Informing Civil Discourse
In my opening talk this fall, I expressed faith that our students have the dispositions to do what seems near impossible in our broader society: engage with one another around difficult topics with kindness and curiosity. This fall, I have seen that happening, even outside the classroom, where students are tentatively but steadily moving beyond the reticence that had set in last year.
To move us further down that path, we have designed our all-school meeting program this year to help inform the conversations our students are having. Shortly before the election, BU history professor Dr. Bruce Schulman talked about several key presidential elections in the 20th century with the goal of helping us all understand how we have landed with this particular flavor of two-party election in 2024. We then welcomed Dr. Nancy Harrowitz, the Director of BU’s Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Students, and Dr. Mohammad Zaman, the Director of BU’s Center on Forced Displacement. They shared their experiences leading university-wide working groups last year on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia respectively, as well as their opinions on campus climates nationally in the wake of October 7. Just this week, BU professor Dr. Tim Longman, one of the world’s leading authorities on the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath, unpacked that tragic period of history. He also walked our students through the origins of the term “genocide,” the definition in the UN Convention, and how it might or might not apply to recent events in Ukraine and Gaza. Later this winter, Dr. Veronika Wirtz from BU’s School of Public Health will join us to talk about her research about misinformation on TikTok, specifically related to the marketing of Ozempic, but with applicability to many areas. And there are some other pieces in the works. This is all a supplement to the deep work our students do with their teachers in class, particularly in history, where several of our offerings are meant to create a factual context for understanding today’s world.
We owe it to our students to give them what they are unlikely to get from social media and echo-chamber news sources: thoughtful, reliable context to empower them to form their own opinions and test them against others’.