Bethany N. Morrison

I wrote this piece following an act of political violence that both shook higher education and contributed to the growing call to prepare our students for productive conversations across disagreement. I want to share the piece at the start of this collection for a couple of reasons: first, it motivates dialogue & deliberation as skills for a functioning democracy. Second, it underscores a key prerequisite: that we “lay a foundation of instructor care and classroom community before we ask students to take on this challenging, sometimes vulnerable work.” 

Bethany N. Morrison

Michael Lee starts each of this podcast’s short episodes by asking the guest to tell us “an argument story.” Sometimes the conversation moves on quickly, but I love it when the argument story ends up as the heart of the episode. The story Rachel Wahl shares in this episode is about a dialogue session between a queer student and a conservative evangelical student. The story is an important reminder of what exactly we are asking of students when we ask them to dialogue across meaningful differences and the lasting impact these conversations can have.

Bethany N. Morrison

If you’ve read a Chronicle of Higher Ed piece about civil discourse or dialogue across differences in the last two years—whether the tone is positive or critical—they likely mentioned the Constructive Dialogue Institute. Universities across the country are adopting CDI’s Perspectives online into their first-year student orientations (and educators can sign-up to explore this program at no-cost). I’m highlighting a guide here for a short classroom activity that builds a key component skill of dialogue: listening to understand, setting aside our impulses to evaluate, respond, or compare to ourselves. 

Bethany N. Morrison

Within the growing discussion in higher education about creating programs for dialogue and deliberation across differences, folks have raised a critical concern: approaches that do not account for imbalances in power can contribute to systems of inequity. While my first inclination was to recommend a piece that outlines this point (e.g. “Civility is Insufficient” by PACE), I’m sharing instead one particular classroom activity designed for students to recognize the impact of power imbalances. It also gives me an opportunity to draw your attention to the larger Collaborative Discussion Project and its “toolkit” of class activities.

Bethany N. Morrison

When I ask students to engage in a classroom discussion on a high-stakes topic, I worry about the possibility of heated, perhaps even disrespectful, arguments. In my experience, however, the more common challenge is getting students to voice a disagreement at all. The risks of social and academic censure may seem too high. This piece highlights two instructors who come at this challenge from different angles: Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg’s Pluralism Workbook uses short written reflections, where students can surface their fears and what might be gained from a difficult discussion, along with practicing skills and developing language to use in a difficult discussion. Alternatively, Sara Ahbel-Rappe illustrates how an extended role-play can encourage perspective-taking and provide students with some distance from their own deeply held positions.  

Bethany N. Morrison

This collection is about dialogue AND deliberation across differences, so while they share component skills, I want to dedicate attention to deliberation in these last two resources. In this short episode of the When We Disagree podcast, Martin Carcasson thoughtfully lays out the Venn diagram of dialogue, deliberation, and debate. This is its principal contribution to the collection. That said, the piece also stuck with me because it convinced me to reconsider the potential of debate—and I didn’t think I was open to that. 

Bethany N. Morrison

This blog series is written by faculty in a community dedicated to integrating deliberation into their coursework. I value the authors’ retrospective narratives on the whole semester of their deliberation redesign, including their initial intentions and assumptions, early failures, and what ultimately proved most impactful. I’m linking to one just piece in the series in this collection—not only does Kathleen Wessel exemplify the story-telling I find so helpful, I’m excited to highlight an example from the arts to bring home how instructors across the academy prepare our students to participate in a diverse democracy where folks will hold differing values, identities, and opinions.