Facilitating Political Discussions: Workshop Materials
This guide has so many useful workshop exercises and handouts that it's hard to decide what to recommend! Let's start with the vignettes in the Troubleshooting Exercise (page 23), which can give instructors an opportunity to plan in advance how they might respond to hot moments and the Facilitator's Job Description (page 11), which is a valuable exercise for any instructor utilizing classroom discussion.
To fulfill their research, teaching, and civic missions effectively, American colleges and university need to provide students with opportunities to study and deliberate the most difficult and politically charged issues facing communities, the nation, and the world. We envision campus communities that achieve those objectives as places where uncomfortable and controversial topics can be named and discussed freely, without the threat of unreasonable suppression and in ways that preserve collegial learning environments. We believe that dissent and conflict can be transformative catalysts and present the proverbial "teachable moment" for student reflection, study, growth, and change.
The current national context for political conversations has been characterized as divisive and ineffective. At the same time, hate speech and repeated, offensive language directed at people because of their gender, race, or other legally protected status can create toxic and discriminatory learning environments that cannot be ignored by institutional leaders. There is a dire need for students - and faculty and staff - to learn to create new norms that value both free expression and inclusion. We suspect that, because this balancing act is hard to do, professors and staff avoid doing it. Avoiding politically charged topics is bad for student learning and, ultimately, bad for democracy.