MUST YOU YELL TO SELL?

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

In the gurukuls of yore in India, a teacher, the guru, didn’t just teach, he (it was always a male) imparted knowledge that helped sculpt character.

An innovative new initiative at the University of Toronto might be on track to recreate that ecosystem for an exchange of views, for learning together, with each other.

Randy Boyagoda, Vice-Dean, Undergraduate, and Professor, English Department, Faculty of Arts and Science, was recently appointed Provostial Advisor on Civil Discourse at the university.

The desire to understand what constitutes civil discourse, and perhaps define its parameters, didn’t happen overnight, though civil discourse – or the absence of it – came into sharp focus with the Israel-Palestine war.

Professor Boyagoda describes how his role came to be.

“The war was certainly a clear catalyst, but it’s not as though everything was great before October 7 last year. I think it’s fair to say universities have been struggling with civil discourse for a while now. To create and sustain conditions where we can think out loud together. To come to a mutual understanding, a shared understanding, in the pursuit of truth, and in the context of universities, of greater knowledge.”

Several factors contributed to the urgency.

Geopolitical issues such as Israel-Palestine.

Social issues around how we perceive and respond to sex and gender – the debate around UofT’s own Jordan Peterson and his choice not to embrace inclusive pronouns comes to mind.

The way the pandemic forced a whole cohort of faculty and students into what Boyagoda describes as “atomized living”.

“The last couple of years of high school that are so formative were impacted. Instead of interaction, the lesson they absorbed was that isolation was keeping them safe. In pre-COVID days, students would have had the opportunity to sit together and discuss intense world events such as George Floyd’s arrest and death in police custody, the storming of the Capitol, etc.,” says Boyagoda. “But there was an interruption of conversations about individual experiences. It’s hard to go from that to interacting with peers.”

And, not surprisingly, social media. “The way in which our interactions are over-mediated by the ever-present smartphones, the way in which we are always connected to internet sources,” he says. “It’s increasingly harder for me to have a candid discourse. Am I being recorded? Where will I be quoted? What will taken out of context?”

He describes a class on contemporary American fiction that he was teaching. Three-hour Zoom lectures for 80 students. Seventy-eight of them kept their cameras off. “There was nothing from them, I had no idea what they were thinking. Did they agree or disagree? Even on a phone call one can sense body language and gauge response. That’s not possible with a blank flat screen!”

Boyagoda has been asked to chair a working group that will meet and discuss and try to make sense of what civil discourse is. There are two parts to his role. The first involves keeping the conversation going, to ensure that the disagreements, if any, are productive and fruitful. Beyond that, and in parallel, he serves independently as an advisor and a sounding board.

“I am happy to chat with faculty, students and colleagues around the world. My hope is that we can make sense of civil discourse in the Canadian context, not just as determined by the conversation in the US. A colleague in Denmark recently said to me that this is a challenging issue and it’s important to not just do what they’re doing in the US. Though they are trying to make sense of civil discourse in public life, in society, on university campuses...I want us to figure out what it means in Canada.

“Civil discourse rules tend to favour the elite – people who are not necessarily invested in the outcome. The goal is to cultivate a disposition for civil discourse, not a set of tactics, to gain a better understanding.”

Later in the fall, consultations with faculty and students will inform a report that will present its recommendations in winter.

Thinking out loud together as a part of civil discourse is a laudable goal – but how loud is acceptable, civil? When does it become discord? Where and how does one draw the line?

We have to have a realistic sense of what civil discourse is and isn’t, not water it down,  says Boyagoda.

“Universities have to be places of dissent, protests, as they always have been. Dissent can be present in classrooms, public lectures, in conferences. It’s when the conversation shifts to insulting that you begin dictating, not engaging. You are setting the rules. You’re saying, in essence, that I don’t want to listen, I want to make my point. Volume is just one part of dissent, intent is the other.”

We tend to think of civil discourse as another way of describing polite conversation, but Boyagoda makes an interesting distinction between the two.

