These two professors engage students around divisive topics with curiosity and respect. And they’re leading the way for other educators.
At college, young people have the opportunity to get to know peers from different ethnic, social, and political backgrounds. As a result, they meet students who see the world in completely different ways.
So what should happen when students encounter ideas, histories, or each other in ways that make them deeply uncomfortable? Avoiding those conversations may reduce conflict in the short term. Simply encouraging students to “speak freely” isn’t enough either. Without trust and skill, difficult conversations can reinforce divisions instead of bridging them.
Professors and other educators can provide guidance drawing from a wide array of sources and points of view. But how can educators teach healthy constructive ways to engage with new ideas and different perspectives, especially in an age of polarization?
Universities have become one of the places where America’s conflicts over race, history, identity, and free expression play out most intensely. In the 2010s many scholars adopted a more critical view of American history and how it shaped our present. But the past few years have seen a roll-back of racial studies programs and diversity initiatives. Universities around the country have opened civics education centers, in some cases as a way of restoring a more traditional take on history.
Our two guests this episode are professors who teach divisive topics including race in America and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. They've each found ways to engage students and create classroom cultures based on curiosity and respect. And they’re leading the way for other educators.
Stephanie Shonekan is Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland. While chair of the Black Studies Department at the University of Missouri, Stephanie created and ran several programs geared towards inclusion and diversity. She’s also an ethnomusicologist, and uses music to address difficult topics in class. She's the co-author of the book Race and the American Story.
John Rose is a professor of the practice at the School of Civic Life and Leadership at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He teaches several courses on civil discourse, including one titled “How to Think in an Age of Polarization,” which has inspired similar classes at colleges across the country. He holds a doctorate in theology.
Learn more from our guests:
Watch Stephanie Shonekan’s TED talk: “SPF, WTF?”
Watch Stephanie Shonekan and John Rose speak on a panel on civil dialogue at the Ohio Civic Center Symposium at the Ohio State University, May 2025
Watch Stephanie Shonekan and co-author Adam Seagrave discuss their book Race and the American Story
Order Race and the American Story
Read John Rose’s essay for the Wall Street Journal, “How I liberated my college classroom.”
Dig deeper:
10 highlights from Yale’s new report detailing why Americans distrust higher education -The College Fix
Higher Education’s Problems Go Way Beyond Trust – The Ringer
Ibram X. Kendi vs. America’s “Antiracism Backlash” – Reveal
The Most Important Question Is ‘What if I’m Wrong?’ - David French, New York Times
Inside the Trump Administration’s Assault on Higher Education - the New Yorker
Buckley Institute 2025 national survey report on free speech and related issues on campus
College Uncovered: the New College Compact - College Uncovered podcast, GBH
Related article: Local colleges targeted amid growing campus culture wars
A five-point plan to save Harvard from itself - Steven Pinker for the Boston Globe
Harvard Derangement Syndrome - Steven Pinker for the New York Times
[00:00:00] Stephanie Shonekan: There should be places on campus on the cultural social side where students can get together, maybe in affinity groups or in sororities or whatever, right? And feel like they are safe, to use that word. In the classroom, I think we need to be brave. All scholars have had to contend with difficult texts that maybe don't feel good.
You know, it doesn't feel good to read Thomas Jefferson's notes on the state of Virginia. Doesn't feel good at all as a Black person, but it needs to be read.
[00:00:34] Jamil Simon: Welcome to Beyond Polarization, a special series from Making Peace Visible. I'm your host, Jamil Simon. In our series, we're going sector by sector, talking to leaders who are working on solutions to the dangers that come from hyperpolarization in the United States.
In this episode, we're looking at higher education. Young people who are lucky enough to go to college have an incredible opportunity to get to know people who come from different ethnic, social, and religious backgrounds. As a result, they meet students who see the world in completely different ways. So what should happen when students encounter ideas, history, or each other in ways that make them deeply uncomfortable?
Avoiding those conversations may reduce conflict in the short term. Simply encouraging students to speak freely isn't enough either. Without trust and skill, difficult conversations can reinforce the divisions they're meant to address. Professors and other educators can provide the guidance students need, drawing from a wide array of sources and points of view.
