Save the Date–Tuesday, September 29 at 8:00 pm ET, Zoom Webinar.
Cornell is educating the next generation about democracy. Read more here about just how we are doing that.
Perhaps the first step in teaching students about democracy is teaching them how to engage in civil discourse, said Peter Loewen, the Harold Tanner Dean of A&S.
In the spring semester, he piloted a course called Disagreement, which sought to provide students with the tools they need to disagree effectively, especially on social and political topics. “It’s not unique to Cornell, but I saw it as a need,” Loewen said.
Peter Loewen, the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, teaches a course titled Disagreement, which provides students with the tools they need to disagree effectively, especially on social and political topics.
“There’s an easy playbook now. Assume the worst of the other side, demonize them, be unfairly uncritical of your own side,” Loewen said. “And then enjoy feeling you’re on the right moral side of things.” “That’s a good, cheap drug. I thought it was important to show students there’s another way to do it.”
For the course, “the hope was that students get a sense of not only how to disagree better, but why disagreement is fundamental to democracy, and why so many things over which we disagree are actually really hard problems with multiple ways of understanding them,” he said.
The Class of ’74 is honored to have Dean Loewen for our next RED Talk–don’t miss this!
Registration to follow.
