Full Transcript for Episode 7 | Civil Discourse in Practice: Working Through Challenging Conversations

00:05:01.439 --> 00:05:02.319 Everything feels so final. 00:05:02.720 --> 00:05:03.120 Yes, right. 00:05:03.199 --> 00:05:04.319 That's very well said. 00:05:04.879 --> 00:05:21.199 Even if no one is recording you, even if you're not going to post anything, I think it's fair to say that our capacity for dialogue has been deformed by the mediating presence of devices and social media in our lives. 00:05:21.360 --> 00:05:23.199 I'll give you an example anecdotally. 00:05:23.279 --> 00:05:32.480 I went to the University of Toronto as an undergraduate, and I can remember one night arguing with my friends about bestiality. 00:05:32.720 --> 00:05:34.399 Now, we weren't being silly. 00:05:34.560 --> 00:05:44.959 This was a serious late night debate about bestiality because someone had taken uh someone taking a philosophy course and they've been discussing Peter Singer in that course. 00:05:45.279 --> 00:05:47.279 Of course, you would know Peter Singer given your own work. 00:05:47.519 --> 00:05:57.759 And there was this argument back and forth about kind of taking Peter Singer's implications about the dignity of non-human animals to the furthest possible extent. 00:05:58.000 --> 00:05:58.319 Okay. 00:05:59.519 --> 00:06:01.759 It was an exhilarating conversation. 00:06:01.920 --> 00:06:15.120 I couldn't tell you whose position was what, but we were all in and we were arguing with a level of, frankly, kind of joy and enthusiasm that I cannot imagine today. 00:06:15.279 --> 00:06:15.519 Why? 00:06:15.680 --> 00:06:33.519 Because when I've mentioned this to contemporary undergraduates, they would never take this chance for fear, to your point about what would happen if you're not on the beach having a conversation, for fear that one part of that captured and posted has a seeming permanence. 00:06:33.759 --> 00:06:34.399 You know what I mean? 00:06:34.480 --> 00:06:40.399 It's like a it's arresting out of a flow, something that's never meant to be kind of just made static. 00:06:40.560 --> 00:06:45.040 And I think people are afraid that, well, if you see that I've said this, then it's all over. 00:06:45.439 --> 00:06:46.879 It's not worth it. 00:06:47.040 --> 00:06:50.560 It's not worth it to even bother trying then. 00:06:52.079 --> 00:07:00.800 That's really interesting that it that it's it's interesting to think that this happens not just in relation to conversations about stuff, you know, ph philosophical conundrums. 00:07:00.959 --> 00:07:05.279 What would you do if you took a philosophical position to the end, as you just described? 00:07:05.600 --> 00:07:12.240 But actually, I'm really intrigued by the example that you gave about the alumna doing climate change research. 00:07:12.480 --> 00:07:16.720 So this is a problem with science as well as with other matters. 00:07:16.879 --> 00:07:21.439 And I think we saw a bit of that during the pandemic as well, around vaccine hesitancy, for example. 00:07:21.920 --> 00:07:22.319 Absolutely. 00:07:22.480 -->

00:07:26.800 For our listeners, I'm smiling because I misgendered the alumna by saying alumnus. 00:07:26.959 --> 00:07:31.839 And so I'm very grateful, Heather, that that you you you corrected me because I didn't think it made sense to do it in the moment. 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:42.240 But you see, you know, you're absolutely right that vaccine hesitancy became a significant source of a kind of silencing or reactive response to difference. 00:07:42.480 --> 00:07:48.639 I can remember giving a talk to a group of public health graduate students shortly after the pandemic. 00:07:48.959 --> 00:07:59.199 And a student put his hand up and he said, How do you deal with someone in a clinical setting when they're completely wrong about vaccines? 00:07:59.519 --> 00:08:04.639 And my response was, well, I would begin by not assuming they're completely wrong. 00:08:04.879 --> 00:08:06.240 They're probably wrong. 00:08:06.399 --> 00:08:08.959 They're likely wrong, they're mostly wrong. 00:08:09.199 --> 00:08:21.600 But if what you bring with the authority encoded in your role as a health official and expert is a sense, if you bring that to bear upon a conversation, you're completely wrong. 