Why you should talk to people you disagree with about politics

  If you talked to friends or family about politics over Thanksgiving, you might not have changed each other’s minds. But don’t be discouraged – and consider talking with them again as the holiday season continues.

  As a scholar of political dialogue, for the past decade I have been studying conversations between people who disagree about politics. What I have found is that people rarely change their minds about political issues as a direct result of these discussions. But they frequently feel much better about the people with whom they disagree.

What American schools can learn from other countries about civic disagreement

  Few areas of American life have experienced more conflict of late than public education. The conflict has largely revolved around how public schools should deal with the difficult subjects of race and racism. The situation has become so inflamed that a national school board group asked the federal government to step in and protect school officials and educators from what they said were a growing number of attacks from angry citizens.

Michael Josephson: Democracy - respectful discourse

  One quality of our democracy is that every citizen is a public official. Thus, the passionate advocacy of political convictions is not only a right, it’s a patriotic obligation.

  What worries me, however, is the tendency of many basically good people to be overcome with self-righteous certainty that they’re right and that those who disagree with them are wrong.