At The Center for Practical Ethics, it’s all about dialogue – and the willingness to be wrong

Talk more; proclaim less. 

It’s one of our mottos here at The Center for Practical Ethics (TCPE). To put another way, we might say our goal is to foster conversations rather than diatribes. This task is more difficult than most realize. What we know as ethicists is that merely having conversations isn’t enough. There’s a wide variety of skills needed for fruitful dialogue to take place, and some are harder to come by than others. 

The ideal conversation partner is curious and humble, able to actively listen, knowledgeable about his or her own positions, familiar with basic principles of logical argument, charitable when interpreting claims, and—most importantly—willing to be wrong. Our work centers around equipping students with these skills and helping them navigate the complex ethical issues within our society’s most contentious disagreements. 

This year, National Week of Conversations (NWoC) coincided with Ethics Week here at the University of Mississippi (UM). Many of our events are conversation-based because dialogue is the best way to evaluate the ideas of others and open ourselves up to new information and interpretation of facts, while gaining a better understanding of our own views. 

Two of our events in particular are worth examining more closely to see why NWoC and the work we do at TCPE are critical for sustaining civil society and the myriad public goods we all take for granted. First is our signature Just Conversations event. Students are placed in small groups and given a couple of ethical dilemmas to discuss. Trained student moderators guide the discussion to point out important aspects of the dilemmas, such as logical fallacies, analysis of stakeholders, ethical concepts and assumptions, and varying methods to achieve goals. Students often discover they agree with others—on the dilemma outcome and the details—far more than they expected.

Second, we have invited free speech scholar Sigal Ben-Porath to give a talk about her new book “Cancel Wars: How Universities Can Foster Free Speech, Promote Inclusion, and Renew Democracy”. Ben-Porath contends that universities are laboratories of democracy where students must learn to engage with disagreement. If the university is to be a place where truth is discovered, it must take seriously its historic social and educational obligation to train students in the skills needed for civil discourse and critical thinking. Her work is especially relevant in our ever more polarized times. 

What these events demonstrate is that conversations—that is, engaged and fruitful conversations—must take place at all levels. Students must learn to talk to students just as much as faculty must learn to talk to faculty and administrators to administrators. What’s more, these groups must talk to each other because while each of us have a role within academia (faculty, staff, student, dean, vice chancellor, etc.), we are also all citizens who work and live together.

Policies must be made, votes cast, businesses founded, churches attended, friendships established, and life lived. TCPE focuses on the skills of civil discourse by providing opportunities to cultivate those skills through Ethics Week, and highlights conversations that ask us to reflect on the role of universities as part of the NWoC. 

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