Erfan: Middle East student dialogue: As an expert in deep conflict, what I’ve learned about making conversation possible

2024/04/23 Leave a comment

Timely (the Wosk Centre for Dialogue specializes in difficult conversations):

…Secret ingredient: ‘Containers’

One secret ingredient to successfully working with groups concerned with contentious topics is creating physical and psychological conditions that make it easier to speak and listen with the goal of understanding. These are known as dialogic containers. Facilitators and participants intentionally build these, and they can include things like: how the room is set up; the level of hospitality in the space; explicit agreements participants in the group assent to about how to be together.

On the night of the BDS dialogue, I thought a lot about the container, including preparing myself intellectually and emotionally to facilitate. But in the group, we also spent nearly an hour building the container through negotiating group agreements. 

Negotiating group agreements

There are many examples of standard group agreements, but I believe in making them from scratch every time, for each unique situation and group. Often groups make agreements about confidentiality and avoiding personal attacks. 

The night of the 2015 BDS referendum, students negotiated some unique agreements, including: 

  • That we would acknowledge the right to existence for both Palestinian and Israeli people and the right to existence of the States of Palestine and Israel, according to the 1967 borders. (This item, which is in the heart of much of the contention in the region, took the majority of the hour to negotiate. It wasn’t that everyone — or anyone — in the room was happy with it — but it was enough recognition, enough of a bridge, to make the conversation possible).
  • That if the conversation stretched past 8 p.m., we would order pizza and the options must include vegetarian, gluten-free, vegan, Halal and Kosher. (I have always felt that the pizza agreement was a breakthrough because by the time you are talking about sharing food, much humanizing has happened.)

‘Flagging’ in real time

In other spaces, my students have negotiated:

  • an intention to avoid using supercharged labels thrown around on the internet (words like “race-baiter,” “snowflake” or “fascist”);
  • to replace an impulse to shout with a declaration of “I am not feeling heard”;
  • to have an observer raise a literal flag when a person was on the edge of stereotyping. 

Not all situations are ripe for dialogue. Charged civil conversations on a university campus do not solve the big conflicts of our times, nor does a whole semester in dialogue. 

Some critics even say that these initiatives divert attention, and take away the energy from pursuing justice, or that they “normalize” oppressive arrangements by sugarcoating them in dialogue. 

Capacity to be together

But these initiatives do provide a space for students who have never been in conversation with each other to talk, to ask questions that they cannot ask anywhere else and to gain more nuanced perspectives.

The capacity to be together is important to pick up while we are students, lest we think that online screaming matches or acts of despair and total disengagement are our only options.

As difficult as it is to remain in conversation on something as divisive as the Hamas-Israel war, as an educator I hope we remain on the lookout for the right time to get back into talking with each other about this on our university campuses.

Source: Middle East student dialogue: As an expert in deep conflict, what I’ve learned about making conversation possible

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Poll shows many Canadians disconnected from democracy, vulnerable to populism

2019/08/27 Leave a comment

Interesting and significant findings as Canadians prepare to go to the polls:

Canadians tend to prefer democracy over other systems of government, but nearly half aren’t happy with the way theirs is working, new survey data from Simon Fraser University suggests.

The national survey was led by SFU’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue and was intended to measure Canadians’ views of and commitment to democracy. Scattered among the results were indications that Canadians may be vulnerable to populist messaging.

For Daniel Savas, the lead researcher on the centre’s Strengthening Canadian Democracy initiative and a professor at SFU, some of the big findings brought to mind Winston Churchill’s take that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms.”

While 77 per cent of respondents rejected rule by a strong leader and 91 per cent rejected rule by the military, many Canadians gave answers that suggested they felt disconnected from their democracy.

About 44 per cent of Canadians aren’t entirely convinced that voting gives them a say on how the country is run, and 56 per cent believe they can’t influence the government, according to the results. Meanwhile, 68 per cent believe elected officials don’t care what ordinary people think, and 61 per cent feel their interests are ignored in favour of the establishment.

To put the findings simply, “we’re not completely convinced that it’s working to its potential,” Savas said, speaking of our democracy. “I think that’s really not optimal at this point in time.”

Nearly 80 per cent of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who stood up for common people against the elite, one of a few results that suggested populists may appeal to many Canadians. But Savas did caution that populism itself isn’t “an ugly word.”

“It’s the anti-democratic form of populism where it starts undermining democratic values and principles that is the issue,” he said.

“I think that there’s this sense that if we don’t pay attention, if we start getting a little too complacent and we don’t pay attention to how invested Canadians are with respect to participating in the democratic process and what they get out of it … there’s a risk that people may fall over into the anti-democratic populist camp and start supporting things like a really strong nationalist view,” Savas said.

Savas said the results showed “an undercurrent of scapegoating minorities.” About a quarter of respondents said Canada has “too much” protection of minority rights, and about a third said Canadians born here should have a greater say in what the government does than those who came from another country before becoming citizens. Savas said he believed the undercurrent could strengthen if it wasn’t countered.

British Columbians are among the most democratically active Canadians, tending to attend public consultation meetings, volunteer, post comments online, sign petitions or answer government surveys more than others across the country, according to the findings.

Anglophones are more likely to participate in democratic activities than francophones, as are Canadians who hold a post-secondary degree, and those who believe their salary and household incomes are sufficient, the survey showed. While First Nations are among the most active people in the country when it comes to democratic activities, Canadians who identify as LGBTQS+ are most likely to believe there are too few opportunities for political participation.

Those who feel voting doesn’t matter or that they can’t influence government are less likely to prefer democracy over other forms of government, according to the findings.

Savas said the survey data was a signal to Canadians to consider the state of democracy and whether they should be concerned. It’s also a call for governments, political parties and government officials to reflect, he said.

“There’s definitely signals in here that are a call to action to do things to get more Canadians involved in a legitimate way so that they feel more engaged in political processes,” he said.

The survey sampled 3,500 Canadians and ran from July 5 to 15. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.7 per cent.

Source: Poll shows many Canadians disconnected from democracy, vulnerable to populism

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