00:08:21.839 --> 00:08:27.360 Well, then what sort of dialogue are you going to encounter or encourage in a situation like that? 00:08:27.519 --> 00:08:37.519 So you have to create the tiniest possibility that they may have a point or that there's a reason why they are, let's say, vaccine hesitant. 00:08:37.600 --> 00:08:43.279 And it isn't out of some dark right-wing conspiracy, nor is it out of a desire to harm others. 00:08:43.519 --> 00:08:54.480 You know, I think I noticed it myself, especially during the pandemic, what I would encounter would be colleagues, staff, students, um, where the vaccine hesitancy didn't code right. 00:08:54.639 --> 00:08:56.879 It coded Cold War Europe. 00:08:57.200 --> 00:09:11.120 In other words, people who would have come from former Soviet bloc countries, Eastern Bloc countries, were much more hesitant about the idea of the government telling you they needed your identity, they needed evidence that you've done this or done that. 00:09:11.279 --> 00:09:14.399 Likewise, people from repressive South American regimes. 00:09:14.639 --> 00:09:31.840 And so, to my mind, what I find interesting about this work is hearing that, my hope would be, well, that that changes us away from a kind of anti-vax right winger, which is frankly a much easier antagonist for people, let's say in our demographic and our spaces. 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:36.639 But what about the person who actually has lived experience that justifies their hesitancy? 00:09:36.799 --> 00:09:40.159 How do we engage with them in a way that doesn't say you are completely wrong? 00:09:40.399 --> 00:09:42.240 Because maybe they're not completely wrong. 00:09:42.559 --> 00:09:43.600 That's super interesting. 00:09:43.759 --> 00:09:45.120 So you make a little bit of space. 00:09:45.279 --> 00:09:45.519 Yes. 00:09:45.679 --> 00:09:49.200 And if you make a little bit of space, you might find an area where you agree. 00:09:49.360 --> 00:09:49.600 Yes. 00:09:50.080 --> 00:09:56.159 You might still disagree about vaccines, but perhaps you agree about, I don't know, distrust of big pharma or government. 00:09:56.799 --> 00:09:58.159 You know, as you said, government management to be able to do that. 00:09:58.559 --> 00:10:00.240 Can I ask this though of you? 00:10:00.559 --> 00:10:04.720 Do you like it when you find this moment of agreement with someone you otherwise would disagree with? 00:10:04.960 --> 00:10:05.679 I actually love it. 00:10:05.919 --> 00:10:06.159 Yeah. 00:10:06.320 --> 00:10:09.919 See, and I wonder, I wonder if that's one way to kind of differentiate. 00:10:10.159 --> 00:10:22.080 I wonder if there are people out there for whom the opposite is the case, that they would rather stay kind of confirmed in their imperial sense of self and have a kind of a complete view. 00:10:22.559 --> 00:10:35.039 Whereas to my mind, the people who are most willing and able and adept at civil discourse are the ones who are seeking that moment where, despite everything else saying that we should be against each other, here we can agree. 00:10:35.200 --> 00:10:49.519 I think about this, you know, as an English professor, somebody who teaches novels, who writes novels, you know, there's nothing greater for me than when a reader finds themselves kind of cheering on somebody that they otherwise wouldn't like or agree with in real life. 00:10:49.679 --> 00:10:52.720 That's that's a great moment of kind of human reach, I think. 00:10:53.120 --> 00:10:54.080 And we've actually seen that. 00:10:54.240 --> 00:10:58.159 It's really interesting to me to think how much of that we've seen in recent television. 00:10:58.320 --> 00:11:00.320 People talk about peak TV. 00:11:00.480 --> 00:11:00.720 Yes. 00:11:00.879 --> 00:11:02.639 And we have all these anti-heroes, right? 00:11:03.360 --> 00:11:07.200 Breaking bad or The Sopranos or Don Draper for Don Draper. 00:11:07.360 --> 00:11:14.000 And and this is exactly that affective experience of barracking for somebody that you wouldn't necessarily agree with. 00:11:14.320 --> 00:11:15.039 Yes, exactly. 00:11:15.200 --> 00:11:20.720 And and the very act of doing so, I think is a form of self-enlarging. 00:11:21.039 --> 00:11:30.080 In other words, your capacity to imagine a life other than your own, a perspective other than your own, deepens and enriches your capacity to deal with difference in the rest of your life, I think. 00:11:30.480 --> 00:11:40.320 If this kind of fraught conflict, polarization is not a problem that's confined to the humanities, but of course sort of broader social problem, including sciences, et cetera. 00:11:40.559 --> 00:11:49.279 Do you think, and I'm asking now as the director of the Jackman and Humanities Institute, Toronto, do you think that the humanities have solutions to

