Teaching the Skills of Civil Discourse

Three years ago, when the owner of a national food chain made defamatory comments about the LGBT community, it became apparent that we need to help people at our University learn how to engage in controversy with civility.  The Council on Civic Engagement, whose membership is made up of faculty and staff from across campus, began discussing how we could contribute to helping people learn the skills of civil conversation.  Under the leadership of Dr. Jason Husser, Assistant Professor of Political Science and the Civic Engagement Fellow, in collaboration with the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement, two new programs were established to address civil discourse. 

Community Connections Forums

The goal of the Community Connections forums is to create thoughtful dialog with members of the university community as well as those who live in Alamance County and the surrounding area.

“Community Connections forums take on a lively format and consist in large part of a well-informed panel having an open conversation with audience members. Co-sponsored by Elon University and the (Burlington, N.C.) Times-News, the series features as many as four events each year,” according to Dr. Husser.

These forums have explored issues surrounding race relations, domestic violence, hunger, downtown revitalization, health care, gun violence and education.

Professor Husser moderates the events, and members of the Council on Civic Engagement recommend the panelists.  Topics are chosen through the input of community members and University faculty, staff and students.  

Deliberative Dialogues

Deliberative Dialogue is an approach to education that emphasizes inquiry, civility, and choice making. Deliberative learners explore complex topics in-depth, consider diverse perspectives on these topics, identify and work through tensions inherent to those views, and attempt to arrive at reasoned judgment.

Issue guides are available from the National Issues Forum www.nifi.org.  Detailed information on how to train facilitators and host Deliberative Dialogues is available on the site.  The North Carolina Campus Compact has hosted several statewide facilitator trainings.   Through these trainings, a group of faculty and staff members have learned about the powerful impact Deliberative Dialogues could have on teaching the skills of civil discourse.  After training faculty, staff and student facilitators on our campus, we have hosted two dialogues-one on Intellectual Climate and another on Immigration in America.  A third dialogue on Health Care is schedule for February. 

All three dialogues attracted about 90 participants each time and the feedback has been very positive.  Dialogue participants have enjoyed the facilitated process, the opportunity to hear other people’s perspectives and to realize that people share common goals even if their approach to solving problems is different.

These two programs illustrate the importance of faculty and staff members working together to tackle University-wide initiatives to improve in and out of classroom experiences for students.   Through quality collaborations, the skills of both groups are utilized for maximum impact.  

Dr. Jason Husser, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Civic Engagement Fellow, contributed to this post.