The Civic Gym: Learning to Deliberate Beyond Red Versus Blue

Graham Bullock, political scientist and director of the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative at Davidson College, joins When We Disagree to explain how meaningful dialogue can break free from today’s “polarization vortex.” He shares how structured, intergenerational conversations about complicated topics can turn simple political binaries into rich, multi-perspective debates. Graham introduces “deliberative dispositions” like humility, courage, empathy, and curiosity as the foundation of healthy disagreement. He also explores when we need dialogue, when we need debate, and how both lead to wiser collective decisions. Ultimately, he argues that practicing disagreement is like going to the civic gym, and it’s essential for a hopeful democratic future.

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Transcript

Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. After something happens, some of us convince ourselves that we saw it coming all along. This is the hindsight bias documented by the researcher Baruch Fih, and it rewrites our memories to make us seem more prescient than we really were.

I knew that would happen becomes our refrain even when we were genuinely surprised in disagreements. Hindsight, bias can make us insufferable. know-it-Alls who claim we predicted problems, others should have foreseen. Hindsight bias can poison relationships after a breakup. Everyone claims they always knew it wouldn't work after a problem erupts, your partner insists they tried to tell you even if they really barely mentioned it.

Parents claim to know all along that their child would struggle in a particular class forgetting their initial enthusiasm for that very class. We retroactively become [00:01:00] profits using manufactured foresight to claim moral high ground and conflicts in workplace disputes. Hindsight bias can. Create blame games.

After a project fails, everyone remembers having doubts They never expressed or managers claim. They saw problems coming but didn't do much to prevent it. Team members insist they knew it wouldn't work, but somehow never documented these concerns. Hindsight bias can turn failures into an opportunity for retroactive wisdom.

Political discourse thrives on hindsight bias. Every crisis was obviously predictable. after it happened, and we can become Monday morning. Quarterbacks brilliant at predicting the past. Understanding hindsight bias can cultivate real humility. Document predictions before outcomes to see how often you're actually wrong and resist the temptation to claim you were nostradamus Hindsight bias can make us feel smart, but really prevent learning and wisdom often admits surprise. I'm Michael Lee, professor of Communication and Director of the Civility [00:02:00] Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on When We Disagree is Graham Bullock.

Graham is an associate professor of Political Science at Davidson College. And the founder and director of the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative, Graham, tell us an argument story. 

Graham Bullock : Thanks Mike for having me on. it's an honor to be, part of this podcast, and to share some, ideas and experiences and have a conversation with you about, disagreement.

as the. Director of the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative at Davidson College. I've hosted a lot of, disagreements, as part of our deliberative forum series our small group discussion series, which we call dte and our deliberative pedagogy collaborative for faculty members interested in embedding more deliberation into their courses. I can talk about examples Of disagreements, I'll pick one you know of. 'cause you visited, one of our deliberative forums last year, on religion in the public sphere.

we [00:03:00] had a great expert round table, like literally a. people sitting around a table disagreeing and agreeing with one another. we had a professor of law. a pastor at, AME Zion Church in Davidson, a professor of religion, a pastor from, a Baptist church, of, vice President from the United Americans, United for Separation of Church and State, and really different viewpoints and backgrounds they brought to the table.

And what was cool, both in that conversation and in the deliberative. Conversations among the audience afterwards, as you saw, very different perspectives crossed political lines about the role of, religion in the public sphere. some conservatives are like, this is great, we need more religion in the public sphere.

And some are like, no, we need to stay secular. and democrats or liberals are the same way. So an interesting kind of mixing up of what you might expect as a binary. so that's just one example for you. I can share others too. 

Michael Lee: Yeah. I really love that example too, because you take what can be reduced into a binary, a kind of up or [00:04:00] down or black or white.

We should have lots of religion in the public sphere, or we should have a full separation of church and state and make it this kind of simplified up or down issue in what these forums as well as the other work that you're doing is to make it a multi-stakeholder.

Complicated disagreement that is really befitting just how complicated some of these questions are. And so you have 8, 9, 10 people on a stage talking about their various points of view on it, not just pro and con. and then also to kick it down to very deliberately led discussions at tables by students who are trained facilitators.

These experts on the stage showing how complicated this is. And then we all engaged in these deeply complicated questions that aren't respective tables. 

Graham Bullock : Yeah, for sure. We just complicating the binaries in a lot of ways. in that context, the sort of. The Democrat slash Republican liberal conservative is complicated by a, by the religious right, the secular versus [00:05:00] religious, kind of difference.

Another thing that comes up you mentioned our students, serve as facilitators, for these conversations. they're also in the conversations as deliberate as well. and we see that in our D teams, our small group discussions. several of our classes actually embed participation.

In a D team as part of the course, my American Politics course. for example, all of our Intro to American politics courses, include this as part of the experience. the reason we do it is it creates an opportunity for the students to engage with non-students, with community members and alumni.

