15:40.920]A sociologist would ask Who benefits,
[00:15:44.800]who benefits from political polarization?
[00:15:47.720]So rather than
[00:15:50.640]focusing solely on material
[00:15:52.800]interests, many interests are non-material.
[00:15:55.920]That doesn't mean they're immaterial.
[00:15:57.960]So we would use the big P word here, which is power.
[00:16:01.520]It's about power.
[00:16:03.040]So who benefits?
[00:16:04.200]Who can consolidate power by dividing and conquering?
[00:16:09.000]Be the emperor?
[00:16:10.320]Even the Romans knew how to do that, how to divide and conquer the civilian general
[00:16:16.200]public in ways that serve their own interests in consolidating power.
[00:16:21.880]So you need to think.
[00:16:23.160]But no matter, it doesn't matter what the issue is, that polarization exists.
[00:16:28.480]All right.
[00:16:28.800]I am going to say that I think our
[00:16:33.240]views overlap.
[00:16:34.400]People get sort of weird, but oh, wait till I tell you
[00:16:37.520]about the political science literature on the role of money
[00:16:41.040]in politics.
[00:16:45.960]That was not me attempting to take much credit, but now we're here.
[00:16:49.480]Okay,
[00:16:50.960]So so disagreement is like intrinsic you have
[00:16:55.520]whether it's differences in material status or different cultures,
[00:17:00.280]beliefs about how the social world should be ordered.
[00:17:03.840]These things, as people in our department have demonstrated, pretty
[00:17:08.680]convincingly, derive from things that we can think of as human nature,
[00:17:13.960]whether you think of genetics that way or or physiology,
[00:17:18.680]but that the polarization and disagreement is ineffable.
[00:17:22.680]The question is how do for me at least, how are those disagreements channel the
[00:17:28.800]the framers of the American Constitution, if you believe their own writings
[00:17:32.600]about this, thought that they were creating a system in which
[00:17:36.560]if you took the classic phrase here is ambition to counteract ambition,
[00:17:41.880]if we could take people who were able to gain power
[00:17:44.080]and put them against each other,
[00:17:45.720]then no one would be able to gain enough power
[00:17:47.640]and sustain it for a long enough time to like rule oppressively over everyone else.
[00:17:53.160]Now we can debate over whether they were successful at doing that.
[00:17:55.640]They didn't account for parties very well.
[00:17:57.720]And you know, here we are. But
[00:18:01.520]one thing that I think is
[00:18:04.040]related to this, one of the separate parts of this question is
[00:18:09.000]how are political circumstances contributing to polarization?
[00:18:13.200]So we have a two party system in this country that's the result
[00:18:16.120]of most directly single member districts where only one party can win at a time.
[00:18:21.240]So it's sort of efficient for people to form at most two parties.
[00:18:25.680]And what happens is now our institutions take all of the diversity
[00:18:30.640]and disagreements and all the dimensions on which that disagreement happens
[00:18:34.680]and collapse it down into a single unit dimensional conflict,
[00:18:38.880]that that means that now each of the two
[00:18:41.560]major parties is a like coalition
[00:18:46.000]of often very fractious and internally disagreeing subcommittees, two choices
[00:18:51.600]that are sort of negotiating amongst themselves to fight it out.
[00:18:55.240]So one of the things that creates political polarization or issue based
[00:18:59.640]polarization, at least, is the fact
[00:19:01.200]that we've set up the rules of the game in such a way as to produce that outcome.
[00:19:05.800]And, you know, I think that
[00:19:09.040]the idea of like changing the two party system is hard to imagine,
[00:19:14.400]but there are people who are actively trying to do that.
[00:19:17.520]And there have been experiments at the local level
[00:19:19.600]with different sorts of political institutions
[00:19:21.760]that have this kind of effect of at least creating space for the
[00:19:26.280]for different levels of political organization.
[00:19:33.080]And I think it helps if you have more than two poles.
[00:19:36.840]Yeah, well, I think if we did,
[00:19:38.560]you can work in the three or the four of the five center.
[00:19:41.360]So it's funny you should mention, if I could if I can plug my own work here,
[00:19:45.560]I'm so poor.
[00:19:47.880]We've got a paper that uses a
[00:19:52.920]statistical method to identify both like in the current roll call record.
[00:19:56.920]How many dimensions are there? Right.
[00:19:58.720]So is it just left or right or are there other sort of dimensions of complex
[00:20:01.880]and then what those dimensions are?
[00:20:03.400]And then we can place different legislators
[00:20:05.760]in different interest groups on each of those dimensions.
[00:20:08.280]And so I'll like, you know, I will keep it a secret, like we found five,
[00:20:14.200]and that's within the existing roll Call record where we have this two party system
[00:20:18.000]that's trying to turn everything into a single dimensional conflict.
[00:20:21.120]So even when we've suppressed
[00:20:24.520]or suppressed the dimensionality of the conflict
[00:20:27.000]as well as we have, we're still like these these other dimensions still being.
[00:20:30.840]So it's interesting to speculate about if we had three or four
[00:20:34.120]political institutions or political institutions
[00:20:36.080]that allowed for more parties, like what?
[00:20:38.000]What would be the additional dimensions, the number of true.
[00:20:44.120]I'm just going to add a little bit about one of the things I love about this series
[00:20:48.360]is that we take a problem or a theme
[00:20:52.280]and we demonstrate to you
[00:20:54.880]how people from totally different disciplines approach it.
[00:20:59.000]And so as a historian, you know, the way
[00:21:02.480]we approach human behavior is thinking
[00:21:05.520]we're all products of a very long, complicated history.
[00:21:11.040]And so we I mean, I as a historian, I believe that we can't understand
[00:21:16.560]our current state of polarization without understanding this long history.
[00:21:22.920]And so last night at dinner,
[00:21:25.000]we were having dinner together, and one of the questions came up was,
[00:21:28.560]do you think anybody's going to ask us if we're as polarized
[00:21:31.560]today as we were in 1860 or 1968 came up to?
[00:21:36.760]And and I thought to myself after that conversation, I thought, well,
[00:21:40.680]the way a historian would think about that is that, well,
[00:21:45.160]we there's continuity with the past.
[00:21:48.000]So the things that we were polarized about in 1860
[00:21:51.960]have not completely dissipated or dissolved,
[00:21:56.640]that we're still a lot of the polarization we see today is stemming
[00:22:01.240]from things that happened 150 years ago,
[00:22:05.040]200 years ago, 400 years ago.
[00:22:09.000]So we're still living with the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow.
[00:22:15.360]We're still living with the legacies of stealing land.