suggest? 00:11:49.919 --> 00:11:51.440 I don't know if we have solutions. 00:11:51.600 --> 00:11:57.519 I think we can instead pose fuller and finer questions and offer a more durable array of answers. 00:11:57.679 --> 00:12:05.600 I would argue that the humanities represent our deepest and most continuous mode of advancing knowledge. 00:12:05.759 --> 00:12:13.519 That if you kind of go back as far as we can, it's it's the humanists who are asking ultimate questions and posing provisional answers to them. 00:12:14.159 --> 00:12:30.480 I suspect, unlike our colleagues in other disciplines, I don't think STEM or social science colleagues would look to the best that's been thought or said or proposed in their fields from 500 years ago and find relevant knowledge. 00:12:30.720 --> 00:12:30.960 Right? 00:12:31.039 --> 00:12:41.440 They would look back and simply think, understand, let me look at how far we've come from this concept or that concept of the human person or of science, by and large. 00:12:41.840 --> 00:12:42.960 That's not true for us. 00:12:43.279 --> 00:12:45.440 Plato still matters. 00:12:45.679 --> 00:12:57.440 Virginia Wolfe's Orlando tells us something about gender and about gendered experience that in that novel is true across time and space and is still true today. 00:12:57.600 --> 00:13:08.240 So I think that's one of the great things about the humanities is that sense that the most durable questions and the most, I think, alive and appealing answers aren't date stamped. 00:13:08.399 --> 00:13:19.600 Whereas it seems to me that there is a certain level of foreshortening that happens in STEM and in social sciences because of the discovery-based nature of research. 00:13:19.679 --> 00:13:22.480 And you're always kind of pushing ahead, pushing ahead. 00:13:22.799 --> 00:13:26.720 Whereas we can push ahead by looking behind us and creating continuities. 00:13:26.879 --> 00:13:28.320 That's the good of the humanities. 00:13:28.960 --> 00:13:35.200 I'm really tempted to take this into a slightly different direction and ask whether AI changes this experience of being human. 00:13:35.279 --> 00:13:40.000 But instead, I'm gonna give you a bit of a test case and tell us how you'd respond. 00:13:40.240 --> 00:13:42.320 So here's the setting: you're in a classroom. 00:13:42.720 --> 00:13:46.399 The discussion is AI, but that's that's the topic of discussion. 00:13:46.879 --> 00:13:49.120 And the room quickly fractures. 00:13:49.519 --> 00:13:54.399 It fractures between a group of students who are generally pro-AI. 00:13:54.639 --> 00:13:58.000 They think it helps them to think better, it cleans up their writing. 00:13:58.159 --> 00:14:01.840 You've got some students in there for whom English is a second, third, or fourth language. 00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:12.320 They find that it evens levels the playing field for them, and they all think they're gonna have to demonstrate capacity and ability to work with AI in order to make it in the workplace. 00:14:12.960 --> 00:14:29.360 A bunch of other students think that that position is environmentally perverse, that AI is unnecessary, that it is making us poorer people, and that we are losing the ability to think and learn the way that we should as human beings. 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:31.840 The conversation gets heated. 00:14:32.399 --> 00:14:33.360 What do you do? 00:14:34.159 --> 00:14:40.720 I would draw on Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of thinking against yourself. 00:14:41.120 --> 00:14:42.240 I would flip it. 00:14:42.399 --> 00:14:53.279 I would invite each student who holds a strong position pro-AI to argue against it, and every student who holds a strong position against AI to argue for it. 00:14:54.559 --> 00:14:55.600 Just to see. 00:14:56.639 --> 00:14:58.480 Because ultimately we're in a classroom setting. 