Columbus resident Aaron Yarmel is the associate director of the Center for Ethics and Human Values at Ohio State University.
People who disagree about what is going on in Israel and Palestine right now attribute very different meanings to the same actions, words, and slogans.
Reconciling this diversity is extremely challenging.
Ongoing conflicts at Columbia University and the recent congressional testimony by the presidents of Harvard University, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania revealed as much to the public.
Those of us who work in our nation’s colleges and universities already knew.
Education not enough to stop the feelings of terror on campuses
What are we to do when two groups of students — both acting in good faith and in the shadow of overwhelming histories of oppression and violence — sincerely disagree about whether their peers are calling for genocidal violence against Jewish people or a non-genocidal struggle for the liberation of Palestinians?
A first approach is to educate students about the history of Israel and Palestine, as this empowers them to understand their peers’ perspectives and contextualize their own.
But the unilateral sharing of information from experts to students is insufficient to meet the needs of those who are genuinely terrified that a bigot will respond to their Star of David or hijab with a verbal or even physical assault, hoping for a reunion with a friend who was captured by Hamas on October 7, mourning the deaths of loved ones killed during IDF operations, or angry that their university is not doing enough to stand with them or their communities.
When students present such a need for care, a second approach is called for: listening empathetically and humbly allowing them to correct our misunderstandings of the contents of their inner worlds.
In my experience, shifting between these two roles in an unpredictable campus environment requires the agility and precision of a professional violinist and, at times, the stamina of a marathon runner.
Empathy not enough to stop the feelings of terror on campuses
Nevertheless, sharing disciplinary expertise and offering empathy are insufficient responses to the situation we are facing on college campuses, and a third approach is needed: civil discourse.
Civil discourse can take many forms, but what unites them is a commitment to collaborating with others across disagreement to search for mutual understanding and reasonable answers to important questions.
When we facilitate civil discourse, our role is to help others engage in this search rather than to offer our own opinions or subject-matter expertise.
To be concrete, imagine a campus where students can attend a series of civil discourse events about the questions:
Is the meaning of a word dependent on the intentions of the speaker, the listener, some combination, or something else?
What meaning(s) does ‘intifada’ have on our campus?
To what extent is it possible for people who disagree about the meaning of this word, and others like it, to build a shared community?
Why civil discourse such a powerful tool to ease the feels of terror?
Exploring questions like these needn’t lead to complete agreement, as the answers are matters of judgment about which reasonable people can and do disagree.
And crucially, facilitators must never begin with the intention of ultimately defending their own preferred answers or the explicit or implicit commitments of their universities. To proceed with such an agenda would be to hide proselytization beneath a veneer of civil discourse: a reprehensible and irresponsible practice.
That said, competently facilitated civil discourse sessions can empower students themselves to find mutual understanding and discover more reasonable answers to the collective problems of living in a diverse community.
At the same time, these sessions are practical demonstrations of a crucial project of higher education: collaborating in intellectual projects across the polarizing lines of disagreement along which we typically self-segregate.
A commitment to civil discourse cannot happen overnight, as it takes time to develop the skills of dialogue facilitation and cultivate a community open to collective inquiry.
What is Ohio State doing to build civil discourse?
Since I joined the Center for Ethics and Human Values at Ohio State University, I have had the privilege of working with colleagues—including a talented team of undergraduate and graduate students—who embrace both aspects of this commitment, meeting regularly to train in the skills of dialogue facilitation, designing and publishing a free and accessible course in the principles of civil discourse, and conducting civil discourse about a range of topics in university classrooms, dorm buildings, local public schools, and other special events curated for that purpose.
Ohio State should be recognized for its broad support for civil discourse, including and beyond CEHV’s efforts.
Civil discourse is not a panacea for society’s problems, and it cannot replace information-sharing, purely therapeutic forms of empathetic listening, and disruptive activism for social change.
But I would like to invite you to join me in imagining, for a moment, what campus communities would look like if sufficient resources were allocated towards a regular commitment to fostering civil discourse.
What skills would our college students then carry with them after graduation?
Columbus resident Aaron Yarmel is the associate director of the Center for Ethics and Human Values at Ohio State University. In addition to overseeing all CEHV programs, he leads its efforts on dialogue facilitation and skill building and outreach, with a special focus on Israel and Palestine.
His research interests are in philosophy for children, applied ethics, social change, and two-level utilitarianism.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Israel-Hamas war| History, empathy can’t mend college tensions alone
