Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin on Civil Discourse at UW-Madison

Zac Schultz:
UW-Madison has announced a new program designed to “foster and strengthen civil dialogue across the university.” It’s called the Wisconsin Exchange: Pluralism in Practice. Joining us now to talk about the program is Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin. Thanks for your time today.

Jennifer Mnookin:
Thanks for having me.

Zac Schultz:
So what is the Wisconsin Exchange?

Jennifer Mnookin:
The Wisconsin Exchange is a collection of programs and opportunities for students, as well as faculty and staff, to gain experience in engaging with each other across their differences Whether those differences come as differences in background or identity or viewpoint and perspective. We already had a number of things happening on campus around this, but we wanted to grow those further because I think it’s a significant priority for our campus and frankly, for our nation.

Zac Schultz:
So Republicans have criticized UW-Madison for liberal professors making young conservatives feel uncomfortable on campus. Is this a response to those types of complaints?

Jennifer Mnookin:
This is actually something that I think is deeper and far broader. I think that universities are perfect places for people to learn from, and to learn to talk to people who experience the world differently from the way that they do. That goes all the way back to “sifting and winnowing,” a core idea at UW-Madison. And I think we do a fair amount of that already. And I also think there are opportunities to be more intentional about it, and also to give people practice and skills. Many people these days live in relatively siloed environments in terms of viewpoint and perspective, and we want people to get out of their silos and have the experience of learning from and talking to each other.

Zac Schultz:
Looking through the materials, it doesn’t look like this will be a requirement, not like a freshman class. So how do you get the people that may need this the most to actually buy into it?

Jennifer Mnookin:
That’s a fair question, and I think we’re frankly starting out with a coalition of the willing. We’re starting out with people who are interested in doing this. It won’t reach everybody on our very large, pluralistic campus from the get-go. We already have programs like the deliberation dinners, where 375 of our undergraduates are raising their hands to come together for six dinners across the year in groups of ten that are selected for viewpoint diversity, to gain skill and practice in talking about pretty contentious issues and learning that you can learn from people who see the world very differently from themselves. That’s grown over the past couple of years, each year. And in fact, we had more people who wanted to participate this year than we could — than we could include. And these additional programs will, at first, be for those who are interested. I hope down the road that we might be able to grow some trainings in other spaces around the university and reach even more students, as well as faculty and staff.

Zac Schultz:
So in recent years, we’ve seen student protesters take over Library Mall and protest over Gaza. We’ve seen conservative groups book speakers accused of hate speech. How would this program deal with those types of environments?

Jennifer Mnookin:
Well, I mean, in some ways — protest is part of free speech. It’s absolutely permitted under the First Amendment. But you can also have time, space, time, place and manner rules that limit it. Similarly, we’ve had many speakers from across the political spectrum, including very conservative speakers, as well as very left-leaning ones who’ve come to campus and shared their views with people who are interested in hearing from them without incident. I think that is absolutely part of what needs to happen on a university campus. We also need more opportunities for people who disagree with each other to show that they can do that diplomatically, respectfully, not necessarily succeeding in changing each other’s mind. But when you hear from someone with a different point of view, sometimes it does change your mind. Other times it sharpens and focuses your own arguments. I hear that just before me on this show, you had two congressmen from opposite sides of the aisle talking to each other. That’s a perfect example.

Zac Schultz:
So in August, the university lost a free speech case in a federal court filed by a woman who said the UW was blocking her speech on social media channels. How does moderation of speech on social media work with civil discourse in the public space because often that speech is overlapping.

Jennifer Mnookin:
Yeah. I mean, I think that we need to have robust dialogue in all the different spaces that are available. I don’t, frankly, find that social media is the most useful or valuable space for having civic engagement across our differences. I think that often on social media, people are more interested in, in supporting their existing point of view, rather than bringing curiosity and compassion to their engagement with one another. So I don’t see this initiative as terribly connected to the social media space of it all. It’s much more about, in real life and perhaps virtually, giving people opportunities to be part of conversations.

Zac Schultz:
All right, Chancellor Mnookin, thanks for your time today.

Jennifer Mnookin:
Thank you so much for having me.

Zac Schultz:
We wanted to ask the chancellor about the state of the UW athletic department and head football coach, Luke Fickell. Chancellor Mnookin wanted to keep the focus on this new initiative but promised to return to our set and talk about athletics at a future date.