[00:22:18.960]And so
[00:22:21.000]if we want to understand what's happening today, how people are dividing over
[00:22:25.960]various issues, we also, as a historian, I think we have to
[00:22:29.920]to know that larger history and we have to we historians
[00:22:33.440]talk a lot about contingency, too, that we tend not to believe that there's
[00:22:38.160]some inevitability to anything, but that it's always
[00:22:42.320]about a chain of events, a chain of trends, a train of things
[00:22:49.560]that that all came together to create the situation we're in now.
[00:22:54.800]So I find it really fascinating to talk with all of you about this and think about
[00:22:59.240]and I know that as an historian, that doesn't explain everything.
[00:23:03.960]And that's another thing that I really love about this series,
[00:23:06.640]is that to truly understand
[00:23:10.240]a problem, we do need this very interdisciplinary world.
[00:23:14.600]We need a university, you know that We need a college of arts
[00:23:19.560]and sciences because of emphasis on the plural.
[00:23:23.640]Yeah.
[00:23:24.040]I mean, we need those like people coming together
[00:23:27.920]to understand climate change, to understand how to repair
[00:23:34.080]the problems of the past around slavery and things like that.
[00:23:37.280]So I've talked enough.
[00:23:40.680]So so I agree with everything Margaret just said.
[00:23:45.240]And I was a history undergrad major,
[00:23:47.320]so I appreciate the historical point of view as is as well.
[00:23:51.960]I come I'm a political scientist like Jeff is, and
[00:23:55.080]but I come at it from political psychology.
[00:23:57.200]So to me, polarization is what we call affective polarization,
[00:24:01.480]which is that, you know, essentially we just hate the other side.
[00:24:04.760]And and there's all this really cool research that looks at
[00:24:09.640]if you give people a stand on and,
[00:24:11.560]you know, if you give people some issue position and, you know, they
[00:24:16.320]there's some agreement, you know, people tend to say, oh yeah, that's a cool idea.
[00:24:19.920]As soon as you label it Democrat or Republican, it just goes,
[00:24:24.360]you know, let's just ban people just separate on it.
[00:24:27.600]If you if you say that the the the
[00:24:30.720]the news network that that had this story was Fox
[00:24:35.920]or MSNBC, you get, you know, just completely different.
[00:24:39.960]So you know to me it's that it's that being on a team
[00:24:44.640]it's it's wanting your team to win and the other team to lose
[00:24:48.000]at any cost because you want you want that other team to lose.
[00:24:51.120]It's the idea that the other team is evil and yours is not, you know.
[00:24:56.520]And so this whole view, that polarization is is a
[00:25:01.520]it's not a good thing in the sense that we're just taking our team
[00:25:05.480]and deciding that the other team is
[00:25:07.000]just all bad and all wrong and we won't listen to them.
[00:25:09.800]And that's that's where I think the really bad side comes in, right?
[00:25:13.280]So anyway,
[00:25:14.160]the polarization to me is is affective and it has happened over history.
[00:25:18.920]It's I think Jeff is absolutely right that,
[00:25:21.560]you know, certain people have been left out of conversations in the past.
[00:25:24.560]So that's why we get what looks like agreement when it's not actually there.
[00:25:28.680]But in a lot of ways, many different ways.
[00:25:31.560]We silence the people we disagree with
[00:25:35.520]and we need to work at not doing that. But
[00:25:42.120]my colleagues clearly inspired me.
[00:25:44.880]So for me, this then becomes the question
[00:25:47.440]of the chicken versus the egg, which comes first people's affects
[00:25:50.440]and attitudes or the institutions that constrain the attitudes.
[00:25:54.600]An aspect we can just play.
[00:25:56.440]So I'm going to air on the institutions creates attitudes.
[00:26:02.840]Attitudes tend to change when the reality
[00:26:05.720]and the material conditions change on the ground.
[00:26:08.920]People were opposed to interracial marriage
[00:26:10.880]until it became legal, and then all of a sudden attitudes change.
[00:26:14.520]It's a classic example.
[00:26:16.160]So for me, the the chicken versus acting is important
[00:26:18.760]because as the only immigrant here on the panel, I've got to tell you that
[00:26:22.600]Americans are uniquely obsessed with binaries, winners,
[00:26:26.760]losers, black, white, Republican-Democrat, all nothing.
[00:26:31.680]It's a very Puritan way of thinking about this is the American studies background
[00:26:37.200]and me, the Puritans
[00:26:38.280]still kind of permeate our the way we think of institutions and discourse.
[00:26:42.840]And we think of everything as a zero sum game.
[00:26:45.280]If we win, they lose. If they win, we lose.
[00:26:48.520]And that's toxic.
[00:26:50.640]I come from a system where political coalitions are the way to go.
[00:26:54.360]Yes, it makes things even more slow going because you have to find consensus.
[00:26:58.440]If you have a coalition and you want to hang on to power.
[00:27:01.880]But that's how consensus gets built through
[00:27:05.520]deliberative, liberate coalitions
[00:27:07.920]rather than deals made under the table
[00:27:11.880]before the roll call is made.
[00:27:15.720]So this just reminded me of something that in the work that I'm doing
[00:27:20.720]on the university, it's often justified that we contribute to the common good.
[00:27:24.520]And, you know, I was asking like, what is it really common?
[00:27:27.480]Have we left people out? You know, what constitutes the good?
[00:27:30.000]Maybe this is the place where we argue
[00:27:31.520]over that rather than the place where we adjudicate it or society.
[00:27:34.600]But one kind of thinking through those those questions.
[00:27:38.600]One of the things that became very helpful as a model is to think through the legal
[00:27:43.880]public good.
[00:27:44.880]You know, that's a legal category of a certain kind of resource in our society.
[00:27:48.960]It's something where the enjoyment of it is open to everybody
[00:27:53.280]in society, and everybody's enjoyment of it does not diminish the potential
[00:27:57.400]for anybody else. Like a park.
[00:27:59.320]If you walk through it, then it doesn't mean
[00:28:01.400]that someone else can't walk through it and enjoy it as well.
[00:28:03.960]And so it's something where it's not an zero sum game, right?
[00:28:07.800]You know, where we conceive of the resources of our society
[00:28:11.640]as something that should be open to all and potentially shared by all.
[00:28:15.600]And so, you know, like that it becomes difficult,
[00:28:18.680]you know, on certain things that we see as finite in terms of the resources.
[00:28:22.360]But the more that we can think about those as in the same category
[00:28:27.360]as public goods, then, you know, I think we would get a little closer to
[00:28:37.440]a document like,
[00:28:40.720]Oh, I'm just going to stand up for our friends in economics
[00:28:43.560]who would claim or originated your status of the idea of a public good.
[00:28:47.560]But oh, but they're not here, so they're not getting part
[00:28:51.640]of the conversation.
[00:28:52.440]I'm not going to
[00:28:56.040]know what that is. But
[00:28:59.440]so about this idea of public good
[00:29:02.640]and us versus badly wanting our to survive the U.N.
