Civil discourse in difficult times is challenging but essential. Here are some tools.

A practical guide to fostering dialogue on difficult subjects

The atrocities of October 7th, the kidnapping of Israeli hostages and the ongoing conflict in Gaza have people all over the world angry and afraid. Rhetoric online and in news reports inflames already divisive discussions and leads to a further polarization of opinions. This has already had tragic consequences around the world: A Jewish senior is beaten to death with a megaphone at a pro-Palestinian rally in LA, a six-year-old Muslim boy is killed in Chicago, shots are fired at Montreal elementary schools, Jewish students on college campuses around the world face physical violence, death threats, and harassment, women in hijabs are spat on and sworn at by strangers.

People are scared. And no wonder – we appear to have completely lost the ability to communicate across this divide. Most of us have largely forgotten the tools of civil discourse, the skills needed to foster dialogue between people with opposing views. Without these tools, it’s easy to despair. It feels impossible to address the fault lines of difference when we are mourning the dead and missing when we are afraid for our children. And yet, this is when it’s most important: Continued connection is our only source of hope when we find ourselves dangerously at odds.

Thankfully, there are always groups of people and individuals who seek to find a way. At the end of October, as student groups in universities across the world retreated dangerously further into their echo chambers, the Muslim Law Students Association and Jewish Law Students Association at the University of Ottawa issued an extraordinary joint statement to publicly acknowledge each other and the need to keep spaces safe and open for dialogue, focusing on what unites them – their common humanity. In this statement, they urged all professors and students to understand that while they have freedom of speech, “this is an exceptionally raw and difficult time. Members of our law school community have lost loved ones in this conflict. We call on you to show a commensurate level of sensitivity and tact. As leaders of our respective communities, we call upon our Ottawa Law School family to focus on how our shared pain unites us instead of letting hatred divide us.”

Similarly, a couple of years ago, a Montreal girls’ high school set out to proactively teach students how to have difficult conversations in respectful and productive ways. Katherine Nikidis, Trafalgar School for Girls’ Head of School, invited Rabbi Lisa Grushcow and Dr. Amal Elsana Alh’jooj, peace activists, colleagues, and friends, to unite the entire school community in an online discussion of how to foster dialogue between those with opposing views, even when emotions run high. Rabbi Grushcow is the senior rabbi at the Temple Emanu-El-Beth Shalom in Westmount. Dr. Elsana is the founder of Ajeec-Nisped, The Arab-Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation – Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development and the founding executive director of the non-profit research centre, PLEDJ (Promoting Leadership for Empowerment Development and Justice). As chair of Trafalgar’s governing board, I had the privilege of moderating this conversation.

During this workshop, Dr. Elsana related a story from her grandmother, which taught her that everyone has the choice to be a lake or a river: A lake sits stagnant, she explained. Without any sources, it’s shut off from the outside. On the other hand, a river always renews itself, allowing new waters to continually wash through it. She pointed out that people tend to shy away from the nuanced, grey areas when dealing with complex events because these require critical thinking. That’s hard to do. It can be uncomfortable when there are competing, often contradictory truths. But that complexity, she said, is what often defines real-life events. She challenged her listeners to spend time in the grey areas, the richest places for critical thinking.

“My truth [as a Palestinian] is my truth but it’s not the only truth,” Dr. Elsana explained. “What are my Jewish colleagues thinking? That is also their truth and has the right to exist. We can disagree on many things but we can find common ground. We can both agree that we want peace and justice based on that solid ground of mutual understanding and respect.”

Rabbi Grushcow followed this by asking, “The thing about dialogue and peace work is to ask how we see each other and hear each other across those differences in a real and respectful way in which nobody is required to give up their own story and experience but in such a way that everyone undertakes the obligation to really listen to each other with an open mind and an open heart?”

To do that, she explains, “it’s got to feel safe enough to stick your head out.”

The Trafalgar school discussion was an excellent example of a school meeting its educational mandate head-on. This requires great bravery in a world where every email, social post, and lecture is weighed in the public eye for bias and discrimination.

As we all face a continuous torrent of divisiveness, I provide workshops to help school communities teach the tools of civil discourse so they can first, maintain a sense of safety and second, encourage productive, creative discussion on hot-button subjects. Here are some of the strategies I encourage people to use:

Start small. Groups of eight people or more have a higher tendency to break off into individual conversations, so start with a small number of participants. This also avoids the tendency to break into factions, indulge in groupthink or let individuals stay silent. Most importantly, it increases the chances for personal connection. Writer Brené Brown famously advised that “people are hard to hate close up. Move in.” People are more motivated to find common ground with others when they can find a reason to like them; small group sizes make this easier. If your goal is to bring this to a larger group of people, this core group of practiced “dialogue champions” can help you add others in increments.