00:14:58.559 --> 00:15:03.360 So my ultimate goal here isn't to settle a question about AI. 00:15:03.600 --> 00:15:10.240 It's to encourage my students to learn how to think better about things that matter. 00:15:10.480 --> 00:15:17.759 And so I would encourage everyone to think against themselves and come up with the best possible argument against their own position. 00:15:17.919 --> 00:15:24.000 Argue on behalf of someone else, demonstrate the empathy, the intellectual empathy required for it. 00:15:24.240 --> 00:15:46.240 You know, I've done this before in classes, and I have found that the less successful version is a kind of condescending model where the student will set up a kind of scarecrow version of the other side and condescend to explain why this would be good, as opposed to genuinely seeing the seeing the subject from the other person's perspective. 00:15:46.320 --> 00:15:51.039 So I would do that first, just to see what would happen, to see who would be willing to give it a try. 00:15:51.200 --> 00:16:01.440 Not everyone would, but at the end of that, my hope is we would then be in a kind of dialectical moment where you've got these two forces kind of going back and forth, back and forth. 00:16:01.600 --> 00:16:04.559 And then I would seek to what we were talking about earlier. 00:16:04.799 --> 00:16:10.000 I would seek from my students any prospect of common ground. 00:16:10.720 --> 00:16:14.799 Are there any positions that you can agree to? 00:16:14.960 --> 00:16:28.080 So can we agree that there are considerable environmental implications to AI in terms of its current technology and how it draws on water, et cetera, et cetera, for cooling purposes? 00:16:28.240 --> 00:16:29.039 Can we agree to that? 00:16:29.200 --> 00:16:29.600 Yes. 00:16:30.399 --> 00:16:35.039 But we probably disagree on whether the cost of that is is worth the benefit. 00:16:35.200 --> 00:16:36.559 In other words, the offset. 00:16:36.639 --> 00:16:45.759 And I would try to kind of build, but I would try to make sure we could come up with at least one or two key planks that we could all kind of stand on together. 00:16:46.000 -->

00:16:49.759 And then I would suggest to the students, okay, now you've got a temptation. 00:16:49.840 --> 00:16:55.759 Your temptation is to pretend that you don't agree with the other side and to kind of go back and keep on, you know, kind of banging away. 00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:59.759 Or you could try to take your conversation a step further, a step higher. 00:16:59.919 --> 00:17:01.840 Let me move into married life for a moment. 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:09.599 I've been married for the past 22 years, and my wife and I, over the course of our happy marriage, have come to the following sense. 00:17:09.839 --> 00:17:11.279 We draw this distinction. 00:17:11.519 --> 00:17:15.039 Is this a historical argument or is this an active argument? 00:17:15.200 --> 00:17:20.079 If it's a historical argument, okay, you know what, we've had versions of this argument before. 00:17:20.240 --> 00:17:31.039 We both know that we've resolved this, but something happened today with the yogurt in the fridge, and it then just led to, or I put the spoon back in and ruined it, or whatever it would be. 00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:32.480 This is a historical argument. 00:17:32.640 --> 00:17:38.799 Whereas an active argument is we're not sure actually where either of us is on this or what it means to be in on this together. 00:17:39.039 --> 00:17:40.960 So now we actually have to have an argument about it. 00:17:41.039 --> 00:17:42.000 So I draw that distinction. 00:17:42.079 --> 00:17:47.359 So I would suggest to the students, you've now agreed on points A and B about AI. 00:17:47.839 --> 00:17:49.279 So they're settled now. 00:17:49.519 --> 00:17:55.839 So now have more interesting conversation or just tempt yourself back into just doing the same old thing, but that's just not as interesting. 00:17:56.000 --> 00:18:00.640 And there's there's few things that you can challenge students with more than just telling them, you know, that's not really that interesting. 00:18:00.799 --> 00:18:03.920 So you want to, I think, encourage them to kind of push themselves a little further. 