3 Questions: John Dozier on Dialogues Across Difference
MIT’s new collection “Dialogues Across Difference” will carry audio system to campus and create alternatives for group members to display sensible methods to tackle tough topics throughout variations of opinion, background, viewpoint, and life expertise.
A collaboration among the many places of work of the MIT president, provost, and chancellor, this system kicks off March 22 with John Tomasi, the inaugural president of Heterodox Academy. His lecture, “Humility, Neighborhood, and the Seek for Reality at MIT,” shall be adopted by dialogue with Institute Neighborhood and Fairness Officer John Dozier, then a group dialogue with questions from the dwell viewers.
In a dialog ready for MIT Information, Dozier displays on the origins, intent, and relevance of getting group conversations at MIT.
Q: The place did the thought for this collection come from?
A: It’s an concept that emerged nearly two years in the past on the finish of my first yr at MIT, when Covid had pushed us all farther aside. At the moment, we actually needed to seek out methods to interact in group dialog. Extra lately, a lot of community-oriented initiatives have come to life at MIT — the values statement, the strategic action plan, the free expression statement, and others. We thought the time was proper to carry the MIT group right into a collection of conversations about what’s driving all this work, and in regards to the form of group we need to construct.
Q: How did you choose John Tomasi as the primary speaker?
A: I’ve been following his work at Heterodox Academy for some time. I had learn a few of his essays on their blog and was impressed along with his readability and compassion. So we arrange a time to speak final fall, simply as our concepts for this collection had been taking form. Talking with him introduced it dwelling — his insights and data had been super belongings that I needed to share with the MIT group, and my dialog with him was a vital a part of the connection. We wanted to share that, too, and convey others into it.
I’m simply as excited, by the way in which, about having Professor Malick Ghachem from Historical past as our second speaker. His ideas about free speech will make that dialog distinct from John’s, however Malick has an equally principled orientation to the problems. We’re fascinated with these occasions as examples or fashions for constructive interactions nearly as a lot as we’re fascinated with what the audio system need to share with us.
Q: There appears to be so much taking place round free expression nowadays. Are you able to say extra about that?
A: There have been a few incidents on campus in the previous couple of weeks which have escalated discussions about free speech on campus. This stuff usually are not taking place in a vacuum. College leaders throughout the nation are struggling to strike a stability between freedom of speech, which is so essential on school campuses, and preserving a way of group, respect, and belonging.
We additionally discovered of a debate that shall be taking place on campus in just a few weeks over what I feel is an completely false binary of “range, fairness, and inclusion” versus “advantage, equity, and equality.” A variety of folks, together with me, had been invited to take part on this occasion final yr. We declined based mostly on the framing, however it fueled our fascinated with easy methods to set the precise circumstances for a dialogue — avoiding simplified variations of points and concentrating on a format that may broaden attendees’ views fairly than on having one aspect “win.”
As President Kornbluth mentioned in her video message to the group a few weeks in the past, there may be “a transparent distinction between what we are able to say to one another — what we’ve a proper to say — and what we must always say to one another as first rate human beings residing collectively in a group.” For this reason it’s so essential to begin a dialog collection, to get folks speaking to one another about this distinction.