Encourage civility | Duke Today

Hussain believes it is possible, as long as students understand that their role is to both express their own opinions and listen openly to others.

“Many people want their voices to be heard, and I want students to have their say,” says Hussain. “But more importantly: can they also listen to each other? That gets to the problem of the echo chamber. Can you actively listen to someone with a different perspective and take them seriously?”

Talk about politics

At Duke, Hussain isn’t the only instructor asking this question. Across campus, faculty members are paying close attention to the intellectual climate in their classrooms, determined to break the rising tide of polarization. It is a challenging social task; Nationally, the share of Americans who describe themselves as uniformly conservative or liberal has doubled over the past two decades to 21 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.

The landscape is terrifying. While no one at Duke is declaring victory, many are happy to accept the challenge.

Can you actively listen to someone with a different perspective and take them seriously?”

Nasser Hussein

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

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

In a recent class period, the entire 75 minutes were spent discussing the presidential debate—which had taken place the week before—and the Harris campaign event, which the entire class attended.

The classroom acted as an intellectual wind-up toy. During the debate, Hussain asked a question about the body language of each candidate. Several students immediately raised their hands and began a free-flowing conversation that rarely faded away. Hussain led the discussion back and forth, making sure everyone had a say. Occasionally he would bring up specific topics, such as how each candidate used fear as a tool in campaigns.

And while there was disagreement, it never got ugly.

“Everyone has their opinion, but it creates more debate than disagreement,” said Alex Malkin, a college sophomore from the New York City suburbs. “Everyone is pretty reasonable. We talk a lot about campaign strategies and I have noticed that the class is willing to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of both candidates.”

Malkin is not a politics junkie. She is studying biology with a minor in global health and took this class as an introduction for both candidates. She commends Hussain for establishing guidelines for respectful discussions; it creates a better environment for deep and layered debates than students could find alone on campus, because no one wants to declare the ground rules before talking politics over a slice of pizza in the dining hall.

“He says we basically have a judgment-free zone, 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 that is rarely if ever disrespectful.”

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

“It’s great to have professors who are open-minded and only serve as mediators and don’t inject their beliefs into it,” he said. “These lessons teach students how to disagree constructively. It takes a professor who has some humility, who has an open mind, a professor who embraces differences of opinion.”

The good life

Hussain is one of many Duke professors who have strong guidelines to promote civility in the classroom. Across campus, scholars are specific about course curriculum expectations and re-emphasize classroom principles.

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

“The Good Life” explores everything from the natural sciences to Buddhist and Confucian perspectives, covering a broad philosophical spectrum to get students thinking broadly. It’s heavy on class participation; Before each class, students must submit a question on a current topic, and Ha and other instructors lead the class in discussing it.

The course is the largest of a dozen courses within Duke’s Transformative Ideas program, all of which tackle big, worldly, often controversial topics in areas such as ethics, religion, politics and philosophy. They all promote respectful discussion.

The program was created to address the dual challenges of declining mental health among young people and students’ increasing reluctance to express their opinions openly for fear of scorn or scorn by their peers, Duke officials said. This was demonstrated both anecdotally and through some informal surveys by professors, which found that significant percentages of students were reluctant to express their opinions in public.

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

Practice charity: listen carefully to others and try to understand their arguments and concerns. Interpret the words of others so that they convey their argument in the best and strongest form; when criticizing an idea, try to focus on the argument itself, not the person who said it; (b) practice intellectual humility: realize that we are all learning and growing (even your professors!), and that we can learn from each other; (c) seek truth, not victory.

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

In a 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 improvement of the human body through new and future technologies. Antepli, who previously 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 ensured high student participation in the class.

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

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