[00:29:07.320]climate report from last week that we have
[00:29:10.440]something here for right now.
[00:29:14.240]So with that idea of
[00:29:19.160]there are no speeches,
[00:29:22.240]do you think there will be more
[00:29:25.320]focus on finding common ground to halt the
[00:29:30.480]radical effects of
[00:29:33.160]humans and environment?
[00:29:34.720]They're out
[00:29:36.680]looking that you've written,
[00:29:43.520]and I ask one of the optimists to speak first.
[00:29:48.720]I mean, I don't think you're an optimist.
[00:29:52.000]I don't have to pretend to be one one just okay, for the sake of discussion.
[00:29:56.760]Oh, yeah. Okay.
[00:29:57.680]So I'll present the the optimistic case for it's going to be fine.
[00:30:02.640]Okay. So
[00:30:05.160]the what's the optimist case?
[00:30:10.400]So I wouldn't claim that it's going to be
[00:30:13.120]okay. All right.
[00:30:14.080]All right. So,
[00:30:16.120]so I think for those of us
[00:30:18.560]who like to live in the world of like studies
[00:30:22.760]and we're extremely used to thinking
[00:30:25.840]probabilistically about things, the
[00:30:29.680]we don't necessarily have the
[00:30:33.920]the perspective that someone who doesn't and who encounters
[00:30:36.560]the idea of like there is an X percent chance that
[00:30:40.040]that the average global temperature will increase by
[00:30:44.280]something between this much and this much.
[00:30:45.960]And here's what we think the consequences will be like for those of us
[00:30:49.160]who hang out in the world of scholarly papers and
[00:30:53.440]and are used to thinking in terms like conditionally
[00:30:57.120]like that or probabilistically like that, we don't really understand
[00:31:00.240]kind of how different that feels from like,
[00:31:03.840]my farm is dead.
[00:31:06.960]And so while we, I think,
[00:31:11.160]are willing to have
[00:31:12.400]like debates about things that haven't happened yet,
[00:31:15.200]but we have reason to think are likely to happen,
[00:31:17.800]I do suspect, you know, one of the nice things
[00:31:20.040]about climate change is that like it's not a cliff.
[00:31:24.040]It's like, well, you you want to tell me?
[00:31:27.600]Actually, it is a cliff. But
[00:31:29.960]but my my understanding, please correct me is if it's not a cliff,
[00:31:34.200]then that means that that direct costs that people bear
[00:31:37.840]will get worse and worse over time.
[00:31:40.720]So and as those costs increase, then it becomes less,
[00:31:44.320]you know, probabilistic and more like this is actively happening
[00:31:47.280]than we might expect that people's interest to change.
[00:31:50.440]Right.
[00:31:50.640]If we think about it materially,
[00:31:52.200]climate change will impact like different congressional districts
[00:31:54.840]in different ways.
[00:31:55.560]So we would expect the representatives of business groups to behave differently
[00:31:58.560]on that issue area over time.
[00:32:01.080]The the other
[00:32:05.280]part of this right, is that there's like a persuasive element.
[00:32:08.000]How do we get people to care about something that they don't care about
[00:32:13.240]people?
[00:32:13.960]One of the, I think, unfortunate aspects of the modern polarized
[00:32:17.720]era that actually is, in my view, like just bad,
[00:32:20.920]is that people think that persuasion is impossible.
[00:32:23.960]It is not.
[00:32:25.280]People just don't know what it means.
[00:32:28.600]And so as
[00:32:32.760]we're able to
[00:32:35.160]as there's kind of more of a physical basis where people
[00:32:39.000]have are interacting with the consequences of climate change
[00:32:42.600]and they can attribute those consequences to that problem,
[00:32:46.440]then the the ability to do something about it will improve over time.
[00:32:52.200]Will it be fast enough to prevent,
[00:32:53.640]like widespread devastation, as the self-appointed optimist?
[00:32:59.400]Sure,
[00:33:01.440]maybe.
[00:33:02.280]All right. Well, I'll go with it.
[00:33:03.520]We'll break down some of the larger structures of society,
[00:33:07.320]which will render us more local, which is where these kind of
[00:33:11.280]weather events at the moment are manifesting.
[00:33:14.160]And while we may hate each other in terms of our macro teams,
[00:33:18.920]no one is going to look at their neighbor and be like, you know,
[00:33:22.560]well, see your house got flooded or burned down.
[00:33:25.200]Tough luck.
[00:33:25.880]You know, I know you're a Republican or a Democrat, right?
[00:33:29.080]I mean, on the local level, I think people are far more generous
[00:33:33.440]to each other, that we tend to be happy to be mean in the abstract
[00:33:38.920]so that, you know, when when your neighbor needs help and, you know, people
[00:33:43.640]say, that's my neighbor and they need help and they share what they have.
[00:33:47.280]And so either because there will be some kind of,
[00:33:50.000]you know, mass breakdown of larger political and
[00:33:53.760]economic
[00:33:54.280]structures, well, we'll be forced to return to smaller kinds of
[00:33:58.440]kinds of organization where we'll know each other
[00:34:00.600]and might build the kind of affective bonds
[00:34:02.640]that will allow us to see this differently and work functionally
[00:34:05.960]together or.
[00:34:09.720]Yeah, that's all I got on the optimism thing.
[00:34:12.880]It's not all that optimistic.
[00:34:15.080]So I would agree that in with your statement that in the abstract
[00:34:19.600]we are happy to be mean and but concretely very
[00:34:22.600]few of us are.
[00:34:26.560]For me, as a social scientist
[00:34:30.480]or as a sociologist, I should say,
[00:34:32.600]because many of us are social scientists, it's
[00:34:36.680]the tricky part is that where
[00:34:38.880]climate change hits the most
[00:34:42.840]is not in our own backyards,
[00:34:45.120]yet by the time it hits in our own backyards
[00:34:48.440]and know what what just happened in Mississippi is nothing
[00:34:53.280]compared to what awaits the world.
[00:34:55.720]Okay, but we're thinking of this, the domino effect.
[00:35:00.400]Waves of migration, climate induced that
[00:35:08.880]puts stress on existing infrastructure wherever people go,
[00:35:12.440]because people have to go someplace.
[00:35:16.760]And the existing infrastructure is not just housing and schooling and health
[00:35:21.000]care, the existing infrastructures, access to clean water and access
[00:35:24.560]to food and the political institutions and who gets represented.
[00:35:27.720]Because refugees have the right to vote to refugees
[00:35:32.000]get included in conversations about how resources distributed.
[00:35:37.640]Well, depends on where you are currently.
[00:35:40.640]Okay, So for me, it's more it's not so much the direct effects
[00:35:45.880]of climate change on polarization, how we feel about climate change.
