Civility and Dialogue

Frequent readers know I am a fan of Professor Patty Limerick at University of Colorado and Director of the Center of the American West who has been doing the “Frackingsense” series on oil and gas development. Rebecca Watson’s presentation is tomorrow. All the podcasts can be found here.

But the reason I brought up Professor Limerick today is that she is also interested, like us, in discourse and improving it.
To that end, she had an op-ed in yesterday’s Denver Post. Here’s the link and below is the op-ed.

Let’s aim to be politically direct, not politically correct
By Patty Limerick

We have gathered to pause and reflect

On the concept, “politically correct.”

While the right of free speech

Protects freedom to screech,

We’ll still make a claim on respect.

I invite you to join in the launching of a movement. My expectations are modest. I’m hoping to recruit and enlist just a few allies. Here is the core program of our movement: When heading into a conversation on a sensitive subject, drop “political correctness,” and replace it with “polite directness.”

Don’t decide what you think just yet. Instead, take a moment to visit my world as a professor teaching Western American studies. Let’s head straight back in time to my classroom on March 6.

Given the centrality of Mormonism in the West’s past, present and future, anyone teaching this course must devote time to that topic. Nonetheless, taking up this subject, a professor has reasons to feel on edge.

The digital world allows professors to scope out these circumstances with precision. You ask the students a multiple-choice question. They take out their clickers and choose a response. The responses appear on the screen as a bar graph.

On March 6, the clicker poll informs me that three students identified themselves as Mormons, and 12 students identified themselves as holders of anti-Mormon attitudes.

Looking at that bar graph, I know two things: I do not want the students who are Mormon to feel vulnerable for their religious beliefs, and I do not want to prevent students who want to learn more to feel uncomfortable about asking questions. I will intervene if anyone speaks in ways that denigrate or demean the Latter-day Saints, but I will also intervene if anyone tries to cast an honest question as an unmistakable expression of anti-Mormon prejudice. I am, in other words, trying to steer our course toward polite directness, not political correctness.

Sex and race barely begin the catalogue of issues that can create sensitivity over political correctness. Add just a few of the big ones (religion, culture, party affiliation, income inequality, fossil fuel use, etc.), and political correctness can seem close to imposing a monastic regime of silence on classrooms and on civil society. And, grimmest of all, it comes close to suppressing and penalizing curiosity, the one utterly essential and indispensable item in a teacher’s tool chest.

Almost half a century ago, I received a demonstration of the value of freely expressed honest curiosity. In our hometown, a friend and I had organized a workshop on race relations. The conversation among our participants limped along, hampered by caution and indirectness.

And then a close relative of mine came for a visit. After listening to concerns about injustices and getting more perplexed, she suddenly exclaimed, “Just what do you people want?”

I was mortified over my relative’s ignorance, expressed with unfettered use of phrasing that was “politically incorrect” long before the term was invented. And then I noticed that the conversation was thriving. My relative’s question had set the conversation free of nervous indirection.

As I have personal reasons to believe, a hopeful movement can gain crucial force and aim from a guiding limerick:

Education requires talking

With respect, not with scorn or with mocking.

Thus, it’s time to defect

From the politically correct,

And to open the doors we’ve been locking.

I don’t know why schools and class discussions can go the way of “political correctness”. I know some folks think “why go there, I’ll just be pounced upon, and I might get a bad grade.” But in my opinion, we are not helping people think or care (treat people who disagree with respect) and really not helping the world become a better place when the academy is not a safe place to dialogue.

I remember once when I administered the McIntire-Stennis program, I visited a large western university, the home of two noted forest ecologists with diverging worldviews. I commented to the administrator I was working with, “it must be very exciting for the students of these two famous folk to hear their dialogues.” And the administrator replied “their students are more like two armed camps, and the professors don’t dialogue about their differences.” In another western school, forest management and conservation were two separate departments (this served to combine budget and resource competition and back-biting with philosophical differences).

If I were in a position to influence academic programs, respectful discourse would be one of the main “learning goals.” “Why do you think that way?” is just as important a question as “what does that critter eat? IMHO.

Whew, I just got done with another quarter of school, which involved reading books and online discussion (and developing an early stage of a thesis proposal).

One thing I learned this quarter is that people can be civil even when discussing the most difficult and passionate views (e.g. Zionism and the policies of Israel). I wondered to myself “why is that?” and “why is it so hard to have that degree of civility on NCFP?”

One thing is that it is an expectation set by the school and the faculty. Another is that we “covenanted” or pledged to the following at the beginning of the year:

I covenant to encourage a challenging intellectual environment through the cultivation of critical reflection, curiosity, creativity, and the sense of adventure.

I covenant to encourage openness to transformation by learning through open, honest, respectful dialogue with one another.

Now, I am not asking us to make that pledge to each other, but I am asking each of us to consider or reflect on approaching our dialogue this way. And we might still want to “learn” without being “open to transformation.”

I think many folks have slipped on this road, including me, and I am not going to single anyone out. As of now, though, I’d ask all of us to step back and try to work on a couple of things to NOT do :

1. Name calling, sarcasm and snark.
2. Questioning people’s motives (i.e. people on or off the blog)
3. Lumping people into groups (e.g., Sowell works for the Hoover Institution, therefore we all know he’s not worth listening to).

Meanwhile, I do think “who is funding the work and what are their qualifications” are relevant questions, because those point to the structure of how information is developed.

