Intro to Ethics: Countering division in American democracy
“One of the key issues in ethics is understanding how we as a polis, as a nation-state, can work together as a community, despite important disagreements.”
In the third module of her Intro to Ethics course, Ethics Lab Director Prof. Maggie Little and her students examined the state of American democracy and the significance of the November election.
The class discussed the impact of misinformation on polarization, the balance between allowing free speech and preventing hate speech, and ways to resolve tensions in democracy.
“One of the key issues in ethics is understanding how we as a polis, as a nation-state, can work together as a community, despite important disagreements,” says Little. “I wanted to talk about that broad issue this semester because, obviously, conversation around the election revealed that there are extremely deep divisions in America.”
The course first looked at the differences between healthy disagreement and extreme polarization, asking what the former might look like and how to encourage it. Which speech do we tolerate, and how do we distinguish it from hate speech? How do we curb hate speech without eliminating opposing viewpoints and falling into groupthink?
“We're all fallible, and we need to be open to learning from one another, on the one hand,” Little notes. “But on the other hand, when we are so partisan that we regard those with different opinions as the enemy, then democracy doesn’t work. If political leaders at the highest level participate in offensive or hateful speech instead of standing against it, that’s problematic — regardless of your political affiliation.”
Students took a close look at misinformation and the dangers of information bubbles, which have contributed to division in the US today. “You can’t have democracy when people are living in different information universes,” says Little.
“You can’t have democracy when people are living in different information universes.”
The class also considered what Little calls “the ethics of bullshit,” essentially the difference between disinformation (actively lying) and bullshit, wherein what’s true fundamentally is not important. In some ways, the latter is more insidious to democracy because it undermines the value of truth in society.
In the last section of the Divided Democracy module, students discussed methods of “calling out” versus “calling in,” balancing the need to encourage open listening across disagreement, giving people the opportunity to grow from mistakes, and drawing the line on unacceptable views and behavior. They talked about the continuum of holding people accountable and the different ways that can manifest, from gentle, educative conversations that call people in to publicly calling out and shaming unacceptable actions.
Students met for class just after the election was called for President Biden, and Little held an open discussion about the state of democracy and the ways students were feeling in light of the results. “The Monday after the election, I had planned a lecture, but I knew we’d all rather talk. In that conversation, and throughout the course, it wasn’t about creating a party-line divide between students, but more about reckoning with the structures in American democracy that are making it difficult for us to understand each other,” she reflects. “I wanted us to consider: what is it to have a hopeful, but realistic, view of democracy?”