“You can yell, you can swear, and still be part of civil discourse, so long as you are trying to get to a common understanding. The Canadian temperament is polite, which is great. But there’s a danger in using politeness not to have a real conversation, to avoid reckoning with issues – though it may feel easier and safer to do so. If we keep walking away, the vital centre of shared public life gets hollowed out, leaving the extremists and the apathetic at two ends.”

He talks about seeing two groups of students protesting on campus. Both were small, both intensely committed to opposing causes. And around them, hundreds of students going about their business, walking away.

“Those at extreme ends do not attract others to their cause – only opponents.”

But is discourse even possible in an increasingly polarized world? On divisive issues where each side has lines etched in stone?

“There’s an analogy I like to use to describe such situations,” shares Boyagoda. “It’s like walking into a forest fire and saying, ‘Hi! I’m here to give you a fire safety demo.’ It’s not going to work because the situation is out of control, past the fire safety demo stage. But one of the great practical ways to approach civil discourse is to identify topics that are still debatable. Issues that we care about that matter to us, that we are open to learning more about, and start from there. Build a habit of discourse.”

Topics that we care about also include incendiary ones like cultural appropriation or colonization. What happens in such situations?

In Decolonization is colonialism, a commentary posted on The Hub, Karen Restoule takes an unexpected stance.

“If the act of colonization is one group entering into a territory and imposing their culture, language, laws, governance system, and general way of life on another, then would the term ‘decolonize’ not be understood to be removing all aspects of European society introduced here in North America since 1492?

“While the concept of tearing down or destroying exists within Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) ideology – the teachings that I carry – it is to be understood within the context of balance and renewal, with emphasis placed on respect for all living beings. This means that destruction without a positive or constructive motivation is seen as irresponsible, harmful, and frowned upon.”

The act of decolonization is, in itself, she posits, colonial.

“The left views ‘decolonizing’ as noble and necessary, fuelled by a strong belief that they are taking essential action by righting historical wrongs and reshaping social equity in re-examining and rewriting historical narratives. And yet, the act of decolonization in itself mirrors the same power dynamics these activists claim to want to dismantle (or claim to be dismantling). It involves the struggle for top-down power and the imposition of new frameworks... There’s nothing wrong with wanting to ensure that government and institutions don’t leave out those historically oppressed. But how we go about those matters – as young people everywhere have learned from Bob the Builder and his machines. We can fix this. Yes, we can. But only if we work together.”

Karen Restoule is Vice President at Crestview Strategy. She co-founded BOLD Realities, to advance the industry-Indigenous relationship, building on a prior role where she served First Nations leadership as Director of Justice at Chiefs of Ontario advancing innovative policy solutions to legacy challenges. She also led the modernization of Ontario’s administrative justice system at Tribunals Ontario. She is Ojibwe from Dokis First Nation.

Hers is an unusual stance and one that makes one think, is that so because others who feel the same way are afraid to voice their opinions?

Boyagoda agrees. “The worry is that we answer one rigid approach to engaging with another rigid approach. We saw that happen in many countries after they gained independence from colonizers – they next generation of the newly-freed became replicas of those they sought freedom from. It has to be a more subtle, supple approach.”

In 1984, George Orwell wrote of the consequences of speaking out, speaking the truth. Are we living in an Orwellian world, where it’s not the state policing us but where we censor ourselves?

“We have a challenge when it comes to our willingness to risk a little,” says Boyagoda. “The assumption is that when a professor, for instance, speaks, fellow faculty members or students are the ones listening because they want to learn, and that everyone will come to an understanding. But the doubts linger at the back of your mind. Who is listening? Why? What will happen? And that’s very disheartening. Exciting new ideas need space. One of the big questions is how to understand safety if there’s a direct physical threat. Things become fuzzier when ideas can be unsafe, where we feel mentally or emotionally unsafe just being in a discussion.”

It might be pertinent to note here that in his latest book Knife, Salman Rushdie engages in an imaginary discourse with his attacker.

