By Lisa A. Kloppenberg, Vincent D. Rougeau, and Eduardo M. Peñalver
How can Jesuit institutions effectively respond to the profound ideological division that threatens U.S. society today? What does it mean to embrace a Jesuit, Catholic mission in such a way that it can help our campus communities and our nation to navigate the turbulence through which we are living?
In early May 2022, three high-profile legal scholars and leaders in Jesuit higher education sat down together to address these questions.
Lisa A. Kloppenberg, now a professor of law and special assistant to the vice president for university relations at Santa Clara University, was then serving as interim president at Santa Clara, a role which she assumed after many years as law dean, then as provost there. Vincent D. Rougeau was completing his first year as president of the College of the Holy Cross, after having served a decade as dean of Boston College Law School. Eduardo M. Peñalver of Seattle University was also completing his first year as president, a role to which he was appointed after serving as dean of Cornell University Law School.
Lisa Kloppenberg: Thinking about our students in these contentious times, how can our institutions effectively prepare them to be comfortable with ideological differences and to argue and disagree in a constructive way?
Vincent Rougeau: Well, one of the reasons it’s not easy to do this is that our students are living in a world where they don’t really have many elders who are great role models in public life.
Still, we get these young people at formative stages in their lives, where they are more open to learning and engaging, where we can intentionally build community and bring them together to get to know each other in a more intimate way in courses and in residential communities. In these contexts, we can help them build relationships, to feel a little bit more comfort and safety, to get to know people who have different views and see them as human beings. That’s a very important start.
Eduardo Peñalver: I completely agree that the role models are falling short. For the past six or seven years, the state of our public discourse has been disheartening, and that’s a huge portion of our students’ lives, really formative times in their development.
Another context is the way that people communicate with one another through social media, where they have not built the muscles of productive disagreement.
So, especially on the Jesuit campus, the beginning of the solution has to be in building relationships of trust among our students and in using these relationships as a foundation for challenging one another in more productive ways.
Seattle University students (above) begin to build relationships of trust as they engage in small group dialogue. Photo courtesy of Seattle University.
LK: In the classroom, you’re always building relationships, particularly in a smaller class. But doing this well demands a lot of intentionality from the faculty and openness from the students, the kind of thing that works in small groups or immersions where people really get to know each other at a deeper level. This is the opposite of social media where we not only self-select into separate groups, but where there’s no really deep engagement.
So, how do you see the work of the classroom making a difference in this context? And how should the classroom differ from what’s happening in other parts of students’ lives?
EP: I think when we’re preparing students of all backgrounds, we have to pay attention to the importance of really charitable listening. Students may resist that, and today it’s just countercultural to train your mind that way.
One of the things I’ve stressed with law students — and I think we can also apply this to the undergraduate experience — is the importance of empathy, of putting yourself in your opponent’s shoes, as an argumentative skill. If you are going to persuade others, that will require putting your mind in places where you would often rather not have it go. Not only do you have to listen, you also have to listen charitably and with empathy to understand the best version of your opponent’s argument — and ultimately your own argument.
There is no interest in that kind of persuasion on Twitter, as far as I can tell. And all sides of the political spectrum are falling short in the effort to persuade others, to figure out the opponents’ concerns and how I can make the position I’m advocating attractive to someone from that perspective or with that set of experiences. Yet if we want to make progress on any number of issues that we care about on campus and as citizens, we have to be able to do that effectively.
LK: That reminds me of Saint Ignatius’s famous “presupposition” in which he says we should be “more ready to put a good interpretation on another’s statement than to condemn it as false.” We listen for that nugget of content that allows us to make the best interpretation, but we also don’t demonize that other person when we disagree.
So, my question is how to make sure that we apply this approach in a way that is fair to everyone and that allows us to support vulnerable and marginalized people on campus who don’t feel like they belong. How do we help these people engage in argumentation without feeling attacked or silenced?
VR: That’s a really important issue for us to think about if we’re going to live together in a democratic society, and particularly if we’re going to live together in this diverse democratic society. The idea that those who are vulnerable or marginalized can come into our institutions and claim a presence and be meaningfully represented in all aspects of our common life — this is critical for building a strong democracy going forward. That we hear the voices of these people in our institutions now when there’s at least a little more willingness for them to be heard by classmates and faculty, this can be transformative.
Of course, it can be difficult to engage in diverse groups, and yet diverse conversations allow people to reckon with their own preconceived notions — their own classism or racism, whatever it is — and when they are in a strong community, they can care for one another in a way that allows for transformational work to take place despite the difficulty.