And a something TO FOCUS ON:

What evidence do you have to support your claim that agrees/ disagrees with something posted? Personal experience is fine, history is fine, just be clear on why you disagree so the rest of us can understand.

I know we do fairly well, and it’s harder to do this, but I think we can up our game with some tweaking. A benefit might be, in addition to better discussion, some gentler souls may feel more comfortable commenting.

Andy Revkin posted this on his blog years ago here, with regard to a new comment policy. Humor always helps!

I’ve been appreciative in the last year of working with some folks at SAF whose day job is auditing forest activities. Many (all?) of those certification systems are based on the concept of continuous improvement. The people I’m thinking of bring that to their work with other organizations, and so I guess I have gotten some of that orientation as well. In addition, this is the season of Peace on Earth and Good Will toward Folks, so bringing improvement to civil dialogue seems to be an appropriate topic.

When I think about continuous improvement for our blog, I wonder if we could be more welcoming, in the sense that more folks would feel less likely to be attacked, and more comfortable sharing their opinions. I have wondered about the gender distribution here on the blog. Certainly females have been involved in natural resources for the last 50 years or so, and might have perspectives of value. Why are so few on this blog? Is it the atmosphere?

I’d like to hear directly (and if you don’t feel comfortable saying it publicly anyone interested in improvement, please send an email to “terraveritas(at)gmail.com”. You won’t hurt my feelings, so please be honest. (I had a boss once who said he thought I was doing a lousy job, but didn’t tell me because he thought it would “hurt my feelings”. Of course, getting effectively fired kind of did hurt my feelings. Another illustration of the importance of the culture of continuous improvement.)

In the widget on the right of the blog, we have these considerations:

When commenting, please consider the three doors that charitable speech must pass through. The gatekeeper at the door asks, “Is it true?” The second gatekeeper asks, “Is it helpful?” The third gatekeeper asks, “Is it kind?” (adapted from the writings of Krishnamurti by James Martin on p. 169 of this book.)

I’m beginning to think that some additional guidance for the blog might be helpful. We have kind of randomly arrived at some. I looked around on the internet but did not find very much directly related. If you know of some helpful guidance please send to me to post.

Perhaps the most important thing we can do, regardless of our favorite topics, is model respectful behavior with those whom we disagree. That’s, in my opinion, what the world needs now (in addition to “love sweet love,” as per Burt Bacharach, for those of you who are old enough to remember that song..).

I wish there were a plug-in I could run automatically to remove disrespect and snark; but there is a slippery slope and there is no such plug-in.

Anyway, here are a couple of thoughts:

1. “I disagree”.. those are powerful words. That’s all you need to say. Don’t add, “you are being …..”

2. We are all individuals. so “you protectionists” or whatever doesn’t work. Now it may make sense to say “groups that advocate protection” because that is a helpful distinction, but it is OK to ask “what groups do you mean?”.

3. If someone posts something not written by them, they are not expected to defend it. On the other hand, people can disagree with the claims made therein and provide reasons for their disagreement.

4. My dear friend, the Forest Service Eeyore, was the first one I ever heard mention the word “content-free”. You need to have something to back up a claim. Experience is fine. A logical argument based on what you have found to be facts is fine. Scientific information is fine as long as you provide the cite and the exact point that the article makes that substantiates your claim.

5. Since no one is the rule enforcement officer of this blog, each person is empowered to point out violations of this rule. Another approach is to simply not reply to someone. However, I’m not sure this is helpful in terms of the author of the comment and their opportunities to improve.

6. It would be nice to not assume the worst about other people about groups before you find out the information. Here’s an example “the Forest Service is trying to keep information from people” compared to “I would like this information, I wonder why they don’t provide it?” We don’t really understand people’s motivations, so let’s focus on their behavior (I think I heard that at a work team-building effort). Take EAJA fees. I don’t think groups do it “for the money.” But what difference does it make what their motivations are, if you find the behavior irritating or counterproductive, just say so, and the reasons for why you think that.

What do you all think? Is this setting the bar too low or too high? Do you have more suggestions or do you disagree with what’s here?

I know that some of you readers are, like me, Patty Limerick and Center of the American West fans and you probably don’t get the Denver Post so..

Here is the link and below is an excerpt:

Having lived in Colorado for almost 30 years, I am both pleased and unsettled by the way that this super-sized state duplicates the “echo chamber” workings of a small town.

Here’s a recent example. On Aug. 6, around 2:30 p.m., I responded to a question from the audience at the Rocky Mountain Energy Summit, the annual meeting of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. The questioner spoke critically of a recent chain of events in which my congressman, Jared Polis, challenged the arrival of a drilling rig in proximity to his rural second home.

Trying to moderate to the intensely critical stance of the questioner, I said that, in my opinion, Congressman Polis had been trying to use his prominent and visible position to call attention to a situation that troubled a number of his constituents. I said that I did not think that his first step — filing a lawsuit — was necessarily the wisest way to achieve this goal. And then I said that I thought it would be a good idea for the association to invite Polis to join us to this conference.

Less than three hours passed before Polis sent me an e-mail. If I had indeed invited him to the conference, he told me, he would try to fit this into his schedule.

When I made my statement, on Aug. 6, to a room occupied by several hundred people, it never occurred to me that I was also addressing the congressman and maybe thousands of others, as information rippled out of the Colorado Convention Center and into the “small town” called Colorado.

Polis’ response to my invitation forcefully reacquainted me with the key lesson of my small-town childhood: Do not forget that your voice carries.

I bet many of our states are like this.