[00:35:49.800]It's about the effects of climate change on
[00:35:53.960]the ability of of humans
[00:35:56.600]as a species to continue
[00:36:00.560]living the way we've been living wherever we've been living.
[00:36:04.680]We always think it affects other people.
[00:36:08.640]And I look at our students and I know it will affect you very differently
[00:36:12.160]from the way it affects our generation.
[00:36:15.840]That's the hard part to predict.
[00:36:18.200]So I'm not sure about the cliff part,
[00:36:20.480]but I certainly see challenges that the United Nations can solve
[00:36:25.160]and that attitudes and thoughts
[00:36:27.240]and prayers won't solve either
[00:36:37.680]at all.
[00:36:38.960]Like so, yeah, I don't I don't think climate change will have
[00:36:44.960]a positive impact.
[00:36:46.360]I don't think, you know, the framing of the question.
[00:36:48.920]I just don't I just don't see it.
[00:36:51.040]I and I tend to be an optimist.
[00:36:54.760]But, but on this question, I mean, it's just seems to me that when we get scarce
[00:36:58.440]resources, there's going to be fighting over those scarce resources.
[00:37:02.880]And it's not scarce resources like, you know, is there affordable
[00:37:07.480]housing or is there, you know, you know, oil to run our car.
[00:37:12.600]It's scarce resources like do we have water to load?
[00:37:16.800]And that that water is fundamental to human lives.
[00:37:21.480]And that becomes this thing where, you know, the fighting
[00:37:25.800]that will happen around the world over those resources.
[00:37:30.680]It's going to I just can't help but be pessimistic.
[00:37:33.880]I just don't know how to not be pessimistic.
[00:37:40.800]So if I were a student, what would I do?
[00:37:45.480]Vote for starters, Revolution,
[00:37:49.880]which
[00:37:52.800]does lobbying come before or after
[00:38:06.480]in terms of universities and the
[00:38:10.640]discipline?
[00:38:11.120]Your own perspectives on this?
[00:38:13.200]So I would ask
[00:38:16.600]the question so what do you think is
[00:38:20.120]one of the most important issues on campus and
[00:38:25.040]discipline your own
[00:38:28.720]staff?
[00:38:39.720]Yeah.
[00:38:40.160]Can we ask you all what are the most divisive issues on campus?
[00:38:43.680]I don't think we know now.
[00:38:47.600]They don't want to say it because they're afraid of not having
[00:38:50.640]common ground amongst themselves.
[00:38:56.040]You know, you're part of the community
[00:39:06.360]while you're thinking about what
[00:39:07.360]you think the most polarizing issues are.
[00:39:10.400]I don't actually think the
[00:39:13.520]polarization in attitudes is the problem for our students.
[00:39:17.320]It's one of them.
[00:39:18.320]One of the few conditions under which the so-called Nebraska Nice actually
[00:39:22.800]works in everybody's favor, as opposed to just being passive aggressive.
[00:39:27.360]I think what matters here is that our students are increasingly having
[00:39:32.400]polarized experiences in life.
[00:39:36.120]So to me, what matters more is how those polarized experiences shaped
[00:39:43.320]your experience here at UNL.
[00:39:46.640]And then when we send you back out into the world.
[00:39:49.280]Okay, so the students who come here from privileged backgrounds
[00:39:54.160]have a completely different experience on campus than the students who don't,
[00:39:58.120]because students who feel marginalized for whatever reason,
[00:40:01.320]whether it's related to status characteristics
[00:40:04.480]or related to abuse, they hold background they have
[00:40:08.240]their experience is fundamentally different
[00:40:10.360]from that of the, I'm going to say, quintessential husker.
[00:40:13.560]Okay?
[00:40:14.600]The experience of athletes here on campus is very different from that
[00:40:18.480]of non-athletes in everything from housing to access to food.
[00:40:23.960]Many of my students struggle with food insecurity and housing insecurity,
[00:40:29.640]lack of access to health care when they need it.
[00:40:32.760]Those are polarized experiences.
[00:40:34.920]So that's that's what occupies my Monday through Sunday,
[00:40:39.120]not how you feel about abortion or climate
[00:40:41.320]change.
[00:40:45.240]Are you
[00:40:48.400]talking about the lack
[00:40:49.840]of people being willing to speak up and say they're Nebraska?
[00:40:53.840]Nice having kids playing
[00:40:56.520]devil's advocate, if you will, positions.
[00:40:59.760]So maybe the question
[00:41:02.880]isn't the more polarizing issue, but is it a safe space
[00:41:07.840]to express dissenting opinions?
[00:41:16.200]I would say we're trying to model a kind of safe space
[00:41:19.200]in a world where there are fewer of those all the time.
[00:41:25.080]Are we succeeding?
[00:41:26.960]Yeah.
[00:41:47.680]Yeah.
[00:41:48.480]Freshman year I was in a dorm room with people who had differing
[00:41:51.520]political opinions and there was able to have a conversation,
[00:41:55.640]but it usually turned out with, You're wrong, I'm right.
[00:41:58.440]And I would try to have a conversation I had.
[00:42:01.560]I went to a very diverse high school.
[00:42:03.000]I had had this conversation a lot of times.
[00:42:04.520]So I was like,
[00:42:04.960]okay, I'll learn. Or at least heard discussion
[00:42:07.400]and it usually turn into, You're wrong, I'm right.
[00:42:09.800]And so that but then in my major, there are four of us in the junior
[00:42:14.040]class of my major, I'm a meteorologist and geologist, and so meteorology,
[00:42:18.760]there's only four of us.
[00:42:19.480]So like there's not an opportunity, like we know way too much about each other.
[00:42:23.040]There's not an opportunity to be like, you're wrong.
[00:42:25.560]I'm right.
[00:42:26.000]Like, there has to be a discussion
[00:42:27.360]or else we're going to be at each other's throats for the next two years.
[00:42:30.560]So just like depends on where you are on campus of like,
[00:42:35.640]is this a safe place for me to discuss things
[00:42:40.080]or am I going to have to sit down
[00:42:41.640]and shut up and be quiet just to survive the next hour of my life?
[00:42:44.760]Yeah.
[00:42:45.800]Do you all get the sense
[00:42:47.240]that you learn in your classes how to disagree productively?
[00:42:50.640]Like, what is it like?
[00:42:51.680]What is a debate that ends with neither side being persuaded
[00:42:56.360]by the other side's arguments?
[00:42:57.480]But like, is that possible for such a debate to be productive?
[00:43:11.440]So I have had conversations with my roommates recently
[00:43:15.600]about different facets of politics.
[00:43:18.800]I tend to lean liberal, and the two girls I was talking with tend
[00:43:22.600]to lean Republican.
[00:43:24.200]And so this wasn't class related.
[00:43:26.080]It was more just social justice.
[00:43:28.960]I think we were like sitting in our dorm room.