How can educators teach healthy, constructive ways to engage with new ideas and different perspectives, especially in an age of polarization? Universities have become one of the places where America's conflicts over race, history, identity, and free expression can play out most intensely. In the 2010s, many scholars adopted a more critical view of American history and how it has shaped our present, but the past few years have seen a rollback of racial studies programs and diversity initiatives.
Universities around the country have opened civic education centers, in some cases as a way of restoring a more traditional take on history. Our two guests in this episode are professors who teach divisive topics like race in America and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They've each found ways to engage students and create classroom cultures based on curiosity and respect, and they're leading the way for other educators.
Stephanie Shonekan is Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland. While chair of the Black Studies Department at the University of Missouri, Stephanie created and ran several programs geared towards inclusion and diversity. She's also an ethnomusicologist and uses music to address difficult topics in class.
She's the co-author of the book “Race in the American Story”. John Rose is a professor of the practice at the School of Civic Life and Leadership at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He teaches several courses on civil discourse, including one titled How to Think in an Age of Polarization, which has inspired similar classes at colleges across the country.
He holds a doctorate in theology. So John and Stephanie, welcome to the show.
[00:03:25] John Rose: Thanks for having us.
[00:03:27] Jamil Simon: Uh, Stephanie and John, you both came into the civic dialogue space on campus from different backgrounds. Stephanie, you're an ethnomusicologist, and John, your doctorate is in Christian theology. I want to start by hearing how each of you came to be facilitators of conversations around polarizing issues on campus.
Stephanie, let's start with you.
[00:03:48] Stephanie Shonekan: Thank you, Jamil. So my path into having these kinds of discussions on college campuses started in 2015. I became chair of the Department of Black Studies at the University of Missouri. At that time, Jamil, there was a major upheaval on many college campuses, but it actually started at the University of Missouri when African American students were bothered by what had happened with Mike Brown in St. Louis. Um, which was about two hours away from campus.
And so those students really wanted the university to, to kind of step up and respond to what was going on nationally. By the time Mike Brown had been killed, there'd been several of those killings over the first couple of decades of the 21st century.
Of course, students in Black studies classes had been really going through a lot, being on a campus where they were called the N-word regularly, where they did not feel that there was a sense of belonging, but also putting that into the context of what was happening nationally as well. And so the students really wanted the leadership, the administrators, to respond.
So students really pushed. There was a hunger strike. The football players said they wouldn't play. But in the midst of all of that, the university asked me as chair of the Department of Black Studies, what would a good program look like for all incoming students so that this never happened again? So that students never called other students names that were derogatory or that would orient students to good behavior, you know, dignity and respect.
[00:05:32] Jamil Simon: Critical.
[00:05:32] Stephanie Shonekan: Critical, right? And so as an ethnomusicologist, I thought, "You know what? Music usually works, so why don't we use music?" I was jointly appointed in Black studies and the School of Music, so I had lots of students, both majors and non-majors, who were musicians who took music very seriously. I said, "Let's come up with a list of songs that we will play live.”
We'll give them a show, and then we'll have conversations about what it means to be human, what it means to be respectful, what it means, you know, all the things that make us good human beings. So the students picked the songs like Bob Dylan's Blowing in the Wind. We did Stevie Wonder, we did Marvin Gaye, The Beatles, just really classic songs that the parents also could not argue with.
Right. Like, who, who's gonna argue with, with Let It Be, right? Um- Right ... but these songs really inspired conversation, inspired sometimes difficult dialogue among the students about what questions were still blowing in the wind.
[00:06:37] Jamil Simon: Provoked their imagination.
[00:06:39] Stephanie Shonekan: Precisely. So we called the program Citizenship at Mizzou, and it was really for all students that came to the University of Missouri.
And after that, a good colleague of mine by the name of Adam Seagrave, a political scientist, came to me and said, "You know, a two-hour program is probably not enough. Why don't we create a course?" And so we created a course called Race and the American Story, and that, that project has lived on since then.
But that's the quick story of how I started doing this.
[00:07:09] Jamil Simon: It's a rich story. The words you chose when you were setting up the class were important. You said that you wanted to avoid using terms like privilege or microaggression. Can you talk about your choice of words, words you used and words you avoided, and why was that so central?
[00:07:27] Stephanie Shonekan: Because I'm a humanist, I understand that words carry meaning. Heavy words carry heavy meaning. Even light words carry heavy meaning. Very quickly, I realized we had to be very careful even in choosing the title of the program so that we did not choose a title like Diversity at Mizzou because even that word at that time in 2015 was loaded.