00:18:04.319 --> 00:18:09.359 I really love the idea of differentiating between historical arguments and active arguments. 00:18:09.440 --> 00:18:09.599 Trevor Burrus, Jr. 00:18:09.680 --> 00:18:11.839 Yeah, it worked, it obviously works well beyond married life, right? 00:18:11.920 --> 00:18:12.720 It's it's true, isn't it? 00:18:12.799 --> 00:18:13.200 You know what I mean? 00:18:13.279 --> 00:18:14.400 You get into a pattern. 00:18:14.640 --> 00:18:16.720 This is so true in academic life. 00:18:16.880 --> 00:18:19.279 Oh, look who's raising their hand at the department meeting. 00:18:19.519 --> 00:18:20.880 Here we go again. 00:18:21.119 --> 00:18:26.799 You know, there's there's and you you know this happens, and in in academic life, everybody's kind of accepts that this is gonna happen. 00:18:27.119 --> 00:18:29.759 But we shouldn't mistake one for the other, I think is what I'm saying. 00:18:29.839 --> 00:18:42.559 Aaron Powell So when you're describing that experience of students articulating the arguments of their imagined opponents, I hear in it something I'd I don't know if this is a legible term, but I'll say a kind of intellectual empathy. 00:18:42.880 --> 00:18:43.440 Yes. 00:18:44.160 --> 00:18:47.200 Is that what you mean by civil discourse? 00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:49.359 I think it's a component of it. 00:18:49.519 --> 00:18:55.759 You know, by civil discourse, my working definition of it is a commitment to thinking out loud together. 00:18:56.559 --> 00:19:17.599 It is a recognition that difference and disagreement can be good things if they can lead to an increase in shared understanding of an idea or an issue that matters, or at minimum, a better appreciation of someone else's position on that idea or issue that matters. 00:19:17.839 --> 00:19:29.279 Understood this way, I think, civil discourse advances knowledge, it serves the common good, and it aids in the pursuit of truth, all of which I think are important features of what we try to do in higher education. 00:19:29.599 --> 00:19:34.799 But a precondition, Heather, yes, for all of that would be intellectual empathy. 00:19:35.039 --> 00:19:52.240 If you cannot be open to the idea of someone holding a fundamentally different worldview and not respect that worldview, reckon with that worldview as it actually is rather than your version of it, then I don't see how you can think out loud with someone else. 00:19:52.559 --> 00:19:55.519 But that's really what I think civil discourse is, thinking out loud together. 00:19:55.920 --> 00:19:59.519 And how important is civil discourse to democracy? 00:20:00.240 --> 00:20:01.680 I think it's very important. 00:20:01.920 --> 00:20:09.440 I think our ability to deliberate about matters that inform our shared lives is paramount. 00:20:09.759 --> 00:20:20.000 If we mistake civil discourse for instead uh a rivaling of closed positions, then I think we do a disservice to democracy. 00:20:20.160 --> 00:20:31.839 And I really mean that when I say that civil discourse fundamentally, even more than intellectual empathy, I think it has to be marked by a sense of openness to difference, openness to possibility. 00:20:32.160 --> 00:20:43.599 Whereas it would seem to me, especially when democracy becomes a kind of an electoral exercise, that you have rivaling closed systems. 00:20:43.839 --> 00:20:55.759 I was just reading in the New York Times yesterday about a meeting between President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries. 00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:09.440 And it was one of these off-the-books meetings because I understand that the Trump administration is sensing that probably the Republicans are going to lose in the midterm elections and the Democrats will control Congress, or at least the House of Representatives. 00:21:09.759 --> 00:21:15.119 And the Trump administration needs to figure out how to work