[00:43:30.640]So it wasn't the formal setting or anything.
[00:43:33.320]But I did learn things through the conversation.
[00:43:37.560]I had to consider some
[00:43:40.800]perspectives that I hadn't
[00:43:42.040]really focused on before, and I think the same thing happened for them
[00:43:45.840]because we did this, this fun back and forth where it was
[00:43:48.720]like I had like 5 minutes to talk and then they had 5 minutes to talk.
[00:43:51.800]And then we were like, write down bullet points
[00:43:53.760]of why things we disagreed with when the other person was talking.
[00:43:57.360]So it was it was the whole thing.
[00:43:58.560]We were doing this for a good hour and I definitely got a lot out of it
[00:44:04.440]because I felt like it was a safe space to have that conversation.
[00:44:09.680]I don't know if I've had that as much in classes.
[00:44:14.600]Maybe that's just a product of my major
[00:44:17.040]because science classes aren't really focused on debate all that much.
[00:44:21.000]I mean, you're there to learn stuff that we've already proven is true,
[00:44:25.080]but but I would say that
[00:44:31.400]even somewhere like this, where we're actively
[00:44:33.400]trying to foster an inclusive conversation,
[00:44:36.480]I feel comfortable because I get the sense that my beliefs
[00:44:40.800]line up well with the beliefs that are vastly represented in this room.
[00:44:46.360]But If I didn't lean that way politically, I probably wouldn't
[00:44:50.880]feel inclined to share it just because I think I would feel outnumbered.
[00:44:55.800]So that's something to keep in mind.
[00:44:57.200]Like how many people are in the conversation and
[00:45:00.200]is it very clear which way those people lean?
[00:45:03.200]Because even just the peer pressure to stay silent survive the next hour,
[00:45:07.920]I think is something that a lot of students would feel here.
[00:45:11.320]And I would I would take
[00:45:14.040]that's a really nice illustration of
[00:45:18.000]like this is outside of my academic expertise a little bit,
[00:45:20.640]but I've been trying to think through it as a general statement, like
[00:45:24.760]there sort of an ongoing debate about like is free speech
[00:45:27.480]imperiled generally and on campus specifically?
[00:45:30.560]And, you know, I have to say, compared to when I work in politics,
[00:45:34.000]the debates that I have in academia are much more like vigorous
[00:45:38.280]and like much better on all the dimensions that I care about.
[00:45:42.720]And we disagree, like, and are willing to voice disagreements
[00:45:45.320]very strongly with each other about things regularly.
[00:45:48.840]But I think that is the product of like people think of free speech
[00:45:52.680]as something that you create by not restricting speech.
[00:45:55.920]And I kind of have been coming to think of it more as a free speech,
[00:46:00.200]as an environment,
[00:46:01.200]or it's the product of a series of choices about the conditions under
[00:46:04.440]which a set of people with disagreeing views are able to come together
[00:46:07.760]and the understanding of like, what are you going to be talking about?
[00:46:10.760]What are the valid bases of disagreement?
[00:46:13.040]And also like, what are the conditions under
[00:46:15.080]which we allow that disagreement to be expressed.
[00:46:16.800]This is why I really value your work both actually,
[00:46:20.240]because the even though, you know, when I have my
[00:46:23.760]like angry Twitter person hat on like
[00:46:29.160]the and sort of can
[00:46:31.600]try to sort of debate with you about parts of that project
[00:46:35.280]like the fundamental reality of like you can't persuade
[00:46:38.480]someone that you don't respect remains
[00:46:42.040]and so yeah so this is where like I'm still actively thinking through it,
[00:46:45.840]so I'm going to awkwardly trail off now. But,
[00:46:48.880]but, but I think that's a really good illustration of how we have to create
[00:46:51.840]spaces in which free speech can happen and thinking through
[00:46:55.280]how do we do that?
[00:46:59.040]You have to be.
[00:47:08.720]Yeah.
[00:47:09.120]So I and this goes back to when she was speaking, but I would say
[00:47:13.240]the biggest thing that gets in the way of having a conversation on this campus
[00:47:16.920]is definitely that maybe not a fear that you're safe to express yourself,
[00:47:21.680]but the just the not being
[00:47:24.720]so stubborn in your ways that you choose to discuss.
[00:47:28.360]I've found that I've met a lot of people on campus on both the right
[00:47:32.760]and the left that, you know, you'll start talking
[00:47:36.000]on a subject or an issue
[00:47:39.400]and they'll say what they believe and then that's it.
[00:47:42.720]There's no further discussion.
[00:47:44.880]They'll resort to strawman arguments calling.
[00:47:48.680]I've heard it's so common for people to call each other fascist these days.
[00:47:54.480]That's the one word that I hear everywhere I go.
[00:47:58.040]And as a political science student, it's it's frustrating.
[00:48:03.240]Like even in my classes,
[00:48:05.600]people don't want to argue
[00:48:09.360]the most arguments
[00:48:11.000]or debate that I've ever seen that's productive and ongoing is with students
[00:48:16.600]who are in political science, students who are moderate on the issues,
[00:48:20.400]who maybe don't have that much background, but they're more open to talking
[00:48:25.040]and I think it's getting really hard
[00:48:28.240]for the people who want to go into poli sci,
[00:48:31.440]who want to go into being in public places a position
[00:48:34.800]because they're just they're saying, no, no,
[00:48:39.280]I it's so much harder to try and, B,
[00:48:44.320]find that ground if people are unwilling to really
[00:48:49.200]continue conversation.
[00:48:51.520]You're making the best argument yet for a general education
[00:48:54.960]curriculum because all I see, I see love
[00:48:59.040]and I love the College of Arts and Sciences, but the people who are
[00:49:02.080]not in this room are from other units of our campus. And
[00:49:07.000]that says something too.
[00:49:08.920]They tend to
[00:49:10.920]pursue majors and occupations
[00:49:13.240]in which political opinions
[00:49:15.800]may or may be undercurrent, but are not front and center.
[00:49:20.280]Okay,
[00:49:21.040]but maybe those are the people with whom conversations should be held more often.
[00:49:24.880]Yet we
[00:49:26.440]we don't touch much
[00:49:28.480]in everyday life.
[00:49:36.160]My freshman year, I took a science class for the honors program
[00:49:39.800]where we had like debates on like CRISPR and stuff.
[00:49:43.840]And I just felt that that was like something really interesting
[00:49:47.600]because we just had discussions about that
[00:49:51.960]aren't necessarily brought up in like discussions like this
[00:49:54.960]because they're so like in the future and stuff like that.
[00:49:59.120]And then, yeah, now
[00:50:04.640]that while passing the mic that way I'm in the English department,
[00:50:09.160]I usually get primarily humanities majors,
[00:50:14.320]but I've been teaching on other stuff in which I'm having primarily
[00:50:19.680]some confusion here.