I should add that we’ve also got to avoid personalizing our critique of structures, so that people don’t feel attacked or undermined or judged all the time. If there’s a structural problem around the participation of First Gen students or students of color, for example, we can fix those structures. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that particular individuals are responsible for building the structures, even if they do have a responsibility to try to get things right now.
LK: Let’s put ourselves now in the shoes of our faculty, many of whom have growing fears that they might say something or ask a question in a way that becomes an explosive incident. How do you encourage dialogue and deep engagement as a faculty member when it can seem very risky?
“I think faculty have reason to wonder whether the free exchange of ideas in a classroom is under threat. ”
VR: A lot of our faculty are truly unnerved and truly troubled by the notion that they may be doing something destructive or inappropriate in the classroom, even as they are thinking carefully about how to structure engaging and inclusive conversations. At the same time, they are very wary of attempts, often from institutions beyond campus, to chill debate, to chill learning in an effort to forward some political or ideological program.
In the end, we have to start working together to create a context for colleagues to protect one another and even to allow people to make mistakes and not feel that their careers will end because they engage with some very difficult issues. We have to make sure that we can do that work on our campuses in a way that really is enhancing the learning of our students, as well as that of our faculty.
EP: As administrators, the most important thing we can do is help faculty by providing them with good resources for better understanding where students are coming from, the kind of training that will help them navigate the shifting sands of our discourse, which can be treacherous. Having good and recurrent support from their institutions can give faculty confidence as they move through this world.
Also, it’s important to make sure administrators and people in authority are exercising sound judgment when it comes to conflict and that there is a clear process to work toward a resolution. There aren’t actually that many cases where someone’s career has been destroyed because of saying something inadvertent in a class. Often, it’s something more going on there. And that’s where sound judgment and good process make all the difference.
LK: Let’s go back to the social and cultural context you both brought up at the beginning. The context that our students have been formed in isn’t very conducive to deep personal relationships, to dialogue, to working across differences, to finding common ground. So, as you think about this context, what particular things should our institutions seek to stand for as we think about ideological diversity on campus?
EP: Jesuit institutions have some real advantages, though we don’t always perceive them as advantages. For example, we already talked about the importance of relationship and relationality, which the whole Jesuit pedagogical model is built on. That relationships are baked into our educational approach — this is a kind of social capital that we can draw on when we’re grappling with disagreement on campus.
Another thing is the richness of the Catholic intellectual tradition which necessitates a sort of discomfort with too much partisanship or tribalism and which encompasses a lot of diversity and tension within itself. At Seattle University, like other Jesuit institutions, all this is kind of built into our identity. We have this vision statement that says we aspire to be the most innovative and progressive Jesuit and Catholic university in the country. But how do we put all these things together?
I’ve kind of leaned into the tension embedded in this vision. So, we want to be progressive and Catholic, which means we have to give each one its due. And if one group over here thinks we can’t have a particular speaker because they’re not progressive enough, then you’re teeing up the argument that we can’t have some other speaker because they’re not Catholic enough. That can’t be the path we go down, because it leads to nowhere good. Instead, we have to embrace the tension, the discomfort, the conflict that our vision creates.
In the end, that’s all good because that’s what universities are for, that’s what a Catholic university is for. And our Jesuit, Catholic identity does us a service here.
VR: I’m thinking of Saint Ignatius himself here as I think about those spaces of tension, which may be the spaces where we actually find truth and a sense of the whole. In fact, I think tensions underpin that notion of the “cannonball moment,” too. When there’s something truly challenging and mind altering, it can actually allow you to see more clearly. So I think these institutions need to be able to be places where earthquakes, where cannonball moments, where moments of deep discomfort do the work they are designed to do — the work of moving us forward into clarity.
I think at Catholic institutions, though, we have a real opportunity to have these difficult conversations in a certain context where there are other values that define the rules of engagement, where the humanity of the speaker is always assumed, where we can speak plainly on why we believe in that humanity, and make clear that this humanity in itself is a reason why we think that these conversations have to happen. We can proceed from a deep sense of faith and spirituality that is committed to the dignity of the human person. And not only to the dignity of the human person as an individual, but to the dignity of the human person in community. That value of interconnectedness is a critical part of how we should talk about disagreement and navigate conflict.
