The news cycle is dizzying. To organize my thoughts around US foreign aid and the closure of USAID, I wrote a piece that came out in March in The Conversation. The British aid agency DFID suffered a similar fate to the US Agency for International Development. Link below.
I also had a chance to speak briefly about this on TV and radio – see WCAX and KCBS stories.
I’m not sure this comparison offers much hope for champions of foreign aid, but it does offer context.
(the essay below will be published on 2/20/25 in the Middlebury Campus opinion section)
In 2017, controversial speaker Charles Murray came to Middlebury a few weeks after the inauguration of President Trump. Our liberal campus was feeling quite raw. Minorities were under scrutiny by a new presidential administration. In that environment, a group brought a speaker to Middlebury to talk about a challenging topic and announced the event with very little notice.
On Thursday, Brianna Wu and Leor Sapir are scheduled to appear on our campus. Anyone can find their essays and talks with a quick Google search. Why then spend resources to bring outside speakers such as these to campus? In theory, outside speaker events could be an invaluable opportunity to have a meaningful dialogue, if we have taken time to consider this critical question: “Under what conditions do our students listen openly and seek understanding?” What good is free speech if nobody is listening?
After the upheaval surrounding Charles Murray’s visit, I was asked to sit on a twelve-member committee of faculty, students and staff representing very different viewpoints. Without explicitly saying so, we followed two norms that are necessary for the functioning of democracy: mutual toleration and forbearance. We had to show up with both a willingness to disagree and a recognition that antagonizing other parties in our iterated conversations could end our work together. Forbearance is a recognition that difficult conversations take time — if you start with the most divisive issue without treating the other party with respect, they will just leave.
The Hamilton Forum, the organizer of Thursday’s talk, aspires “to contribute to a culture of reasoned, civil discussion across political and intellectual differences.” As many of my colleagues know, I have long worked on fostering dialogue across difference. But since 2017, I have been consistently concerned that we are focusing too much on who gets to speak (the mutual toleration) without enough attention to whether anyone is listening (the forbearance).
Our job is to bring new ideas and new information to our students. If our students spend four years here and do not have their prior beliefs challenged, then we aren’t doing our job. As democratic practice, education thus requires mutual toleration. But it also requires forbearance. As simply stated by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, people don’t think well when they feel personally insulted.
This conversation isn’t just uncomfortable – it feels unsafe for some members of our community. The new presidential administration issued an executive order on Jan. 20 that seeks to “enforce all sex-protective laws.” Timing matters.
Sometimes, the response is that our students are simply incapable of listening openly. That “snowflake” narrative is wrong. It is also dangerous for democracy and for education. Arthur Brooks, former president of the American Enterprise Institute, argues that the most dangerous emotion in a democracy is contempt — a combination of anger and disgust. Hatred, disdain and pity feed political polarization. These emotions also have no place in education, which proceeds from the basic ontological assumption that people can change and grow.
We do not have a lot of conservative voices on our campus. I worry that we are not preparing our students for a polarized America. I worry that feelings of isolation among a political minority are driving a move from frustration to anger to contempt. And I worry about the safety and well-being of trans and LGBQ+ members of our community.
But I also think we can do better than we did in 2017.
For trans folks and friends: you have my support. These events are opt-in and I hope you will care for yourself. Maybe attend a different gathering. A similar event from Vergennes several years ago was a model of more speech and joyful solidarity. Not going is also an option.
For the Hamilton Forum and other event hosts: critique is not the equivalent of silencing speech. The 2018 committee suggested that hosts announce talks early and reach out to other groups and departments. Lack of transparency and a short time frame makes it harder for people to engage, not easier.
For Brianna Wu and Leor Sapir: You are prominent people who have given lots of talks, so you likely have thought about the timing and setting. I hope you will speak to those as you engage with this corner of the United States.
For campus conservatives: there are other options on our campus. After the election, our community conversation at the Town Hall Theater had 70 attendees, including many Vermont Republicans. Students in a conflict transformation skills class got a hands-on workshop this fall from a Braver Angels representative addressing Red/Blue stereotypes. We are trying to structure constructive engagements across all sorts of differences, including political ideology.
This is the work of an intellectual and residential community. We are capable of doing it together.
This August, I took on a new role as director of the Conflict Transformation (CT) Collaborative at Middlebury. Before this, my work with the Engaged Listening Project at the College had brought me in as this grant was being developed. Moving from a focus on the undergraduate college to the director role follows the sudden loss of our provost this summer. I am grateful to Michelle McCauley (now interim provost) for the foundational work she did in launching the CT Collaborative. It has been wonderful to connect to colleagues at many different parts of Middlebury and I look forward to the work ahead.
The received wisdom among dialogue practitioners is that the online sphere is more likely to divide people than to foster mutual understanding. As our workplaces, social spaces, and college campuses have closed this spring, however, the digital realm is the *only* public sphere that we have available.
During the coronavirus pandemic, digital communication tools and social media have become invaluable in maintaining social connections at a time of physical distancing. My kids each lunch in a Google Hangout; college students are having parties over Zoom; I have been having a happy hour with old college friends. While partisanship and vitriol are still part of the internet, we are all learning a lot about the promise of the “digital public sphere.”
In effort to maintain and strengthen these relationships in a time of social distancing, I’ve been participating in several efforts at Middlebury via my role as faculty co-director of the Engaged Listening Project.
There is a lot of national attention to the return of a controversial speaker, Charles Murray, to Middlebury at the end of March. From the perspective of advancing dialogue on difficult subjects, I’ve been working on a few different private and soon-public projects. More in mid-March here, but reach out if you are curious!
In the meantime, I had an amazing virtual meeting with the leaders of the “Can We” project, setting up productive dialogues across difference for high school students. Learn about the project here: https://vimeo.com/309298751
I love podcasts. I usually listen to them on my morning runs and walks, looking out at the beautiful Vermont landscape and letting my mind wander. I used to try to only listen to “work” podcasts (related to my teaching and research about human rights, the UN, foreign policy, etc.), but now I find that I am happier and more relaxed if I just explore.
Are these podcasts part of some “digital public sphere?” I’d like to think that our ability to comfortably explore a wide range of ideas feeds back into our public lives and social relationships. So, as an experiment, I did a podcast episode with the Engaged Listening Project (of which I am one of the faculty directors). Way more work than I thought it would be, but also really rewarding. I got to work with great students and with my friend Brett Simison as producer. Will there be more? I don’t know yet – need Midd folks who want to keep talking on tape!
Links to Stitcher, iTunes, and transcript here.
I have a new role on campus as faculty director of the Engaged Listening project. In and out of the classroom, we are trying to create spaces for close listening and productive disagreements that build rather than undo the relationships that make up our intellectual community. This effort is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation and by dozens of students, staff, and faculty already doing great work in this space. http://engagedlistening.middcreate.net/
Some thoughts of mine around the blogosphere –
On running efforts at deliberation on a college campus (with Jin-Mi Sohn ’18)
On teaching about philanthropy and students as grantmakers (with Steve Viner)
On refugee politics in early 2017
One on the World Social Forum (WSF) meeting in Montreal from 2016 (with Jamie McCallum)
A couple of posts (here and here) on getting a job at a liberal arts college (with Amy Yuen)
One on sustainable development goals (SDGs) from 2015 (with Charlie MacCormack)
one on human rights NGOs from 2015
one on Oxfam and SodaStream from 2014