UW-Madison has announced a new program designed to quote,
foster and strengthen civil dialogue across the university.
It's called the Wisconsin Exchange Pluralism in Practice.
And joining us now to talk about the program is Chancellor Jennifer Mnuchin.
Thanks for your time today.
Thanks for having me.
So what is the Wisconsin Exchange?
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.
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?
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.
And 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?
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 10 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.
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?
Well I mean in some way 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 and 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.
So in August the university lost a free speech case in the federal court
filed by a woman who said the UW is 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.
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.
All right. Chancellor Mnookan, thanks for your time today.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm glad we were able to hash that out.
Yes I am too. Seem. Engagement right civic engagement.
That's what we believe in. I wish I'd come.