In a culture that is so focused on the individual, so winner-take-all focused, we’re ultimately being countercultural by drawing on our Catholic commitments to structure these conversations as communal and not merely individual.
EP: People often frame issues around “freedom of speech” on our campuses, and I think for the reasons Vince just gave, this is not the right frame. Not to say that there isn’t a freedom of speech on campus or that there shouldn’t be a right for free academic exchange.
But the legal rubric of the First Amendment, I think, ignores what’s unique about the educational mission of Jesuit and Catholic universities where the frame isn’t purely about the various substantive positions, but instead about affirming people’s dignity and about a shared entitlement to be engaged in the community. Unlike the free speech frame, this calls on us to be more caring in how we engage with each other. And that’s just not consistent with the very legalistic free speech framework that people are often trying to bring into these discussions.
LK: I agree that the free speech frame doesn’t sufficiently take into account the dignity of the person and the way we speak with each other and the way we live with each other.
And so I think the value of ongoing reflection, which is emphasized in the Jesuit practice of the Examen, can be mobilized for the sake of more effective disagreement, learning, and intellectual growth. We can reflect persistently on how relationships of trust and how the centering of the human person and how the emphasis on the dignity of the person in community — how these things can both create deep discomfort, but also might help us grow closer to the truth.
So, what else might you see as practices or habits that could help us in these ideologically divided times?
VR: Building on that point about discernment, we are engaged in an educational project that ultimately centers that practice. This is an important gift of the Jesuit tradition, and I believe that with Jesuit institutions, we are adding something very distinctive and very important to the scope of higher education in this country.
In a society where there’s a lot of noise, a lot of short-term thinking, a lot of social media which really is designed to undermine reflection and produce quick emotive responses, we are responsible for handing on this practice of discernment to young people. I’m convinced discernment will help with the larger problem of ideological conflict because, if they haven’t even been self-reflective and they haven’t done any kind personal discernment, people are going to be more likely to join these forces of negativity surrounding them.
So, even encouraging students just to take the time to be at peace alone — this is something we can do. We can also encourage and support them in being in a setting where it’s quiet, where there are no electronics, and where they actually come to engage with and know other people without distraction.
Encouraging all stakeholders at Jesuit institutions to incorporate moments of pause into their daily practice is an important starting point in passing on the practice of Ignatian discernment. Photo courtesy of Tom Retigg, the College of the Holy Cross, and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities.
EP: Within the Spiritual Exercises, there’s also the use of imagination and the deep consideration of possible alternatives that is involved in the imaginative work of true discernment. There’s the spiritual practice of imagining yourself in those various alternatives, which can be good practice for engaging imaginatively with others’ perspectives.
And tying all this together is the imperative to find God in all things. I think the Jesuits have always followed that to its logical conclusions — going anywhere, engaging with anyone and everyone. They’re very clear about who they are and what they stand for, but the openness of their spirituality is really what I think is so distinctive and is something we need to develop amid really heated ideological and political battles. Social media definitely primes you for emotional responses that prompt you to ridicule the people you disagree with — and this certainly cuts across the political spectrum.
But the idea that God might be at work among the people we’re disagreeing with, amid the perspectives that we find appalling — the kind of openness behind this idea is challenging in a good way. And I’m not exempting myself from struggling here. But the notion of finding God in all things is a tool that we can use as leaders of Jesuit institutions as we encourage members of our communities to engage more productively with one another and, really, with people outside of our campus communities in the end.
LK: I would add one more kind of practice from the Jesuit world, which is accompanying those on the margins and those who are suffering. In the context of ideological diversity and debate, this means factoring in and making sure everybody is heard. This includes our diverse students and our alumni who might have a different mindset than our current students, and it particularly means those who’ve been hurt in our campus communities.
In the end, I think the skills of accompaniment are what we need to be teaching our students, and accompaniment is what we need to be developing in our faculty and staff so that our institutions can move toward true openness and discernment and a true willingness to engage deeply with one another in the pursuit of a common good which serves us all.
VR: One final thought. Ultimately, we need to learn to live with difference and tension and even conflict because these things will always be present — and particularly so in a diverse society.
And being at peace amid all of this, while also having some level of sophisticated understanding of the fact that there’s value in this dynamic of disagreement and in our diverse society — I hope we can continue to grow in that direction. There are going to be times when our differences and conflicts will make things very difficult. But if Jesuit institutions actually do the work we’ve been talking about, our whole society can reap the benefits of what they have to offer.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of Roberto Reposo via Unsplash.