[00:50:22.200]Business majors and engineering majors
[00:50:25.680]area.
[00:50:26.600]We're going to make the political science graduate students on a question panel.
[00:50:30.640]We see you.
[00:50:32.800]There is no escape, but
[00:50:39.240]go for it. I'm
[00:50:46.040]having conversations with people in colleges really hard.
[00:50:48.840]I'll try to start slowly, but I'm sorry
[00:50:53.040]and I feel like a
[00:50:56.520]like one one way to talk to someone
[00:50:59.520]that you're really like so far disagreeing with is
[00:51:05.520]I guess like
[00:51:06.960]one way I it's kind of easy to talk about
[00:51:09.240]this is abortion just because it's a good example
[00:51:12.320]when one side is just so opposite for you, whatever.
[00:51:17.200]I find that like looking at history is a different way of engaging with people
[00:51:22.160]specifically because when we talk about abortion, it's like a
[00:51:25.200]two, like ideal types, almost like a two universal categories
[00:51:30.000]that it's like almost like a logic that you can't argue against.
[00:51:33.080]But when you talk about the conditions that in history that made that an issue
[00:51:38.040]that people cared about in the first place,
[00:51:39.880]that like unlocks the key because they can argue against a logic
[00:51:42.600]all day and get nowhere with it. But if you
[00:51:47.160]it takes more work
[00:51:48.120]for them to argue against history, I guess.
[00:51:52.240]And so
[00:51:54.280]it's going to be more productive anyways if you're talking about real life
[00:51:57.240]and not just made up scenarios.
[00:51:58.800]And so I find that history is more useful, especially in that kind of context.
[00:52:03.200]And so if you are annoyed by someone keeps talking to you about something
[00:52:07.320]you don't want to just like learn about the history of what they're saying,
[00:52:11.000]learn about the conditions that produced whatever thought is even possible
[00:52:14.640]for them to have at the time. That's how I go about it.
[00:52:17.200]And I think that's that's served me way better
[00:52:20.280]than just going at it
[00:52:23.400]and saying it's it's God, it's this, it's that I don't know.
[00:52:26.480]But I
[00:52:29.040]think I think that's a really
[00:52:31.040]insightful point because I find in my own classes,
[00:52:35.640]my history classes, that
[00:52:38.800]sometimes we can have really difficult conversations
[00:52:41.560]about really difficult things because we can talk about it
[00:52:45.120]as a past thing rather than, Oh no, so we can talk about rape.
[00:52:50.880]In the past, I teach women's and gender history so
[00:52:53.920]we can talk about rape, we can talk about abortion, we can talk about reproduction
[00:52:57.960]and all these kinds of issues that are really,
[00:53:00.840]really intense for people right now.
[00:53:03.240]But if we can put it on to past actors
[00:53:07.120]and sort of talk about what it meant to them,
[00:53:11.040]we can provide a little bit of distance
[00:53:14.040]and so then it makes it a little bit easier to talk about.
[00:53:17.280]I was really thinking this discussion reminded me of the day
[00:53:21.800]after the 2016 election when I came to my women's and gender history class.
[00:53:27.480]And, you know, I think most of the students in the class
[00:53:32.560]and probably me too, were all expecting we were going to have like some sort of
[00:53:37.360]historic day in the women's and gender history class where we talked about
[00:53:41.400]there's the first female president who's been elected and instead, you know,
[00:53:46.320]it was just this really for I'd say 90% of the students in that class.
[00:53:52.360]They were crying.
[00:53:53.520]They were upset.
[00:53:54.480]But then there were other students who were quite happy
[00:53:57.360]with the election results.
[00:53:59.120]And it was a really
[00:54:02.720]it was a really day, obviously, for
[00:54:05.480]for a lot of different people, for a lot of different reasons.
[00:54:08.760]But I actually think we somehow
[00:54:11.360]managed to have a really good discussion that day.
[00:54:14.400]You know, like would you put aside what was on the syllabus?
[00:54:18.280]And we actually talked about what had happened with the election.
[00:54:23.520]And I felt really good because the people who were part of that 10% who were real
[00:54:27.880]happy with the election felt like they could talk and say something.
[00:54:32.280]But some sometimes they would say things like, Well, it's been really hard being
[00:54:35.880]in this class where there's 90% of you who are like the opposite of me. But
[00:54:41.040]so thank you for that insight.
[00:54:42.640]I think that's really interesting because sometimes I think that if we can
[00:54:45.920]distance things a little bit, it makes it a little bit easier to talk about,
[00:54:49.800]you know, all out in the literature.
[00:54:52.320]Does that as well.
[00:54:53.240]Yeah, fiction allows you to discuss things because it's not you,
[00:54:57.520]it's it's other people and it's fictional characters
[00:55:00.640]from, you know, across the historical spectrum.
[00:55:03.840]So I often have wonderful
[00:55:07.520]rich and moving conversations about things like rape, reading
[00:55:11.680]Shakespeare's long form poem, The Rape of Lucrece,
[00:55:15.240]which one would not think would do that, perhaps,
[00:55:18.800]but actually is one of the most kind of
[00:55:22.640]evocative and productive things that we did reading of the class.
[00:55:26.440]Even though it was written 400 years ago by a man. So
[00:55:31.840]following up on that, we
[00:55:34.360]want to hear
[00:55:36.960]from you on the ground.
[00:55:38.680]How about that?
[00:55:39.840]So how do we create spaces where
[00:55:44.120]we disagree,
[00:55:45.720]whether or not the words for this work is good for others
[00:55:49.920]and how we find common ground?
[00:55:53.480]Actually, I want to pick up on something
[00:55:56.760]that you brought up about persuasion,
[00:55:59.360]because listening to all I think that was actually a key here
[00:56:02.520]is that if we've given up on the idea that we can actually persuade other people,
[00:56:06.480]then we have no motivation to either exchange ideas with them or to listen.
[00:56:11.240]Because in order to be persuasive,
[00:56:12.840]you have to understand where somebody is coming from.
[00:56:15.240]You have to understand their position, be able to demonstrate to them
[00:56:19.080]that you understand their position in order to kind of occupy
[00:56:22.200]a rhetorical space of a place of trust so that they're like, okay, well,
[00:56:26.160]I may not trust this person, but they get me.
[00:56:28.360]They get what I'm saying, at least
[00:56:31.000]And then from there you can start trying to figure out ways
[00:56:34.320]what is the best way to bridge
[00:56:37.320]the space between where they are and where I want to move them to be.
[00:56:41.120]Right.
[00:56:41.480]You know, the good goal of rhetoric, right,
[00:56:45.120]is to figure out how to persuade people to move them to a new place.
