Thanks, Sarah--this is a much-needed perspective on open inquiry and civil dialogue that's often overlooked. Everyone needs the intellectual freedom in their own minds first before being required to talk because often, we're conflicted, sorting through contrary evidence, and attempting to resolve something--or just being willing to say, "I don't know." Undergraduate students often don't have the faintest idea of what they really think and need time to ponder and reflect in the privacy of their own minds. Others, of course, have a lot of uninformed opinions and dominate class discussions, and therefore the faculty member has to manage that dynamic. And students who don't want to talk shouldn't be compelled to.
I do know that the organizations you've mentioned are concerned about all the self-censorship, and studies like the recent one done at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University show that students engage in either self-censorship or preference falsification because of fear of their peers, not because of faculty domination. I'm quite willing to believe that civil dialogue initiatives may be too contrived or too artificial to address that issue.
Two initiatives that I know about that might offer useful alternatives in shifting the culture for better discussions and civil dialogue:
The Tufts University Center for Expanding Viewpoints (focused on institution-level viewpoint diversity and multiple venues for open discussion and debate).
The "Disagree with a Professor" initiative at the University of Virginia (which encourages small group participation of students together with a faculty member on a piece of the faculty member's research--so students learn how to disagree with the professor and potentially with each other in safe way, but certainly not through "safetyism")
Here is another example of an initiative, at Dartmouth, focused on civil disagreements in the classroom that might be an alternative to the civil dialogue projects that are widely adopted.
I'm all in favor of privacy of thought. I think Neil Postman's advice to reduce the number of things you feel obliged to have an opinion on is a good one. Also if there were a little more reinforcement of the idea that some things are actually hard to understand, that would be helpful. And a polite formula for saying "I don't want to talk about that, leave me alone." would be nice.
I run a small charity that does hands-on science and engineering for children. At present the public schools are saturated with ideology about science: internal combustion engine bad, car that runs on batteries good, Elon Musk bad however, trains good (I think), nuclear power bad, etc. One reason I started the organization is that so children could be exposed to ideas about energy and power w/out having to bathe in ideology at the same time.
Thanks, Sarah--this is a much-needed perspective on open inquiry and civil dialogue that's often overlooked. Everyone needs the intellectual freedom in their own minds first before being required to talk because often, we're conflicted, sorting through contrary evidence, and attempting to resolve something--or just being willing to say, "I don't know." Undergraduate students often don't have the faintest idea of what they really think and need time to ponder and reflect in the privacy of their own minds. Others, of course, have a lot of uninformed opinions and dominate class discussions, and therefore the faculty member has to manage that dynamic. And students who don't want to talk shouldn't be compelled to.
I do know that the organizations you've mentioned are concerned about all the self-censorship, and studies like the recent one done at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University show that students engage in either self-censorship or preference falsification because of fear of their peers, not because of faculty domination. I'm quite willing to believe that civil dialogue initiatives may be too contrived or too artificial to address that issue.
Two initiatives that I know about that might offer useful alternatives in shifting the culture for better discussions and civil dialogue:
The Tufts University Center for Expanding Viewpoints (focused on institution-level viewpoint diversity and multiple venues for open discussion and debate).
https://expandingviewpoints.tufts.edu/
The "Disagree with a Professor" initiative at the University of Virginia (which encourages small group participation of students together with a faculty member on a piece of the faculty member's research--so students learn how to disagree with the professor and potentially with each other in safe way, but certainly not through "safetyism")
https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-students-invited-disagree-professor
Thanks again for the article and for your work on privacy literacy!
Good to hear people agreeing — I have felt like a lone voice!
Here is another example of an initiative, at Dartmouth, focused on civil disagreements in the classroom that might be an alternative to the civil dialogue projects that are widely adopted.
https://pep.dartmouth.edu/news/2024/04/disagreements-initiatives#:~:text=The%20Political%20Economy%20Project%20invites,and%20economic%20questions%20through%20co%2Dteaching.
I'm all in favor of privacy of thought. I think Neil Postman's advice to reduce the number of things you feel obliged to have an opinion on is a good one. Also if there were a little more reinforcement of the idea that some things are actually hard to understand, that would be helpful. And a polite formula for saying "I don't want to talk about that, leave me alone." would be nice.
I run a small charity that does hands-on science and engineering for children. At present the public schools are saturated with ideology about science: internal combustion engine bad, car that runs on batteries good, Elon Musk bad however, trains good (I think), nuclear power bad, etc. One reason I started the organization is that so children could be exposed to ideas about energy and power w/out having to bathe in ideology at the same time.