Actually, we started to call it that, and then a student, probably from one of the rural areas, came to see me and said he had been to the program, really loved the program, and he said, "But that word would maybe turn away folks who needed to hear it." And so he suggested Citizenship at Mizzou because what's the problem with citizenship?
Everybody wants to feel that they belong. Words like white privilege, you know, those types of phrases that have been taken and repurposed, unfortunately- Have been
[00:08:25] Jamil Simon: weaponized, in a way.
[00:08:25] Stephanie Shonekan: Yes. Yes, and so knowing that, we just thought, "Okay, what's the most effective way to get to the purpose that we've set for ourselves?"
[00:08:34] Jamil Simon: John, now let's hear from you. You teach a class called How to Think in an Age of Political Polarization. What led you to start that course? And I've heard you say it, you're a theology professor who now teaches politics.
[00:08:48] John Rose: My story starts around the same time as Stephanie. I was working on my dissertation, and in it I was examining the intellectual virtue of open-mindedness, considering whether or not it was a virtue from the Christian standpoint, and asking myself in the dissertation what the value of intellectual diversity was, and again, how Christians might think of it.
Upon finishing that degree, I, I took a job at, at Duke University in their Institute for Ethics. I looked around and noticed that our country was highly polarized, the campus reacting to Trump's election. And then in having coffee with students outside of class, I discovered that many of them were self-censoring, not saying what they really thought about controversial political topics in discussions with friends.
By this time at Duke, I was teaching classes on Aristotle and things like this, but in response to what I was seeing around campus and hearing from my students I designed a, it's just a freshman seminar. That's a, that's a good place to start when you're unsure of a class- Right ... first semester. Right. Freshmen are easy to impress.
Uh, experimental seminar called How to Think in an Age of Political Polarization, as you said. And the first word in that title is important because it wasn't the word what, it was how. And I knew that if there was any hope of getting lots of different kinds of students around the table and getting them to be honest, I was gonna have to stay out of it myself and make the students feel comfortable sharing their views, whatever they might happen to be.
When I asked myself, "Well, how am I gonna do this?" I called upon my training as a virtue ethicist and decided to foreground the intellectual virtues, hold them up to students and say, "Hey, let's, let's try to practice these. We might disagree about politics, we might disagree about religion, but don't we all agree that courage, intellectual courage, is a good thing?
You admire it in yourself and others, and we don't much like cowardice. The same for curiosity, and intellectual charity, and intellectual humility, and something like resilience or grit." And I said, "Let's try to flourish as people over the course of the semester, and then practice these virtues. I'm gonna do my best to model them for you."
And so I, I started teaching this course, and as the semester moved on, we kind of build towards the hardest issues, including race in America. And what I discovered was that the students were capable of doing this, given the right conditions, given time to, to build trust with each other, and that their image of students you get to hear about these students who are woke or snowflake, I think it's misleading and unrepresentative.
In my experience, granted my students probably self-select a, a little bit coming into my class, but even so, I, I think the vast majority of students actually wanna have civil discourse about hard topics.
[00:11:40] Jamil Simon: That's an important point, I think. You know, as you said, you can't teach things like curiosity or intellectual humility.
You really need to model them. Can you give us some examples of how you do that?
[00:11:53] John Rose: Yeah. If you can, in your very fallible way, give them a glimpse of what, like, real curiosity looks like by responding when somebody says something that you don't like. Instead of saying, "How could you possibly think that?" say, "Tell me more about why you think that," in a way that's sincere, in a way that communicates to the other person, "I really wanna know more about why you think that."
That's a contagious thing, Jameel, and I've seen it time and time again in a classroom. I'll do it, another student will do it, and then it's like the vibe changes. Suddenly the air feels different, and we're no longer competing to show that we're more virtuous than the next person by virtue of our political opinions, but instead we're in this, like, collaborative human exercise where we're trying to get a little closer to figuring out what they believe, what I believe, and maybe what justice is, and it's not a win or lose thing.
[00:12:52] Jamil Simon: All of these things are part of building trust in a way.
[00:12:54] John Rose: Yeah. Trust is the magic word.