then with a Democrat-controlled Congress. 00:21:15.359 --> 00:21:17.680 The interesting question for me, though, is the flip. 00:21:17.759 --> 00:21:24.720 The way the Times reporter posed it was what would you do if you are now running the House of Representatives as a Democrat? 00:21:24.880 --> 00:21:32.319 Should you try to work with the Trump administration on things that you both care about, housing or affordability? 00:21:32.559 --> 00:21:38.960 Or should you completely close yourself off, replicating the way that you've experienced the administration? 00:21:39.200 --> 00:21:52.319 And it seems to me that the better move for democracy would be in openness, but that's at odds with the great electoral and cultural, and I think even human pressure to resist. 00:21:52.559 --> 00:21:58.000 That that seems to me where I see civil discourse most in need and also uh most challenged. 00:21:58.400 --> 00:21:58.960 It's interesting, right? 00:21:59.039 --> 00:22:02.160 There's a kind of political Pragmatism behind what you're talking about. 00:22:02.400 --> 00:22:24.319 And when we think about a lot of the elections that have happened over the last couple of years, I think that the Australian federal election and the Canadian federal election that returned Albanese and Kearney, respectively, were actually expressions of an interest in pragmatism of people who would work with others on opposing, on opposing sides in a kind of pragmatic way to address the issues that you've just been talking about. 00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:25.599 Yes, absolutely. 00:22:25.839 --> 00:22:42.960 In Canadian terms, one of the ongoing phenomena of the of Mark Kearney's leadership is his confident openness to ideas from across the spectrum, very much, I think, at odds with his predecessor, who was much more, I think, narrowly construed, Justin Trudeau, that is. 00:22:43.119 --> 00:22:53.920 And it's a great source of frustration for the Conservative Party in Canada, for instance, because Kearney's taking good ideas where he finds them, and some of them might be coming from right of center, and now they're liberal, liberal party ideas. 00:22:54.079 --> 00:23:02.079 But that pragmatism seems to be working for Mark Kearney and for the liberal government, and it is absolutely in need. 00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:16.160 You also see it, again, in a very different context in university life, where especially when you're in positions of leadership and you are dealing with student leaders, you're dealing with senior colleagues, you're dealing with faculty, you're not down the line in agreement. 00:23:16.400 --> 00:23:25.200 The hope, and I say this now as an administrator myself, is always to be able to find people willing to work with you on what you can agree with about, and then you build from there. 00:23:25.359 --> 00:23:30.240 And the question is: are people willing to say, yes, I can agree to this or I can agree to that, and we can build from there? 00:23:30.720 --> 00:23:51.119 So has there been a time when you've experienced civil discourse as especially fraught, where you've really been challenged on those fundamental beliefs that you have about being open to the possibility that somebody's not completely wrong, looking for shared understanding, as you just said, and finding it almost impossible or impossible to do? 00:23:51.599 --> 00:23:55.279 I've had a couple of moments that have been harder than not. 00:23:55.440 --> 00:24:02.400 I can remember a couple of years ago, I was at the University of Windsor in Canada giving a talk that ended up on CBC radio. 00:24:03.119 --> 00:24:14.240 And uh when it was time for the QA, which wasn't part of the broadcast afterwards, a student, I think it was a graduate student, asked a question, but it wasn't really a question. 00:24:14.480 --> 00:24:16.720 It was a statement pretending to be a question. 00:24:17.039 --> 00:24:18.319 I've never heard such a thing in the academy. 00:24:18.640 --> 00:24:19.759 I know could you imagine? 00:24:20.319 --> 00:24:34.640 And he basically called me out for taking on this role even while the university was, by his account, mistreating students who were advocating on behalf of Palestine. 00:24:34.880 --> 00:24:38.880 And this was in relation to the 2024 encampment at the University of Toronto. 00:24:38.960 --> 00:24:40.079 So this was shortly after that. 00:24:40.160 --> 00:24:42.160 It was a very raw time on campus. 00:24:42.640 --> 00:24:48.720 And he called me out for kind of aiding and abetting the institution with my work. 00:24:49.039 --> 00:24:51.440 And then he walked away before I could answer. 