New Charlotte conversation series explores how we can disagree respectfully

Respectful debate and disagreeing with someone without despising them can feel like a lost art these days. The last decade in American politics has been, well, anything but civil. That’s why WFAE and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation are teaming up for Public Square: Charlotte’s Conversation Series, which starts this month. Former Davidson College President Carol Quillen will moderate the first conversation in the series Oct. 29 at the Carolina Theatre. She joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry.

Marshall Terry: So let's start at the beginning. Can you talk more about the idea behind this conversation series, and tell us who the guests are for this first event?

Carol Quillen: Disagreement has always been a part of American politics. In fact, diversity was presumed from the beginning of the country to be a positive good. Washington said in his farewell address that the diversity of the American people will protect their liberty from tyranny. So that it's not just that we put up with each other, but we value the fact that we disagree, that we come from different places, different geographies, trying to come together and live as one. That requires a particular approach to disagreement. We have to be able to talk about the things that matter most to us with respect and curiosity for people who don't share those beliefs and convictions. And these conversations are meant to model how to do that and to engage — for the audience to be a part of that and to ask questions and to participate in this conversation.

The first two guests are Melissa Murray, who's a law professor, and John Hood, who runs a foundation here in North Carolina — who have, I would say, different views about the relationship between freedom and equality and different views about the relationship between individual freedom and our sort of collective responsibility.

Terry: And how will this conversation be structured with you in the middle moderating?

Quillen: That's a good question. It's the first time we're doing this. I guess I would say I spent a lot of my time in the classroom with really smart students, and I learned a lot from the people that I talked to. I think my job is to highlight the views of each of our speakers and then to invite them to engage with each other in conversations about their differences, and then we'll engage the audience.

Terry: So the official topic for this first discussion is "Freedom and Responsibility: What We Owe Each Other." You've already talked about who the guests are and their sort of backgrounds. How are you planning to explore this topic?

Quillen: Although it's easy to imagine that this is a debate where one person is going to take one side and one person is going to take the other side, I would invite the audience to think of this more as a conversation where speakers emphasize different aspects of our political tradition in different ways. The conversation that we want to have is going to be, I hope, more nuanced than the kinds of conversations that see everything in terms of this or that. Right now we're so polarized, it's like we're in this binary space where it's this or that.

Terry: It does seem very polarizing right now. So what does a better argument look like?

Quillen: One thing is to be curious about the person with whom you're engaged. The second thing is to ask questions rather than to make statements. The third thing is to imagine that you might learn something that you didn't know before. And the fourth thing is that you have to believe that out of the conversation, some path forward that was not evident prior to the conversation could emerge, that if we all talk to one another with curiosity and a kind of open mind that we may, together in conversation, discover paths forward that none of us thought of before we engage with one another.

Terry: Do you think people still want that even in this echo chamber world we seem to be living in?

Quillen: I really do. I think people are exhausted. I think we need to remind ourselves of our own agency and our own responsibility for building the public sphere that we want to live in, and we can't leave that solely to political leaders. We the people need to build that for ourselves. Our diversity is why we're creative and innovative and come up with new solutions. It's part of the engine of growth that we love about America. And so I do think that we can recover that and that normal, everyday people like me want that kind of conversation and not the screaming, shouting past each other that we have now.