[00:12:57] Jamil Simon: Yeah. That, that really is. There's a concept in the field of peace building that I think is also relevant here called dignity violation, and it's the idea that conflicts arise when people feel that their dignity has been violated.
So John, how do you set up your class so that students can have authentic conversations without people feeling their dignity has been violated?
[00:13:22] John Rose: Yeah, and Stephanie used that word dignity in your remarks as well, and I totally agree. Sometimes we use language of respect. I actually prefer dignity, the kind of respect that's due somebody by virtue of the fact that they're another human being, not because they're smart, not because they were nice to you, and despite how they may be treating you.
You know, I think avoiding unnecessarily embarrassing somebody. Whatever you do, don't humiliate. People who study high conflict and peace studies will tell you that's a common ingredient. A group of people feel humiliated, like their dignity is ignored. You know what? You've not changed their mind. You might coerce them into or silence them.
You haven't persuaded them. You, you haven't actually restored peace. So avoid unnecessarily embarrassing other people. Assume goodwill. This is a hard one, and I tell my students, the nice thing about that, among other things, is that you can expect it in return if that's the norm in the room, and then that kinda frees people up to speak.
But it also, I think, removes a barrier from entering into another person's story because one of the reasons we don't hear people's stories is that we've already predetermined that the reasons they're giving for why they believe aren't the real reasons, and I know what the real reasons are, something unsavory.
You gotta suspend that for the sake of trying to connect with another human being.
[00:14:35] Jamil Simon: Stephanie, do you have anything to add to that?
[00:14:37] Stephanie Shonekan: Yeah, I mean, I agree with John's points there. I think one thing that I would add is that you can't really, like, step into another person's shoes and fully give them the dignity that they deserve if you don't understand them or if you don't at least attempt to understand them, you know?
And as Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, I just believe so strongly in the power of reading or listening, um, and sometimes that comes in listening, like in John's class. You spend a, a semester learning how to listen, really. It's listening, but it's also reading. It's also being unafraid to read difficult things.
When you read for yourself and you give it its space, I think that's where you start to really get behind the act of dignifying another human being. If you're not willing to read the book or if the book has been removed because there's a sense that the book is no longer good, then that removes a few steps from our journey towards understanding people e- even if those books or articles are difficult.
[00:15:52] Jamil Simon: John, if a heated argument does happen in class and people get offended or defensive, how do you handle that?
[00:16:00] John Rose: One of my go-to moves is to always take a step back and talk about the conversation
[00:16:05] Jamil Simon: Kinda look at it from a balcony sort of?
[00:16:07] John Rose: Yeah. I find that just that little space, like, what about that didn't go well?
How could we do that better? I think that redirecting a conversation, changing the tone is sometimes oftentimes more effective than, say, reprimanding somebody, because you don't wanna lose students. You're trying to, like, bring them back in to the fold, and if you shame them too much, then they feel like they're outside the fold again.
So one of the problems on campuses is that students sometimes feel unfree to speak because of fear of their other fellow students, more so than the faculty, according to surveys that they've done. So I'm trying to kind of run that peer pressure back the other way, and if I can make it cool for the group to want to do this thing together, then in a certain way, the student who wants to screw it up for everybody else by, let's say, violating Chatham House rules, they're gonna say, "What are you doing?
You're screwing this up. We had this special thing going." "Aren't you in the group?" Right. And, like, you make community that way, and that becomes the glue. Right. So they kinda work for me instead of against me.
[00:17:13] Jamil Simon: Right. That's great. Stephanie, how about you? When that kinda thing happens in class, what's your strategy?
[00:17:20] Stephanie Shonekan: Yeah, I do like the strategy of redirecting, and I can share a real-life example. In 2023, I was teaching a class called Race and the American Story when October 7th came in Israel. The following week, I had to go back into the classroom, and it was such a tense time in class. You know, the students, they were nervous.
They were anxious. I had, in that class, a good number of Jewish students. I also had a couple of Muslim students and some African American students as well. And I walked in not knowing how I would deal with the tensions. And then I just happened to look at my syllabus for the day, and we were going to be talking about Strange Fruit, the wonderful song by Billie Holiday.
So that song was actually written as a poem by a Jewish teacher from New York City. His name was Abel Meeropol, and he wrote that song in the 1930s because he knew what African Americans were going through during the Jim Crow era, and that song is about lynching, right? But he had a unique understanding of what it means to have your humanity violated,
[00:18:34] Jamil Simon: right?