[00:56:49.120]And and the first step in all of that is listening
[00:56:52.280]and to demonstrating to them that you understand where they are.
[00:56:55.560]And, you know,
[00:56:56.720]if we give up on persuasion and then we give up on that listening to.
[00:57:00.360]And so I think we need to commit
[00:57:02.680]to the idea that it's actually possible to bring people to your side
[00:57:07.560]on whatever whatever issue is under debate.
[00:57:10.800]And that would be my initial,
[00:57:14.160]you know, how we reach common ground eventually, if it's desirable in any given
[00:57:19.440]moment, is to at least start by showing you've got where they're starting
[00:57:24.960]and are calling political science to your spectrum
[00:57:28.480]as shown in some of this research, that having I knew that I was going to do
[00:57:31.680]this, that that being able to find
[00:57:36.280]like is going to be really mad at me for how much I'm going to watch this.
[00:57:40.080]I'm sorry, because
[00:57:43.080]that that even on moral contentious issues.
[00:57:47.120]Right.
[00:57:47.440]If you're able to identify like pieces of your share
[00:57:51.800]of like your moral convictions, where you share convictions,
[00:57:55.720]you're able to at least not be so distant
[00:57:59.680]from each other or to try maintain social distance from each other
[00:58:04.880]in the face of
[00:58:05.880]differences on contentious moral issues.
[00:58:09.600]So and that's like a classic mode
[00:58:11.720]persuasion is to try to figure out
[00:58:14.640]what are the things that we agree on first and then identify.
[00:58:19.120]Okay, how is
[00:58:22.200]what what I'm trying to persuade you a another version
[00:58:26.760]or a different way of thinking about the position that you are in?
[00:58:30.720]And I think that's
[00:58:32.840]kind of along the same lines, what you said,
[00:58:37.080]I guess, in terms of how do we find common ground.
[00:58:41.280]I think that people have
[00:58:46.920]you know, I'm sort of sad to hear that people
[00:58:48.760]sometimes have this exchange
[00:58:51.960]where people just sort of say stuff and then they say stuff against other
[00:58:55.800]and then everyone just thinks they're terrible people
[00:58:59.240]and goes about their day.
[00:59:00.840]Like, I don't think that that's a
[00:59:03.840]productive form of debate.
[00:59:06.120]I hope it didn't feel scary or unproductive at the time.
[00:59:08.960]Maybe I'm sort of misunderstanding, but I think that at the end of the day,
[00:59:14.160]yeah, I'll I'll
[00:59:17.040]piggyback on Julia said in that believing that persuasion as possible
[00:59:20.400]means that you have to believe that you can learn about other people,
[00:59:23.960]that you can know them, that you can respect them for where they are at,
[00:59:27.480]and that is a necessary, if not sufficient condition for persuasion.
[00:59:32.400]I don't think you need to respect them, but I do think they need to understand.
[00:59:36.720]Sorry, I'm going to add a qualification that
[00:59:39.680]I think you need to respect them.
[00:59:41.480]But I don't you know, I don't think they're
[00:59:44.520]willing to even sit down and listen if you don't give them that basic,
[00:59:48.200]basic respect as a fellow human being, that you
[00:59:52.240]that you accept them as fellow human beings, even if you disagree.
[00:59:56.120]I also I you know, I agree that it's good to think that persuasion is possible.
[01:00:02.720]But what I see often happen is that if you don't persuade
[01:00:06.440]the other person, you just give up on them even stronger.
[01:00:09.720]I mean, it's like they're just such jerks.
[01:00:12.120]And so I'm not even going to talk to they won't be my friend.
[01:00:14.360]I'm not going to talk to my Aunt Alice anymore because she won't.
[01:00:17.160]I tried to persuade her and she won't listen.
[01:00:19.240]And, you know, that's it, period.
[01:00:21.960]So I, I do think there has to be a level of respect,
[01:00:25.600]and I think that persuasion is fine.
[01:00:27.920]But I don't want people to think that that's the goal,
[01:00:31.400]that you have to persuade them to change their mind.
[01:00:34.560]I also think we just need to do a much better job.
[01:00:37.920]And the discussion here, I think symbolizes that is that
[01:00:42.400]we need to do a better job teaching people how to handle disagreement.
[01:00:47.840]We need to do a better job of getting people to feel comfortable
[01:00:52.000]with disagreement.
[01:00:53.040]And that needs to start early on.
[01:00:54.880]I mean, I think by the time you get to college,
[01:00:57.360]it's a little it's a little hard to do that.
[01:00:59.280]I think it needs to be earlier. And I think we need to
[01:01:03.800]it's just really
[01:01:04.520]training, you know, how do you handle a difficult conversation?
[01:01:08.720]And there's lots of work on that.
[01:01:10.800]We know what we need to do.
[01:01:12.960]And I just think we need
[01:01:13.920]to get that at an earlier age so that people can understand it.
[01:01:17.040]I also think I'll reiterate what Margaret said earlier.
[01:01:19.800]You know, the college of Arts and Sciences is so important because it gets people
[01:01:25.200]to think about problems from so many different perspectives.
[01:01:29.320]And we need that.
[01:01:30.480]I mean, if everybody's just looking at something from the perspective of, say,
[01:01:34.440]engineering or from business or from, you know, it's
[01:01:38.360]I mean, I'm not saying they all agree on everything and those in those areas,
[01:01:42.320]but here we've got people in the sciences and the humanities
[01:01:46.000]and social sciences and coming at stuff from such diverse points of view.
[01:01:50.120]And I think that's healthy.
[01:01:51.360]I love it.
[01:01:57.360]So for me, the the whole issue of persuasion is a tall it's a tall order,
[01:02:03.480]okay?
[01:02:04.160]I don't think it's my job to persuade anybody of anything.
[01:02:09.120]At the end of the day, persuasion
[01:02:10.720]is still about attitudes and opinions.
[01:02:14.960]And for me, what matters is what people do, not what they say.
[01:02:20.360]So my goal post
[01:02:21.880]would be regarded as of whether I persuade you that I'm right
[01:02:26.800]and I persuade you to work with me on a common goal.
[01:02:31.640]Okay, so actions speaks louder than words to me,
[01:02:35.840]and that means common ground
[01:02:40.200]to me.
[01:02:40.560]Common ground.
[01:02:41.640]This is going to sound very rationalistic.
[01:02:44.560]Common ground is a means towards an end.
[01:02:46.800]It's not an end in and of itself.
[01:02:48.880]When we make common ground, an end in and of itself,
[01:02:51.840]we're just going to be wallowing in public discourse.
[01:02:55.080]If you actually want to do something, whether it's about climate change
[01:02:58.200]or infant mortality or whatever your pick up favorite issue is
[01:03:04.760]what are you going to do
[01:03:07.320]and where can we find where is the ground on actions?