Start by finding and acknowledging areas of agreement. This can be as basic as appealing to a common humanity. These foundations of unity can also be our love for our families, our global desire for peace, and our sense of belonging to a school or other community.

Establish guidelines for respect and safety. This means understanding and avoiding triggers, and having mutually agreed upon ways to backtrack if lines are crossed: Avoid raised voices and drama, ensure people aren’t interrupted, and establish that there are to be no long diatribes or accusations. It’s impossible to solve problems and think rationally when emotions are running high so continuously monitor the temperature. Understand that if anyone no longer feels safe, they can step back or walk away from the conversation.

Validate each other’s positions. Validation isn’t the same as approval or agreement – it’s just an acknowledgement that you have heard and understood. Statements like “I understand you are in pain,” “I can see that you are scared” and “I hear that you’re angry” ensure people feel they are communicating strong emotions in a safe space.

Use “I” statements for emotional reactions. When parties disagree about elements and get upset or angry, expressing that in terms of how it makes them feel is more conducive to continued conversation than accusations. Instead of saying “You’re insulting me,” saying “I feel insulted by that statement” encourages the parties to consider the impact of their words and actions.

Avoid slogans and trigger words. Nothing derails dialogue quite as much as reductive slogans and trigger words. These statements almost always oversimplify complex issues and arrest dialogue. Conversations require us to use natural language that doesn’t immediately send other parties back into the trenches. This isn’t always easy to do but if you’ve established guidelines for respect at the outset, a gentle nudge can help parties reframe the discussion. What can this sound like? Here’s one example: “That term is contentious, would you be able to please explain it in another way?”

Be realistic about outcomes. No one expects you to find a way to world peace but just opening up lines of conversation between opposing viewpoints is a victory. Ensuring people feel safe and heard is also an achievement. Remember that every conversation is a starting point.

No cameras. Unless everyone feels safe and agrees to record at the outset, there should be no recording of the conversation on video. It’s too easy for snippets to be taken out of context, misunderstood or weaponized against participants online. This also helps people relax and focus on the present conversation and not the sound bites.

Proceed with incremental objectives. The initial goal will be to keep lines of respectful communication open. In some cases, this might be enough; in others, the parties might want to proceed incrementally toward some other shared objective. However, for civil discourse to work well, bear in mind that the objective is not to convince the other party they are wrong in their beliefs. Changes in perspective may very well take place as dialogue continues and parties learn more about the other but it cannot be framed as a competition or zero-sum game. When civil discourse remains possible, everyone wins.

If you’ve read this far and are thinking all this is hard to do, you’re 100% right. Like any set of skills, these take patience, practice, and a measure of goodwill. When it goes well, the payoff can be nothing short of spectacular.

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Pandemic parenting: 6 Ways to rethink screentime for kids & teens

If you’re worried about screentime for your kids and how to guide their use of digital tech this fall, join me online Tuesday, August 27th for a one-hour parenting webinar, Smartphones, Sexting & Social Media: What Parents Need to Know. Tickets are $11.50 CDN, tax included. Click here to register.

When lockdowns and restrictions first hit us all back in March, parents understandably abandoned most (if not all) of the screen time rules in their homes. As we all grappled with what this meant for our jobs, our families, our kids’ learning, our businesses, our elderly parents, and our communities, it really didn’t matter if we had to briefly resort to electronic babysitting to keep everyone sane.

kids on smartphoness

The days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. Summer offered some respite with good weather and a chance to go outdoors. With an uncertain school year about to begin and families everywhere facing the prospect of online schooling part of full-time, screen time is once again on everyone’s minds. Here are some practical ways to think through screen time for kids of all ages.

Distinguish between active and passive screen time. Not all screen time is created equal. Composing music, editing video, writing a blog or coding a game is creative, productive work that stimulates young brains, quite unlike the entirely passive drool-inducing experience of watching YouTube live streams or videos of other people playing online games. If your kids are devoting time to schoolwork and creative pursuits online and not (just) scrolling endlessly through Instagram or Tik Tok, you’ll want to cut them some slack. Online school and homework is work, so it’s only fair to balance that with some online fun, but steer kids to the creative stuff where possible and help them be mindful of time spent on the rest of it.