[00:18:35] Stephanie Shonekan: And it was a powerful moment in class, just all of us realize, oh, there's allyship. You know? There's a way to cross over to understand another people's pain, another group's suffering. This is what this poet did, and this is why Billie Holiday was able to sing that song.
[00:18:55] Jamil Simon: And Nina Simone, too.
[00:18:57] Stephanie Shonekan: Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
So my answer to your question is that sometimes there's a text, whether that is music or a book or a play, that allows you to reset, to have them pause, bring the tensions down. That allows the students to put their differences on the side so we can focus on something else that will then get us to think for ourselves about this difficult question, and in perhaps different ways.
[00:19:26] Jamil Simon: This next question is a broad question: Are there ways that campus culture, even academic pedagogy itself, can unintentionally deepen polarization? I'll leave that to either one of you who wants to respond to that.
[00:19:41] Stephanie Shonekan: Yeah, I think it's very possible. I think we're all human beings. We all have opinions and beliefs, which is our right as a human being.
But when you become a faculty member
[00:19:53] Jamil Simon: or a professor or a lecturer
[00:19:55] Stephanie Shonekan: of a particular field, you have taken like an oath, right? To come into the classroom and teach that field, teach your expertise. You spent time working on a dissertation on ethnomusicology. Come be an ethnomusicologist. You know, I'm Catholic, but I can't come into the classroom and say the Rosary.
You know, that's, that's not what they pay me for .
[00:20:17] Jamil Simon: Right. At least not on this campus, anyway .
[00:20:20] Stephanie Shonekan: Not on this campus, right?
[00:20:21] Stephanie Shonekan: So I think sometimes we just need a, a reminder that, yes, I get it, you're human, you believe in this, absolutely, that's your right, but when you come into the classroom, let's teach what we have on the syllabus.
I think sometimes when we cross that line, there's a possibility that we could kind of dig the chasm a little bit deeper than we ought to.
[00:20:46] Jamil Simon: John, what about you? How do you feel about unintentionally deepening polarization?
[00:20:52] John Rose: I think there are times it isn't unintentional. I mean, you will find people on college campuses who, when you s- start talking about depolarizing, will say, "What's wrong with polarization?"
You know, like, "There's another side of this country that's problematic." So don't assume that everybody's for depolarization. I think most people, in theory, would say, "Yeah, we- we're too polarized. We need more civil discourse." Can it happen that you unintentionally make it worse in the classroom? Sure. I would say one feature of polarization is that it puts us in negative trust feedback loops, so much so that people who are doing the work of civil discourse and depolarization are sometimes suspected as having their own political agenda, because we live in a very suspicious time right now.
And so you go out and you say, "I'm gonna teach this class, and we're gonna talk about Israel and Palestine." Well, students are gonna be pretty quick to wonder whose side are you on. You say you're for free speech, you say you're for discourse, and it's very hard. It's very hard. And if you're trying to kinda get everybody to the table and get everybody to trust you, you're gonna put yourself in a situation where you might end up where nobody trusts you.
[00:22:01] Jamil Simon: Right.
[00:22:01] John Rose: Or, or people take turns distrusting you. Right. It's quite difficult.
[00:22:05] Jamil Simon: I mean, there is some value in conflict. I mean, we do learn a lot from conflict. We do grow out of conflict. Conflict can be creative. It's really all about how you manage it. But I imagine you've each experienced pushback from your college communities for these initiatives at different stages in the process.
Can you explain the resistance you received and how you handled it? Jon, you go first.
[00:22:33] John Rose: Well, I mentioned the Israel and Palestine topic, so I'll discuss that. I've now twice helped teach a class called Israel and Palestine on campus.
[00:22:41] Jamil Simon: You do have courage.
[00:22:42] John Rose: Yeah. The first time around, we, we traveled to Israel and Palestine.
Second time around, we couldn't do it because of the war. But this class was met with fierce resistance on the part of s- some faculty and students on the grounds that it, in their words, both sided genocides. They called our field trip a genocide field trip, calls to boycott the class. And as somebody who runs to the fire and does controversial things, I've had this sort of thing before.