[01:03:11.240]We can take weakening stores as opposed to where's the common ground in
[01:03:15.960]attitudes we all
[01:03:27.360]we all.
[01:03:29.520]Well, I don't have a whole lot to say,
[01:03:32.640]but I really agree with Beth that respect is so key
[01:03:36.920]and not as an end in itself, but as also being a talks about.
[01:03:43.200]It's that if we want to solve the problems that we see all around
[01:03:47.280]us, that we need to find ways to work together.
[01:03:51.480]And I feel like to work together.
[01:03:53.280]We have to respect each other.
[01:03:54.640]And I mean, that's a tall order, though.
[01:03:57.160]I mean, it's hard to respect somebody
[01:03:58.920]who you violently disagree with about lots of issues, but
[01:04:04.480]I was thinking about another thing I was thinking about
[01:04:07.080]as everyone's talking, as I just learned recently of this cool project
[01:04:11.280]that some people have proposed.
[01:04:15.520]Louanne I always get her name wrong.
[01:04:18.240]Consultant in anthropology.
[01:04:21.360]She is working on this project where with some people at UNC
[01:04:25.920]and they are going to be going out and doing interviews
[01:04:29.760]and gathering knowledge from farmers,
[01:04:33.400]ranchers, rural folks in Nebraska with the aim of
[01:04:38.560]these are the people on the front lines of climate change.
[01:04:42.120]These are the people who have to deal
[01:04:43.920]with it in their livelihood, in their daily lives.
[01:04:47.840]And so they're going to be doing they are going out
[01:04:51.760]with an attitude of respect.
[01:04:54.240]They are not going out and saying we need to persuade
[01:04:57.560]these people that climate change is real and we need to get them to act on it.
[01:05:00.960]No, they're going out and saying these people know a lot.
[01:05:04.560]They have experienced this firsthand.
[01:05:07.240]They are experiencing these weather extremes and these floods
[01:05:10.680]and these and so they have a lot of knowledge to share.
[01:05:14.080]That's a really different way to approach a problem than to think
[01:05:17.600]we're the all knowing people and we're going out
[01:05:19.920]and we're going to show them what they should be doing.
[01:05:22.800]It's more thinking, we're partners,
[01:05:26.480]we have this big problem to solve and we know you have knowledge,
[01:05:31.320]you have skill, you have experience, and we need to know what you can offer.
[01:05:36.640]And so that to me is are really I'm always searching
[01:05:39.440]for these kind of models of people who are finding ways
[01:05:43.920]to overcome these big divisive barriers that we have.
[01:05:47.800]And that to me is like a really good example of that
[01:05:50.760]and how it's really predicated on basic respect.
[01:05:56.400]And so I feel like
[01:05:57.360]that's that's super important toward moving
[01:06:01.160]toward the resolution of some of the major problems
[01:06:03.960]we face.
[01:06:07.440]I know that's a warm, fuzzy note to end on.
[01:06:09.840]May I?
[01:06:11.040]Of course, had my SO as the one who threw in.
[01:06:14.360]I don't think it's necessary.
[01:06:15.440]I mean, I think partially we've had three or four different definitions
[01:06:19.240]of what constitutes respect.
[01:06:20.880]And, you know,
[01:06:23.160]and I guess I would say that there are positions
[01:06:26.200]that I do not respect in the world that I will not, you know,
[01:06:30.360]and and I think that that has to do with one moral position.
[01:06:33.880]And that, you know, I think that the line that we don't need to ask everybody
[01:06:37.760]to cross in order to be able to work functionally towards a shared goal.
[01:06:42.400]And that I think, is right that the you know, like we need to find a way
[01:06:47.400]to commit to actions that will benefit us in our society,
[01:06:51.560]even if we massively disrespect someone for holding an opinion
[01:06:56.040]that is beyond the pale in your estimation.
[01:06:59.520]But we still need to find a way to say, all right, but we're going to work
[01:07:02.880]together on the thing that will benefit both of us.
[01:07:06.320]And perhaps that's what that means about, you know, respecting the basic human
[01:07:11.400]equals and that sense, right, that that's a more kind of abstract way
[01:07:14.800]in which we acknowledge that everyone has the right to exist in a certain space.
[01:07:19.760]And, you know, to to to have access to basic human needs
[01:07:25.280]and that we might have shared interests that would, you know,
[01:07:28.960]then it would behoove us to work together on.
[01:07:30.840]But I do think there's a difference there about that.
[01:07:33.440]I would defend in terms of not needing to respect
[01:07:37.880]where everybody is in terms of their position, but also doesn't
[01:07:41.040]preclude my trying to persuade that person
[01:07:44.320]and to really understand, you know, like
[01:07:46.600]where exactly they are coming to that thing that I think is terrible.
[01:07:50.480]Right.
[01:07:50.760]You know, because again, if I'm ever going to persuade that person
[01:07:55.520]to leave that position, then I really need to understand it.
[01:07:59.280]So I don't think either persuasion or acting together necessarily required
[01:08:02.840]more than a kind of basic acknowledgment of the right
[01:08:05.880]to be in a certain space based on one's inanity.
[01:08:08.520]And maybe, you know, like I would commit to that respect for everybody, but
[01:08:14.160]I wonder for the students
[01:08:15.840]is this is something that I've read and I don't actually know whether that's true.
[01:08:19.800]It is. It
[01:08:24.440]Or do you observe others
[01:08:28.800]taking disagreement as a personal affront
[01:08:33.720]that do you feel just personally, as a human
[01:08:36.640]being disrespected because someone disagrees with you?
[01:08:42.280]It's something that I've heard.
[01:08:43.400]And to me, those are two pairs of shoes.
[01:08:46.120]All right.
[01:08:46.960]So as a tweet, if you ever want to become a teacher,
[01:08:50.200]you can't take things personally, okay?
[01:08:53.080]You just can't.
[01:08:54.080]You will not survive.
[01:08:57.080]My guess is if you're a politician,
[01:08:58.680]same thing.
[01:09:02.840]Lots of occupations, come to think of it.
[01:09:04.560]But is that how you experience it?
[01:09:06.240]Is that to you a sign of disrespect if someone disagrees with you?
[01:09:09.680]Because if so, of course one's going to ever disagree
[01:09:12.680]with you, Right.
[01:09:17.400]Would that explain what's happening in our classrooms?
[01:09:24.680]Wouldn't
[01:09:30.200]you want to open
[01:09:34.280]our welcome
[01:09:34.920]continue this discussion to thank you all so much for coming tonight.
[01:09:38.760]And thank you again to the panel for
[01:09:47.080]comments
[01:09:47.560]lecture series on Sustainable Futures
[01:09:51.440]and more global growth in science classes.
[01:09:54.280]And that's where I speak
[01:09:59.160]to everyone.
[01:09:59.880]Please, please.

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