Involve your kids in creating family tech agreements. Even young kids can help come up with guidelines for your family, and teens will appreciate having some say in how things are supposed to work. Critical discussions about the whys of screen time are as important as the whats.

Set up device-free spaces and times. Everyone needs breaks. Mealtimes should be device-free, wherever possible (that includes parents). Experts also agree that, at the very least, beds should not be places where devices are used. If you have space, consider creating device-free reading nooks, play areas, or places for socializing. All devices (including phones) should be charged out of bedrooms overnight. (Yes, that also means you.)

Protect kids online. Small kids, school-aged children, tweens and young teens need help to stay safe from identity theft, phishing, online harassment and predators. Set up parental controls on devices and SafeSearch on browsers. Set up strict privacy controls on online apps and games. Insist on approval for all new accounts and games and record usernames and passwords. Enlist your kids’ help to research new accounts and privacy settings – Common Sense Media is a fantastic free resource for reviews on apps, games, movies and TV.

Model good digital hygiene. Your kids are watching everything you do, so if you perpetually take calls during dinner, interrupt bedtime stories or family movie night or walk around all the time with your AirBuds in, they are silently taking notes. Phones off during mealtimes, give your kids your full attention when you are having a serious conversation or doing an activity together, and remove your devices from your bedroom overnight.

Help them (and you) find some balance. If school and work do end up being online for you and your kids, it’s more important than ever to find a balance between digital media and the other important things in life. If you’re finding that the time they spend online is unhealthy, create a checklist to remind them that every day should also include:

  • Creative time (music, writing, art, etc.)
  • Physical activity
  • Chores
  • Face-to-face interaction with family/ friends
  • Sufficient sleep
  • Personal hygiene

Want to learn more about guiding your kids’ use of digital tech? Click here to register for my Tuesday, Aug. 27th (7:30 p.m. EDT) parenting Zoom webinar, Smartphones, Sexting & Social Media: What Parents Need to Know. full of practical suggestions. Bring your questions! Tickets: $11.50 CDN (tax included)

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Fostering Respect & Civility Online: What Parents & Kids Need to Know

Difficult issues and events are often reframed in highly simplified ways online. It’s tempting to boil complexity down into memes, pictures and provocative posts that are more likely to get likes and shares. It’s also appealing to believe we can reduce shades of grey into black and white. But as history teaches us, there’s a cost to doing that. Navigating hard situations requires more information, not less.

Silhouette man hate speech online content
Aim to generate light, not heat, when posting online.

If we plan to teach our kids how to do that, we need to understand – and model – the skills required to assess contradictory information, process it and produce opinions. That’s especially important on social media, which have effectively become each of our own individual publishing platforms. Caught in our own echo chambers, it can be easy to forget there are other opinions, positions and feelings. The “other side” can come to seem so abstract. It can seem like all the posts are bringing people closer together but they are also driving people apart.

That’s a problem. As the brilliant Brené Brown maintains in her book, Braving the Wilderness, “people are hard to hate close up.” We need to move in, not build Instagram or Facebook barricades.

With that in mind, I offer in this post some helpful ways to 1) Check our own impulses before we comment or post and 2) Parse out the sometimes blurry differences between hate speech and opinions you don’t agree with (however strongly). This lens and these skills can prove helpful when you or your kids come across stuff online that upsets you, pushes your buttons, offends or disgusts. Because you and they absolutely will.

Here are is my working draft of Risk-Within-Reason’s guide to generating light, not heat online. Have I left anything out? Please let me know – after all, this is a working document and I welcome your input.

How do I know if something is hate speech or just something I disagree with?
This is undeniably a tricky one. Hate can seem very clear to one person and not so clear to another. Minority groups have the right to define what is offensive to them. Not all offensive speech is hate speech, which means organizations such as workplaces and schools need to have their own policies for basing decisions on what is acceptable and what is not.