We do this both online and in person, the students are. Engaging, talking with community members, people who can be decades older than them, but as peers, not as, their parents or their teachers, their professors, but as, equal members in the conversation. difference creates another, layer to the discussions and they bring their different perspectives. you have 18 year olds talking to 80 year olds, which can be amazing for both. the 80 year olds love to hear from the student perspective and the 18 year olds, [00:06:00] love to be in a conversation where they're not, talk down to.

And treated as children sometimes. 

Michael Lee: you are the founder and director of the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative, doing a whole bunch of work. Around healthy disagreement and dialogue across difference. So you do these big public facing events where you're doing intergenerational dialogues and debates.

You have students who are the tip of the spear, so to speak, who are doing free expression and dialogue work on campus and in the community at a peer to peer level. And then you also are training faculty to embed more dialogic, more debate based perspectives in their courses.

Big broad question. to sum this up, why are you trying to get people to disagree so much?

Graham Bullock : it's a great question. I think there's a lot of different reasons. there's personal reasons, professional reasons, and civic reasons. 

Michael Lee: Okay. 

Graham Bullock : And I don't know which one you wanna start with. 

Michael Lee: the personal's always interesting, so let's start there.

Graham Bullock : I grew up in Washington, DC in the eighties and nineties, we thought it was very polarized back [00:07:00] then. I was stuck navigating, between, different perspectives, and and then, throughout my kind of career, figuring out how do engage with difference, yeah. And try to understand where people are coming from, in a respectful and civil way while also, being able to express your own perspective, and so figuring that out has been a personal journey for me. professionally, there's maybe two perspectives. Two of lifelong interests have been the environment and China and Asia more generally. 

I've found over my career, I teach environmental policy and politics that, so many issues from climate change to pollution to, endangered species, have become sucked into what I call the polarization vortex.

it's very difficult to have a conversation. about any of these issues, without the partisan, one-liners coming in from both in all sides and not to really deeply engage with the issues themselves. And so you can try to suck the issues out of the vortex, which I think is pretty much impossible at this time.

Or you [00:08:00] can try to engage with the vortex itself and try to figure out how do we break out of this polarization problem and then the other. element is my interest in China. I love China, I love the Chinese people. I've lived there for almost five years.

and the history, the culture, is amazing and fascinating. but, living in China is different than living in the United States. it's a one party system. and they don't have the same traditions of protection, of civil liberties and civil rights. That we do.

I've come to appreciate that, our approach, in the United States, while also, trying to reengage with the dialectic, seeing where they're coming from as well, that's some of the reasons why I've been interested in promoting disagreement, in a productive way.

Michael Lee: That's a great answer. you've seen and hosted and enabled healthy disagreements across the board. Presumably some of those have gone really well. I'm sure there's examples of ones that have not, that you've learned from.

Can you talk on a high level about what you think makes a disagreement constructive and what you think [00:09:00] makes a disagreement destructive?

Graham Bullock : I think people coming into these conversations are nervous about them because they feel like, oh, I don't know what to say. I don't know how to say it. Just right, or, I don't know enough. I don't have the encyclopedic knowledge to necessary to engage and really express myself clearly.

Or to understand what. My, other deliberate are saying, but and certainly those things can be helpful and there's ways to improve with practice engaging in conversation. But for us, we found that the starting point should be more about dispositions 

How you come to these conversations, how you engage, and not so much what you say specifically. we call them deliberative dispositions, dispositions that we try to put on when we're in these conversations. they range from things like just a basic commitment to egalitarianism, that everyone at the table has a right to be at the table, and to speak at that table.

And, and [00:10:00] then that, some of virtues of both humility and courage, which are, intention with each other, right? Being humble enough to recognize that you might be wrong. But you don't know where you're wrong. and then also the courage to express your own perspective and hear perspectives that really you don't agree with, but to try to, understand them.

that takes courage too. and so those are few of the dispositions, the virtues that, can make these conversations more constructive. by not leaning into them, not remembering them, they tend to be less constructive. 

Michael Lee: So when you talk about deliberative dispositions, what you mean is a kind of sense of how you're approaching the discussion, your desire, your willingness.

at least for you to set up a good debate or constructive dialogue, there is a norming that needs to happen at the beginning where there is some public statement about, Hey, let's think about how we're all showing up. Are we engaging in what you've called egalitarianism? What I've also heard called pluralism, which is reasonable [00:11:00] minds can disagree, and also we all have a right to equally speak here.

Us having a sense that taking our righteousness down a peg and saying that I have some things I'm uncertain about and perhaps I'll learn something today. But also the courage of my convictions to state where my boundaries are, what I think is true in the world based on the evidence. And then finally some ability to listen to the other person and respond and not just to repeat, the polarization vortex lines that I've inherited from social media or thought leaders in my political side of the aisle.

Graham Bullock : Yeah, definitely. and to bring, some virtues that cross many cultures and traditions. empathy, trying to understand where other people are coming from charity. seeing the best in the other, and not expecting the worst.

basic curiosity and anticipating difference as a gift, as something amazing. experiencing something new a new idea that I don't usually get to experience. Not seeing it as this, threatening thing all the time. and that is how you can really, have a constructive, [00:12:00] discussion with someone you might disagree with.

