Encouraging Civility

Hussain believes it’s possible, as long as students understand their roles are both to voice their own opinions and listen openly to others.

“Lots of people are keen that their voices are heard, and I do want students to have their say,” Hussain says. “But the more important thing: can they also listen to each other? That gets to the echo chamber problem. Can you listen to someone with a different perspective in an active way and take them seriously?”

Talking Politics

At Duke, Hussain is not the only instructor asking this question. Across campus, faculty members are paying close attention to the intellectual climate in their classrooms, determined to break from the rushing tide of polarization. It’s a challenging societal slog; nationwide, the share of Americans who describe themselves as uniformly conservative or liberal has doubled in the last two decades, to 21 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.

The landscape is daunting. While nobody at Duke is declaring victory, many are happy to take on the challenge.

Can you listen to someone with a different perspective in an active way and take them seriously?”

Nasser Hussain

Hussain’s Civic Life and Thought initiative aims to create safe spaces in classrooms, residence halls and other settings where students can explore big, important ideas free of judgment.

This semester, his class is simply called The Presidential Election. This fall, Hussain’s students – about 18 in each of two sections – are closely following the Harris/Trump race. They read media coverage, analyze speeches, and attend campaign events like a recent Harris rally in nearby Greensboro.

In one recent class period, the entire 75 minutes was spent discussing the presidential debate – which had taken place the prior week – as well as the Harris campaign event, which the entire class attended.

The class functioned as an intellectual wind-up toy. Hussain asked a question about each candidate’s body language during the debate. Several students instantly raised their hands, kicking off a free-flowing conversation that rarely ebbed. Hussain guided discussion this way and that, making sure everyone had a say. He occasionally raised specific topics – like how each candidate used fear as a tool in campaigns.

And while there was disagreement, it never got ugly.

“Everyone has their opinions, but it leads to more discussions than disagreements,” said Alex Malkin, a sophomore from suburban New York City. “Everyone is pretty reasonable. We talk about campaign strategies a lot, and I’ve noticed the class is willing to acknowledge strengths and weaknesses with both candidates.”

Malkin is no politics junkie. She’s majoring in biology with a minor in global health and took this class as an introduction to both candidates. She credits Hussain for setting guidelines for respectful discussion; it creates a better environment for deep and layered debates than students might find on their own on campus, because nobody wants to declare ground rules before talking politics over a slice of pizza in the dining hall.

“He says we have a judgment-free zone, basically, and that really resonates with the students and makes them feel comfortable right away,” she said. “Students sometimes disagree with each other and challenge each other, but it’s rarely if ever disrespectful.”

An instructor’s ability to mediate without bias is key, said Zander Pitrus, a junior from San Diego. Politically conservative, Pitrus is president of Duke’s College Republicans chapter and says it is difficult in some classes to express a less popular view freely.

“It’s great to have professors who are open-minded and serve just as a mediator and not inject their beliefs into it,” he said. “Those classes let students learn how to constructively disagree. It takes a professor that has some humility, that’s open-minded, a professor who embraces disagreement.”

The Good Life

Hussain is one of many Duke professors using firm guidelines to foster civility in the classroom. Across campus, scholars are being specific about expectations on course syllabi and re-emphasizing the principles in class.

Polly Ha believes in this. A professor in the Duke Divinity School and the History department, Ha leads “The Good Life” course, which explores how religions and philosophies influence a person’s ability to live a good and satisfying life. On the syllabus, Ha tells her students to practice charity and cultivate intellectual friendship through humility, and to aim for truth, not victory.

“The Good Life” explores everything from the natural sciences to Buddhist and Confucian perspectives, a wide philosophical spectrum to get students thinking broadly. It is heavy on class participation; before each class, students must submit a question about a current topic, and Ha and other instructors lead the class in discussing them.

The class is the largest of about a dozen courses within Duke’s Transformative Ideas program, all of which tackle big, worldly, oft-controversial topics in areas like ethics, religion, politics and philosophy. All promote respectful discussion.

The program was created to address the twin challenges of declining mental health among young people and the increasing reluctance by college students to speak their mind frankly for fear of brushback or scorn from their peers, Duke officials have said. This was demonstrated both anecdotally and through some informal surveys by professors that revealed significant percentages of students were reluctant to offer opinions in public.

“We heard that even students who felt like they were in the majority view were likely to self-censor,” Ha said. “They didn’t want to even raise questions because they felt peer pressure through social media and their peer groups.”

Practice charity: listen well to others and try to understand their arguments and concerns. Interpret others’ words so that they convey their argument in its best and strongest form; when you critique an idea, try to focus on the argument itself, not the person who said it; (b) practice intellectual humility: recognize we are all learning and growing (even your professors!), and that we can learn from one another; (c) aim at truth, not victory.

From the syllabus for "The Good Life," taught by Polly Ha

In one recent class, Ha co-taught with Abdullah Antepli, the new director of Duke’s Civil Discourse Project. Ha introduced ‘transhumanism,’ a movement that advocates radical enhancement of the human body through new and future technologies. Antepli, who formerly served as Duke’s first Muslim chaplain and director of the campus Center for Muslim Life, then discussed how the Muslim faith might view transhumanism.

Both instructors elicited plenty of student participation in the class.

“They have such a diverse faculty for this class and they’re very open-minded themselves and very open to questions, comments and concerns,” said Shira Shasha, a sophomore from New York City. “It’s definitely exposing me to other ideas and perspectives.”

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