00:24:51.680 --> 00:24:55.039 So, in other words, he didn't even like that was very frustrating to me. 00:24:55.119 --> 00:24:58.799 He didn't even give me a chance to, he just kind of did his question. 00:24:58.960 --> 00:25:01.119 And as I was answering, I just watched him just leave. 00:25:01.279 --> 00:25:05.839 And I thought, well, you you just wanted to be heard as opposed to have any kind of conversation with me. 00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:09.039 So I found that, I admit, pretty discouraging. 00:25:09.279 --> 00:25:15.599 And then there was one other that comes to mind where I was giving a talk on civil discourse on campus. 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:35.200 And when I finished, an academic colleague vigorously dissented from the term civil discourse itself and suggested that the term participated in settler colonial racism and advanced injustices, was exclusionary, had tacit assumptions about who was and who wasn't allowed to speak, et cetera. 00:25:35.359 --> 00:25:43.440 I said to them right away when they answered, I don't care what we call this, as long as people are willing to have conversation with each other first. 00:25:43.839 --> 00:25:54.640 And second, let's not pretend that other kinds of language aren't themselves kind of replete with associations and resonances that are not intended. 00:25:54.880 --> 00:25:58.319 But that said, I'm all ears if you have other suggestions. 00:25:58.400 --> 00:26:01.039 And they said, okay, you know, uh happy to give you some. 00:26:01.200 --> 00:26:03.200 Then the meeting ended, and I approached them. 00:26:03.279 --> 00:26:05.119 I said, you know, I'd love to get some other ideas. 00:26:05.279 --> 00:26:07.920 And they said, Yeah, well, I'll get you some, and nothing. 00:26:08.079 --> 00:26:09.039 Never heard. 00:26:09.200 --> 00:26:18.880 And and again, that was discouraging to me because it seemed like I was an occasion for them to kind of perform a level of institutional dissent. 00:26:19.519 --> 00:26:24.880 That's fine to find there as your pretext, but again, aren't you really interested in advancing the thing that you're talking about? 00:26:25.119 --> 00:26:33.920 Uh finally, uh, more than once I've been called uh a CBC-friendly model minority for my willingness to do this kind of work. 00:26:34.079 --> 00:26:38.160 And you know, my only response to that insight is, well, I'm a novelist and I'm always working. 00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:41.039 So I'll have a way to respond to you eventually. 00:26:42.960 --> 00:26:44.240 We're almost out of time. 00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:47.759 What's one thing that you'd want listeners to take away from this conversation? 00:26:48.240 --> 00:26:57.119 That I think the most important thing we bring to any version of a conversation with someone where there is some difference is humility. 00:26:57.440 --> 00:27:04.559 And more specifically, epistemic humility, which is University College London Chancellor Michael Spence's term. 00:27:04.799 --> 00:27:12.640 But that sense that, you know, enter a conversation entertaining the possibility that you might be wrong. 00:27:12.880 --> 00:27:17.759 You might be wrong even if your lived experience tells you that you're right. 00:27:17.920 --> 00:27:20.000 Now, I I acknowledge that's harder for some than others. 00:27:20.079 --> 00:27:33.440 I acknowledge that's a very difficult thing to practice, but if you go into a conversation a little bit open, a little bit uncertain, a little bit willing to practice that humility, I think that would be a wonderful way to think out loud with someone else. 00:27:33.519 --> 00:27:35.440 A wonderful way to practice civil discourse. 00:27:35.759 --> 00:27:38.000 Randy, thank you so much for this. 00:27:38.160 --> 00:27:40.240 It's been a genuinely terrific conversation. 00:27:40.480 --> 00:27:41.440 I've enjoyed it too. 00:27:41.519 --> 00:27:42.400 Thank you. 00:27:42.960 --> 00:27:54.720 If anything you heard today resonated with you or maybe unsettled you a little bit, we encourage you to keep discussing it because dialogue doesn't end when we stop recording. 00:27:55.279 --> 00:28:01.039 Until next time, thank you for listening to Dialogues Across Difference.