Engaging Across Viewpoints Lecture Series

TBA

David Blankenhorn

Topic: Civil Discourse in Troubled Times

Main lecture: Monday, February 16th at 6 PM in Weitz 236.

Lunch and Learn: Tuesday, February 17th at 11:45 AM at AGH Meeting Room. (Registration required). “Biases and Bridges: Is Dialogue Always the Answer?”

David Blankenhorn is the founding president of Civic Life, an organization whose mission is to strengthen citizenship. In 2016, David co-founded Braver Angels, a citizens’ group working for less rancor and more goodwill in politics and society, and in 1988 he founded the Institute for American Values, a think tank on civil society.
Previously, he founded the Mississippi Community Service Corps, the Virginia Community Service Corps, and the Committee for Economic Change at Harvard University. He co-founded the National Fatherhood Initiative and served two years as a VISTA volunteer.
David is the co-editor of ten books and the author of five, including most recently In Search of Braver Angels: Getting Along Together in Troubled Times. His articles have appeared in many publications and he has served as lead author of nine jointly-authored public appeals to the nation.
David has spent a lifetime working across political divides:

• A profile in the conservative-leaning Deseret News says that Blankenhorn has “carved out a unique career cutting across ideological lines.”
• A profile in the liberal-leaning USA Today describes him as making “a career of thinking about big issues” and as “a catalyst for analysis and debate among those with differing views.”
• A profile in the New York Times calls him “a consensus builder for a moral base in society.”
• A profile in týždeň (“The Week,” Bratislava, Slovakia) says Blankenhorn “in the spirit of [Václav] Havel” is “trying to hold America together.”

David grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. He graduated in 1977 from Harvard College,
where he was president of Phillips Brooks House, the campus community action center,
and the recipient of a Knox Fellowship. In 1979 he received an M.A. in history from the
University of Warwick in Coventry, England. He and his wife, Raina, have three children
and live in New York City.

The Office of the President and the Division of Inclusion, Equity, and Community were pleased to host the inaugural Engaging Across Viewpoints Lecture Series presented by Dr. Simon Cullen. In his talk, Beyond civility: Honing reason to create safe spaces for dangerous ideas, Dr. Cullen, explained how he set out to test a 165-year-old hypothesis in the psychology of reasoning and ended up teaching a viral philosophy class called Dangerous Ideas in Science and Society. Using live polls and student data, he explored the effects of self-censorship on academic freedom and the contradictions implicit in how students often think about speech and education. Finally, he shared practical, easy-to-use tools backed by empirical research and his own classroom experience to help us reach beyond mere civility: to understand, discuss, and evaluate controversial arguments more deeply and with less bias.

Simon Cullen is an Assistant Professor and Dietrich College AI and Education Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. His research and teaching combine philosophy, cognitive science, and educational technology to improve reasoning, communication, and understanding across moral and political divides. His work has been published in Science Advances, Cognition, Nature Science of Learning, and the Review of Philosophy and Psychology. He has a background in ethics, moral psychology, the psychology of reasoning, and the philosophy of cognitive science, and he holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University.