How do political correctness or being woke fit in with the concept of civil discourse?

There are those who refer to the “tyranny of the left”, who claim it can be as limiting and restrictive as that of the far right.

Boyagoda responds with an anecdote.

During an interview with Rushdie for a PEN Canada event in 2017, he had asked him about the challenges to freedom of expression.

“Rushdie said the greatest ones came from the left not the right.”

There’s a difference between institutional liberalism and activist liberalism, says Boyagoda.

“We are always looking to extend the dignity of people who have been denigrated. Institutions have problems but are not the problem.

“Also, I think political correctness has been sunsetted. Wokeness is an awareness of systemic and historic prejudices.

“The challenge I have with it is that it begins from a place of suspicion. That those in the ‘other’ group have ulterior motives or an agenda that harms those we should be protecting. Whereas in reality, by and large, a great majority of people are not seeking sexist, racist, or sectarian hierarchy. But it’s become a case of ‘Racist unless proven otherwise’.

“If this project works, then it would mean more people more in the centre – I don’t care where they come from, right or left.”

Ironically, on his appointment as Provostial Advisor on Civil Discourse, he received emails from both sides of the divide saying pretty much the same thing, that they would not be welcome in the discourse.

“I believe that if I go in guns blazing as an ideologue to ‘fix’ this, that’s not discourse. I want to see how I can bring the fullness of my world view and that of others to this.”

So are we in a good place because we have this initiative, or a not-so-good place because we need one?

“One of my colleagues messaged me to say, ‘You know civil discourse is bad when they hire someone to do it!” he says with a laugh.

Interesting insights gleaned from a research project on civil discourse that he had his students work on include the fact that the first known reference to the term dates as far back as 1605.

In On Learning, Francis Bacon expresses dissatisfaction with the universities of the time for not teaching civil discourse!

And also spikes in the use of the term in the 60s, in the 80s during Apartheid, and of course, now.

“It comes up whenever there’s a distinct lack of it,” says Boyagoda.

Boyagoda is the author of the critically-acclaimed Beggar’s Feast, Original Prin and Dante’s Indiana, as well as the recently-released novel Little Sanctuary for young adults.

He has served as past president of PEN Canada.

Does he view himself primarily as a writer, teacher, mediator or negotiator of peace?

“As someone who is willing and able to keep a conversation going between people who don’t agree with each other,” he responds.

Once upon a time, parents used to tell their children to steer clear of politics and religion in the public sphere.

When the two intersect, as it often happens now, the rules of polite engagement blur even more. When are you on safe territory and when are you offending someone? That becomes difficult to determine.

Educators are stepping into the gap, helping people navigate the minefield of civil discourse.

Academic, writer and thinker Dr Vicki Bismilla addressed the issue in the March 2024 issue of Desi News.

“As a life-long educator I am interested in how human rights are respected around the world. But in writing about thorny political issues I keep thinking about how teachers might educate students about those issues.

“They would need to teach students about how to be careful when talking or writing about the violations and staying within the shifting sands of freedom of speech. Regardless of how our personal ethical standards, morals and compassion are ignited when we see violations of human rights, we need to always be wary about what we say and how we say it.

“So how do students use this kind of controversial yet documented facts in their own writing, especially if that writing becomes public if they choose to express their opinions on public media?

“They need to be careful because freedom of speech legislation can be interpreted differently at different times. Educators will need to apprise students about their personal safety when expressing their ethical objections, especially in political scenarios.

“In the minefield of the shifting rules of freedom of speech, educators struggle with how to teach youth that they have a right to speak their minds when they see ethical violations but to do so in a safe way.”

Boyagoda has these tips for students heading back to school this month on how to navigate a possibly fraught landscape.

“No matter what you study, read a good novel. Good novels invoke characters with different views coming into conflict. Read how the novelist resolves those issues.

“And go to events on campus. There’s so much going on at every university – go, meet new people and invite new thoughts and ideas into your mind. There’s also free food, usually!”