The college will celebrate free expression with public events and activities including this week and next, including:
March 22: "Revitalizing Discourse on Campus and Beyond," 7:30-9 p.m., Knobloch Campus Center, Smith 900 Room. Sponsored by the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative. Free and open to the public. Speaker Leila Brammer is the director of the Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse, a program dedicated to exploring and fostering respectful and productive public discourse through the lens of the Chicago Principles. Brammer has taught and researched the subject of public discourse for over 30 years. Learn more and register.
March 24: “Why white professors should be able to say the n-word in class (or should they?) and other thorny free speech issues,” 5 p.m., Alvarez College Union 900 Room and via Zoom. Q&A with Professor Ike Bailey and Robert Shibley of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).
March 28: “Shamed into silence no more: Professor Ike Bailey and Brandon Reid (Harris) ’22 in conversation with Sura Sohna,” 7 p.m., Hance Auditorium and via Zoom. Reid's childhood friend Sura Sohna recently was released 12 years early from prison, in part because of Reid's advocacy. Read more.
Last fall, Cadie McNaboe, a senior political science major, was back at her West Virginia home for Thanksgiving. It was great to get her extended family around the table, but the mood could curdle whenever the conversation leaned toward politics.
“My family is like a political nuclear bomb,” McNaboe said. “You've got me, who's very progressive. And then you have conservatives like my grandpa and all of the spaces in between.”
A successful high school debater, McNaboe loved the art of argument.
“I know my freshman and sophomore year at Davidson, I spent a lot of time arguing with people. Sometimes for no good reason,” she said. “My debate training led me to a place where I was always technically listening, but I was taking notes on the weak points of somebody else's arguments so that I could counterpoint them.”
This dinner, however, would be different. For the past year or so, McNaboe had served as a Deliberative Citizenship Initiative Fellow, where she had learned how to lead difficult conversations.
And sure enough, when the conversation got dicey, her training kicked in.
“I unintentionally stepped into my facilitator role and was like, ‘Okay guys, I think you both have really good points. Let's take a step back and then let's talk about the different facets of this issue, because I think we both make really good points.’
“And my mom just kind of looked at me like she couldn’t believe what just happened.
“All I could say was, ‘I guess there are more important things than winning.’”
McNaboe had not only defused the ticking bomb at the table, she had steered the conversation in a productive direction. There were no winners or losers after McNaboe’s intervention. Instead, there was hope for mutual understanding and respect.
In short, she had lived out the promise of the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative.
“The DCI training fundamentally changed the way that I looked at political conversation in my own life,” McNaboe said.
Original source can be found here.
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