Michael Lee: I'll share something from my space of humility and vulnerability. When I do speeches I talk about the mutual importance of dialogue and debate I steal a line from the famous couples therapist, this Sarah Perel, which is. Do you wanna be right or do you wanna be married and adapted that more largely to, do you wanna be right or do you wanna be in this relationship?

Do you wanna be citizens together or roommates, or whatever it is, which is more about, less about the facts and more about the story you tell yourself. About the facts and having humility curiosity and compassion for how you've gotten to the belief you currently have, regardless of what that is.

sometimes we need hard facts or some sense of real probabilities in the real world to come to an agreement about what's true and what's false, and then to make a decision debate is really great for that. that's more competitive. If I'm right, you can't be right.

You know what I mean? And but my question in a place that I feel some confusion about that I'll admit to is I think some examples of [00:13:00] conflict requires the trust building that dialogue really enables, and some conflicts really require us to separate the wheat from the chaff and say, no, I think this is really happening in the world and we need to do something about it.

And I can't just infinitely validate. Agree to disagree sort of perspective, because then we won't get anywhere. But the question is, when are the times for dialogue and when are the times for debate? That is the vexing issue that I face. And I'm curious to know what you think about that issue.

Graham Bullock : Yeah. I know you had Martine Carcas on, the podcast and he, talks very eloquently about these differences. I see it as a kind of process. starting. With the dialogue, Really starting with discussion, in our framework, mapping the landscape, what do people believe about this? what are the different positions on abortion guns or immigration, 

Michael Lee: right? 

Graham Bullock : and getting beyond the sort of binaries. On the surface. the dialogue is then the sort of understanding why people understand why you hold, a particular perspective, why others hold different [00:14:00] perspectives.

Just the why, the stories, the evidence, the data. Then once you've done that mining and understanding, then you can interrogate. I understand, where you're coming from and I actually agree with this part. But I don't agree with that part, and here's why.

Providing the reasons. for why we disagree. And that's really the value of debate, right? That's the, trying to really get it the truth or the better understanding. but then if you leave it there, it's a sense of winners and losers, it can be, a kind of zero sum game.

So that's where deliberation comes in and says, okay, we've done all this debating, dialoguing, discussing what do we wanna do, weigh all this information and then try to come to some. Decision. sometimes you're gonna end up where you started, but maybe you've come up with some new ideas that no one else has thought of before because you've gone through this process and you come up with something transcendent and, valuable to everybody at the table.

Even if those people don't feel like they got fully their way, [00:15:00] they can trust the process, right? they feel heard and that the next time you do it, maybe they'll get more of what they started with. but that's, the value of a kind of deliberative democratic approach, that just doesn't assume that we know what we know and we're not gonna ever change, even after talking to other people.

Michael Lee: You mentioned the polarization vortex earlier, and I really like that metaphor. That sets up the big last question. we live in a time of intense polarization when it's difficult to step outside of these rigid, concretized political roles that many of us play, and so many Americans have a massive negativity bias or really fearful about violence or cancellation or really intense fight flight reactions in the national culture.

Question's relatively simple. I presume because of the work that you're doing, that you have a lot of hope, what keeps you hopeful?

Graham Bullock : I think the work we're doing we actually ask a question our [00:16:00] pre and post surveys at our events and programs about hope. Do you feel more. Or less hopeful after this conversation. the vast majority, say they do feel more hopeful, it increases over, the vast majority of our forums, I think that hope is important because it brings you back to the table, you're never gonna get it right. we're always gonna make mistakes and it's always gonna be hard, but the more we do it, the more we practice.

Just like going to the gym. It hurts in the moment. Especially, you haven't gone to the gym in a while. but over time you build the muscles, you build the civic muscles to have these conversations, and you help each other. it's a collective process and we see each other grow and be more able to articulate our own ideas.

The sort of the public reasoning. that's important, as well as the kind of psychological resilience to, come to the table listen with strength, and speak with kindness to each other even when you disagree, seeing each other as [00:17:00] fellow humans, 

Fellow members of a community, trying to solve problems, trying to solve our collective problems. And, I think, seeing people sit down together expecting not to be able to understand each other and then leaving wow, I now know better, where people are coming from. Maybe I'm, persuaded a little bit. maybe I feel I can come up with better arguments in the future informed by the conversation I just had. That kind of, process and progress, gives me hope that all this is worth it, 

And really what's the choice? The choice is, war and violence, and, I don't, particularly think that's a good alternative. So we've gotta figure it out. We've gotta go to the gym. and we've gotta do it together. 

Michael Lee: Graham Bullock, thank you so much for being on 

Graham Bullock : Thank you so much, Mike, for having me. look forward to staying, in touch and listening to your podcast in the future.

Michael Lee: When we Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and [00:18:00] sound engineering by Jesse k and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We disagree@gmail.com.