Right. But to answer your question, how did I respond to it? I asked those people out to coffee. And so if somebody says, "This is what I think of your class," I'll say, "You wanna meet me and talk to me? I'll, I'll buy you coffee. I'll tell you my story. You tell me yours. Would you like to come to my class and see it for yourself?
Because I'm not sure it's what you think it is." It's a powerful thing, and I don't say it just, like, to be Machiavellian. I actually think it helps you grow as a human being, 'cause maybe they have critiques that are good, and I need to hear them, too. And wouldn't it be better if you were actually in the class and we talked about it there?
And so I think going in that direction, I think, really helps as a way to respond to criticism, which, yes, I have, I have definitely faced.
[00:23:56] Stephanie Shonekan: Yeah, I would say similar for me. The example I will pull on is the Race and the American Story class, which actually, yes, I taught it here at Maryland, but I started teaching it at the University of Missouri with Adam Seagrave, who is a white man, and, and I'm a Black woman.
So I think there were students on both sides who were uncomfortable with a white man teaching about race or that I would want to work with him. You know, like, a little shade, you know? A little- Yeah,
[00:24:26] Jamil Simon: yeah ...
[00:24:27] Stephanie Shonekan: like, "Why are you working with him?" You know? "What does he know?" And so Adam and I designed it. We had five sections.
Of course, I got many of the Black students. He got most of the white students. That's just how human beings are. They'll go to the, the professor that they think will understand them more, hear them out. And so we realized that was a problem, because what we were trying to do there was say, "Look, we're all in this together.
Doesn't matter if you're Black or white or Asian or Latino. Like, we all need to figure this thing out and understand where race comes from in this country." So we decided that, okay, let the students self-select. That's fine. But once every two weeks, we will bring them all together for dinner. And so that way they had to come together, and we would talk about the course so that the white kids could hear what my Black kids were saying and, and so on.
And that's a way we got around it, and then he and I then wrote a book and so on. I found it really useful to kind of bounce my ideas off him, because he has a different background from mine, and-
[00:25:33] Jamil Simon: And he might hear things differently.
[00:25:35] Stephanie Shonekan: Exactly, and I might rethink things when I hear it from Adam. You know, we had differences, but we kinda worked it through, and we ha- wanted our students to actually see that it could be done.
[00:25:48] Jamil Simon: Making Peace Visible is a member of the Democracy Group, a network of podcasts united around the goal of helping listeners understand what's broken in our democracy and how people are working together to fix it. Here's another Democracy Group podcast that you might like.
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[00:26:35] Jamil Simon: Well, you know, the notion of safe spaces has become popular on college campuses as a way to protect students from being attacked, or in some cases from being re-traumatized by others.
And at the same time, this can be a slippery slope because it's also important to foster courage, resilience, and open dialogue on campus. John, you use the Chatham House Rules in your polarization course. For those who don't know, could you explain what they are and how it functions within the context of your class?
[00:27:07] John Rose: Your audience may be more familiar with Vegas rules. That's what's said here, stays here. But Chatham House Rules isn't quite that. It's what's said here cannot be attributed to a person in class. So you could leave class and say, "We had a discussion about abortion, and there were students who were pro-choice and there were students who were pro-life," but you can't say, "Turns out Jennifer is pro-choice or pro-life, and she said this."
That gives you just that level of anonymity that you can feel a little bit more comfortable talking. Yeah.
[00:27:42] Jamil Simon: Yeah, and Stephanie, for people who come from marginalized communities, the debate between free speech and safety is more personal in a way. I'm sure you hear from students and faculty of color that they feel the clock has been turned back in the last couple of years.
How do you encourage people who feel under attack to engage in dialogue with the other side?
[00:28:05] Stephanie Shonekan: Yeah, I do understand where students are coming from, even young faculty as well, all have been horribly trolled in the last few years just for what they teach, you know, just for who they are. You mentioned earlier, Jamil, the notion of safe spaces.
I do think there should be places on campus in the, on the cultural, social side where students maybe can get together and maybe in affinity groups or in sororities or whatever, right? And feel like they are safe, to use that word. But I think in the classroom, I think we need to be brave, you know? Like, I think the classroom is the place where you read the description of the course before you sign up, and then you come into the class and you're a scholar at this point, you know?
