How examining conflict can be “intellectually serious” and “incredibly fun”

The banging on the tables begins almost immediately.

It's September, and the 53 first-year students in MIT's Concourse program are debating the pros and cons of capitalism during one of their Friday lunchtime seminars in Building 16. Sasha Rickard '19 - assistant director of Concourse and the chair, or moderator, of the debate - reminds everyone of the rules: "Stand when you speak, address your questions and comments to the chair, and if you hear someone saying something you support, give them a little bang on the table." The first speaker walks to the podium, praises the benefits of capitalism for her allotted four minutes, and is rewarded with a cacophony of table-banging.

Other students jump up to question her argument. The next speaker takes the opposite view, denouncing capitalism. For nearly two hours, there are more speeches on both sides of the issue, more questions, more enthusiastic banging on tables. Participants call the back-and-forth "intellectually serious," "genuine good-faith engagement," and "incredibly fun."

The debate is one of the cornerstones of MIT's Civil Discourse Project, a joint venture between the Concourse program and philosophy professors Brad Skow and Alex Byrne. The premise behind the Civil Discourse Project is that first-year students who practice talking and listening to each other even when they disagree will become more thoughtful and open-minded citizens, during their time at MIT and beyond.

"It's consistent with free expression and free speech, but also consistent with the mission of the university, which is teaching and learning and getting to a greater sense of the truth," says Linda Rabieh, a senior lecturer in the Concourse program and co-leader of the Civil Discourse Project with Skow, Byrne, and Concourse Director Anne McCants.

The project appears to be working. First-year Ace Chun, one of the student debaters, says,"It's easy to just say, 'Well, you have your opinion and I have mine,' or 'You're wrong and I'm right.' But going through the process of disagreement and coming up with a more informed position feels really important."

It's debatable

Funded by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the project launched in fall 2023 as a series of paired events. First, two scholars with opposing views on a particular subject - often one from MIT and one from another institution - participate in a formal debate on campus. A week or two later, the Concourse students, having seen the first debate, hold their own version on the same topic. Past debates have explored feminism, climate change, Covid-19 public-health policies, and the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.

This year's first scholar debate explored the question "Is capitalism defensible?" and featured economist Tyler Cowen of George Mason University, who argued in the affirmative, and political scientist Alex Gourevitch of Brown University, who vigorously disagreed. Roughly 350 people registered to watch the two take turns delivering prepared remarks and answering audience questions in a large auditorium in the Stata Center.

These debates are open to everyone at MIT, as well as the public. They are not recorded or livestreamed because, Skow says, "we want people to feel free to say whatever's on their mind without worrying that it's going to be on the internet forever." Concourse students in attendance look for ideas for what they might say in their own debate, but also, Rabieh says, how they might say it. Cowen and Gourevitch remained respectful even when their exchanges grew louder and hotter, and they ended the evening with a handshake. Students "were seeing reasonable people disagree," Rabieh says.

Five or six years ago, Rabieh had begun to notice a reluctance among students to talk about controversial ideas; they didn't want to risk offending anyone. "Most MIT students spend a lot of their time doing math, science, or engineering, and it's tempting for them to take refuge in the certainty of quantitative reasoning," she says.

Today's combative political and cultural landscape can make it even harder to get students talking about hot-button issues, and as a result, civil discourse has become something of a holy grail in higher education. Some institutions (including MIT) now incorporate free-speech exercises into their orientation programs; others host "conversation" events or offer special faculty training. Byrne sees MIT's Civil Discourse Project, with its connection to the Concourse curriculum, as consistent, pragmatic, hands-on learning. "We're talking instead of just talking about talking," he says. "It's like swimming. It's all very well to hear a lecture about pool etiquette - stay in your lane, don't dive-bomb your fellow swimmers - but at some point, you have to actually get in the pool."

Learning to argue

Concourse's "pool" can be found in a student lounge in Building 16. That's where a group of "debate fellows" - older students who have gone through the Concourse program themselves - coach the first-year students in crafting statements and speeches that can be presented at a debate. It's also where the fellows help Rabieh and Rickard adapt the original debate question into a resolution the younger students can reasonably argue about. "Our students are still figuring out what they think about a lot of things," Rickard says. So, the question debated by Cowen and Gourevitch - Is capitalism defensible? - becomes: "Capitalism is the best economic system because it prioritizes freedom and material wealth."

The first-year students jumped in. During their lunchtime debate, they crowded around tables, ate lasagna and salad, and waited their turn at the podium. They told personal stories to illustrate their points. They tried arguing in support of an idea that they actually disagreed with. They admitted when they were stumped. "That's a tricky question," one of the speakers conceded.

"At a place like MIT, it's easy to get caught up in your own world, like 'I have this big assignment or I have this paper due,'" says debate fellow and senior Isaac Lock. "With the Civil Discourse Project, students are thinking about big ideas, maybe not having super-strong, solid opinions, but they're at least considering them in ways that they probably haven't done before."

They're also learning what a balanced conversation feels like. The student debates use a format developed by Braver Angels, a national organization that holds workshops and debates to try to bridge the partisan divide that exists in the United States today. With strict time limits and room for both prepared speeches and spontaneous remarks, the format "allows different types of people to speak," says debate fellow Arianna Doss, a sophomore. "Because of the debates, we're better-equipped to articulate our points and provide nuance - why I believe what I believe - while also acknowledging and understanding the shortcomings of our arguments."

The Civil Discourse Project will publish more about its spring semester lectures on its website. Coleman Hughes, author of "The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America," will be on campus March 3, and a debate on the relevance of legacy media is being planned for later in the semester.

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