Things are particularly complicated for schools, which strive to teach critical thinking and expose students to a wide variety of viewpoints and perspectives. They have to navigate between their students’ right to free speech and all o provide freedom from discrimination. This is a thin delicate line to walk, to avoid some students being silenced and some students being harmed. While we do want to encourage diverse perspectives and tackle hard questions, we also need to avoid injuries. Ideally, classrooms will have rules and norms around these things, including promoting empathy, avoiding stereotypes and challenging ideas, not people, and determining as a group if there are lines that cannot be crossed. It makes a big difference to proactively discuss how words can be hurtful before incidents arise. (read more here from MediaSmarts.ca)

When reading or posting content online, here are some things to consider:

  • Begin by assuming good intentions but keep your critical lens handy. When reading other people’s posts, remember that they may not always provide context or explain their points clearly online. Begin by assuming goodness instead of reflexively moving to outrage, anger or insult. This would avoid a lot of conflicts online. The critical questions below can help to clarify if your assumption is warranted.
  • Refuse stereotypes. Anything that lumps people together based on stereotypes is both lazy and insulting. Question any content online that does so, particularly when it targets a vulnerable group, and avoid using it yourself. Look inwards to see what stereotypes you may be bringing to the content and challenge yourself to recognize and see beyond them.
  • Promotion of hatred or discrimination against a defined group. This is always flat-out unacceptable and causes serious harm. It’s acceptable to question the existence of ideas but not groups of people. Report to moderators where possible. Kids who come across this kind of content should be encouraged to tell a trusted adult since it can be very upsetting.
  • Promotion of violence. Any content that promotes violence – directly or indirectly – by using violent words or proposing behaviours is to be reported.
  • Remember the people behind the words. Abstract groups of people are actually made of individuals who have parents and kids and full lives of their own. Words can hurt real living people. Can you see the humanity in this post or does it rely only on abstractions that make it easier to ignore the harm they may cause?
  • Don’t feed the trolls. They are trying to provoke. Your reactions are their food. The best thing to do is refuse to engage
  • Consider the speaker. How could these words benefit the original speaker or author or their interests? What were their intentions? Is this part of a pattern of behaviour? Do they have a leadership role, which gives their posts additional power over those they lead?
  • Consider the climate. Where/ when is this is being shared? Are people calm and thoughtful? Scared? Is the poster adding fuel to the fire or adding something thoughtful or insightful?
  • Consider the source. It’s easy for misinformation and disinformation to seem credible and legitimate at first glance. Approach content online with a critical eye and research both the author and publication/ channel or context in which it is circulated online. Kids often assume that adults are looking out for them but many websites and social channels don’t have moderators to report harmful content.
  • Consider the target audience. Is the poster looking to just rally those who already agree with them or actually create a dialogue with others?
  • How far will this reach? What is the context in which it is being shared or published? Could it have been copied out of that context? How might that change the meaning of the words/ images?

“Remember there are people behind your words. Can you see the humanity in this post or does it rely only on abstractions that make it easier to ignore the harm they may cause?”

Before you hit “send” or “comment” or “share”, take a deep breath and look at your words. Here are some important questions to ask before you click:

  • Is this post based on someone’s identity or on an individual or group’s specific actions?
  • Is this post likely to incite hatred or violence towards others?
  • Could my post make someone feel unsafe? Could it cause harm?
  • How does my post add value to the discussion?
  • How would I feel if I saw these words/images targeted against me?
  • Am I promoting empathy?
  • Does this post contain trigger words or terms that function as dog whistles or shorthand to hate or violence (“holocaust”, “genocide,” “terrorists”, the N-word, etc)?
  • Does this post contain terms that are dehumanizing (“animals,” “dogs,” “cockroaches”)?
  • Am I recirculating something that is untrue, exaggerated or taken out of context?
  • Is this becoming personal (against a specific person or group of people I know in real life)?
  • Am I being intentionally provocative or inflammatory to elicit a reaction from people who already agree with me? 
  • Am I using excessively vitriolic language to elicit an emotional reaction? This dilutes meaning and impact and strips power from powerful words. It also makes it less likely that others will carefully consider your points.
  • Am I using shocking pictures to seize people’s attention? Am I sure these pictures are correctly attributed to this event? Stirring up drama in this way is performative and insensitive and confuses people.
  • Speaking of drama, what am I trying to accomplish? Highly emotional people are generally not good at thinking clearly and addressing actual problems.
  • Am I slipping into using hate speech because of group-think?
  • Do I think this post will convince someone who shares different beliefs?
  • Where will this be circulated? Can it be copied or shared in other contexts that might alter my meaning?
  • If you aren’t sure if a post may be deemed offensive, is it necessary to post at all?
  • Am I willing to take responsibility for any consequences to my words/ image/ post?

Want to know more? Check out this excellent resource from https://www.connectsafely.org/hatespeech/

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