And all scholars have had to contend with difficult texts that maybe don't feel good. You know, it doesn't feel good to read Thomas Jefferson's notes on the State of Virginia. Doesn't feel good at all as a Black person, but it needs to be read, and as scholars, we need to give it our attention. So I don't think the classroom should be insulated in that way.
But we need to do a better job of helping our faculty to prepare for sometimes very difficult dialogue in the classroom. And so that's why we've started a program here at Maryland called the Douglas Dialogues. You know, Maryland is a state where Frederick Douglass was from, and he was unafraid of having some really difficult conversations with suffragists and abolitionists and so on.
And so we started something called the Douglas Dialogues, which is really designed to show students that they can look at a theme and come at it from different angles, but you need to come with some knowledge, some, some learning.
[00:29:53] Jamil Simon: There's a popular adage that teachers often learn from their students just as much as students learn from teachers.
[00:29:59] John Rose: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:30:00] Jamil Simon: Have you found yourself changed unexpectedly, either of you, from having taught these courses?
[00:30:07] John Rose: I've become more curious. I like preach about curiosity, but then I discovered I have this habit of I really want students that I know to be skeptics, skeptical about my project, maybe even skeptical about me personally, where we clearly see the world a bit differently.
I wanna get to know you better and see if it's possible to have some kind of intellectual friendship. And the more I've done that, the more I've found myself kind of delighting or in or taking joy in students who might not be initially supportive of my project, and I find that interesting. I think that, I think that's a good thing.
Yeah. I think it is.
[00:30:46] Jamil Simon: How about you, Stephanie?
[00:30:48] Stephanie Shonekan: I don't think I would be in the position that I'm in right now if I hadn't been pushed in 2015 to enter the fray, you know? I think I learned a lot about myself at that time. I learned that one of you used the word trust. I learned that you can build trust, but that it's a process, and that trust building is not only with students, but it's with your colleagues, it's with the administration, and I learned that I had the skills to do that, not always successfully, but I enjoyed the challenge of doing it.
I also felt that this needs to be done not only when there are crises, but that as human beings, we all need to continue to think critically for ourselves. Being in the position that I'm in right now, it's lots of work and it's hard work, but it's fulfilling because I get to see it happening in the classrooms of my colleagues.
[00:31:45] Jamil Simon: Right. I mean, you're seeing things in a wider-
[00:31:48] Stephanie Shonekan: Yes ... in a
[00:31:48] Jamil Simon: wider frame in a way.
[00:31:50] Stephanie Shonekan: Exactly. In different canons, you know, not only in terms of race and so on, but also in terms of, you know, I love to see folks in literature bring in some Chinua Achebe, you know, and I love to see Frantz Fanon on, on a syllabus in philosophy because that's how we become better thinkers and a more prepared citizenry.
[00:32:12] Jamil Simon: Yeah. Actually, it's interesting, there's a recent op-ed in The New York Times by a Harvard professor who studied civic education at both the secondary and college level, and he said there's been progress in this domain, and in a sense, the work you two have been doing, uh, reflects that. Civic education is a requirement in a lot of schools and in many states.
Do you see the demand for these courses coming more from the students or from the university or state government? Where is the energy coming from?
[00:32:43] Stephanie Shonekan: I think that's a loaded question.
[00:32:44] Jamil Simon: All right.
[00:32:45] Stephanie Shonekan: I think I would love to see us again break up the meaning of things, right? So right now, if you ask many faculty about civic education, they will mention a few centers like the one at UNC, or the one at ASU, or the one at, you know, it's mostly in, in red states, Texas as w- you know, like, there are centers that are kind of branded as places where civic education happens.
And it does happen in those places, but I'd love to see us think about where else it, it happens. I think it can happen in a philosophy class, or a classics class, or in the Department of English, and not just in designated centers that have been funded by usually a certain party in certain states.
[00:33:35] Jamil Simon: How about you, John?
Do you, do you see some energy coming from the students or...
[00:33:39] John Rose: Students.
[00:33:39] Jamil Simon: Students.
[00:33:40] John Rose: I'll go with students. What they're really hungering for is spaces where they can disagree and can play with ideas and feel as though they're hearing all sides and are allowed to think for themselves. I think that there has been an unmet student demand for this for some time, and that academia been slow to respond to it.
I mentioned that I, I started teaching that Duke class in, like, I don't know, it was 2018, something like that, and I was an unknown professor, but it was still up right away, and it wasn't because I was some kind of special teacher. It's because word got out amongst students, "Hey, there's this class where you can actually have conversations about pronouns or transgender ally, whatever."
And they're like, "No way. Really?" "Yeah." "And how does he do it?" "Well, he'll give you both sides, and then you don't never figure out what he thinks, and then he'll let you hash it out." And you know, I could've filled 10 sections. And again, not because I'm anything special, but it's because-
[00:34:40] Jamil Simon: But there's a demand.
[00:34:41] John Rose: Huge demand. Huge
[00:34:42] Jamil Simon: demand. Yeah. That's great.
[00:34:44] John Rose: I, I, and I will say this, Jamil. I think one of the reasons the supply didn't keep up with the demand is that faculty, I include myself in this, faculty as a g- as a group today in higher ed are a rather risk-averse group of people. And I don't know if academia attracts its people or produces them or both.
We're very cautious, and so when you asked me the question about tell me a time when it went wrong, I think a lot of professors upon hearing of one instance where it was cringe would say, "Well, that's why I'm not gonna do that." But I think it's the wrong response And I don't mean that's what you meant by the question, that, that- Right
that this is it. No, no. But, you know, sometimes you gotta do things where it's gonna be a little bumpy, and you're gonna have those moments when you wince, but we should still do it. You should keep going. You're gonna get better at it, students are gonna get better at it. And so I think just leaning in a little bit more as faculty and being okay with it not being perfect, and taking a little bit more risk would increase the supply of these classes.
[00:35:46] Stephanie Shonekan: Can I just add one?
[00:35:47] Jamil Simon: Absolutely.
[00:35:48] Stephanie Shonekan: I agree with all of that, actually. But I would also add that the folks who are worried about delving into this space in this way are people who may not be able to bounce back quickly. The faculty I was talking about who were trolled, if they had left academia, they would never have come back in.
So I, I do agree that we should take the bull by the horns and so on, but we also need to acknowledge that there's a whole group of people who, what if they were immigrants, you know, like, who maybe don't have as much space to be as adventurous, and I know that you didn't leave them out.
[00:36:27] John Rose: No, I, mostly I'm looking at the tenured faculty and telling them they ought to step up.
[00:36:34] Jamil Simon: Yeah, I mean, one of the thing, things the current administration is doing is shifting funding from racial equity based education towards civic and citizenship education. Since you started in this field, you, you've married concepts of racial equity and citizenship in your pedagogy. Could you speak to that idea in this particular moment?
[00:36:55] Stephanie Shonekan: I don't think they're mutually exclusive. You know, I think it's all important. I think especially in this country, I think to be a good citizen, you, you have to have good racial training. You, you have to understand why race became an issue in this country. And so how are we good citizens if we don't learn about Rosa Parks, you know, or, you know, John Brown, or Thomas Jefferson, or Abraham Lincoln?
You know, like, all of those folks have had an impact on how we think about race in this country.
[00:37:27] Jamil Simon: Well, I'm very grateful for the time you both have spent with us and your openness to ideas and everything. Is there anything that you'd like to share as we end this conversation?
[00:37:39] Stephanie Shonekan: I would just like to say this is, I think, the second time I've been on a panel with John, and it's always a pleasure.
[00:37:46] John Rose: Likewise.
[00:37:47] Jamil Simon: Well, it's been a pleasure for me, too, and I really enjoyed hearing your insights and your perspectives.
[00:37:52] Stephanie Shonekan: Thank you, Jamil.
[00:37:53] John Rose: Thank you.
[00:37:59] Jamil Simon: You can find more from Stephanie Shonekan and John Rose in the show notes, along with more resources on addressing polarization on campus. This episode was produced by Andrew Muraskin and Faith McClure. Emmy Todd helps manage our social media, and I'm Jamil Simon. For more ideas on moving beyond polarization, follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube at Making Peace Visible, and check out our previous episodes on journalism, new media, and the psychology of disagreeing better.
You can find them at makingpeacevisible.org/podcast or on any podcast platform. We'd love to hear your feedback on the series. You can email me directly at jamil@makingpeacevisible.org, or even better, leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And we'll see you back here on September 15th for the next episode in our Beyond Polarization series.
Making Peace Visible is a proud member of the Democracy Group. Thanks for listening, and talk soon.