Democracy through dialogue

Instructor in History Bill Jordan reflects on educating for civility.

Exeter doesn’t have a required civics course, but for the past 20 years or so, I’ve been teaching one that comes close: HIS550: American Politics and Public Policy. So, I’ve given some thought to what an American civics course should do.

The nuts and bolts of government and the U.S. Constitution are obviously essential to learn, and students should discuss contemporary policy issues. Some teachers think it’s more import-ant to instill a passion for “social justice,” and to foster a sense of political efficacy and encourage civic engagement.

I’ve come to the conclusion that to prepare students for democratic citizenship at a time when Americans are splitting into antagonistic political tribes and mutually incomprehensible information bubbles, and credible commentators talk seriously about a coming civil war, it’s even more important to cultivate certain dispositions toward fellow citizens and the truth.

Over the years I’ve been influenced by others who have been asking the same question: teachers I met at the Exeter Humanities Institute, Harvard Professor Danielle Allen and her writings on citizenship, assembly speakers, a presenter at a National Association of Independent Schools conference and a number of “civic dialogue” organizations.

I read about one of these, Braver Angels, in a 2019 Atlantic article, “Can Marriage Counseling Save America.” Its mission statement, “The Braver Angels Way,” could hang comfortably above our Harkness tables. It reads:

• We state our views freely and fully, without fear.
• We treat people who disagree with us with honesty, dignity and respect.
• We welcome opportunities to engage those with whom we disagree.
• We believe all of us have blind spots and none of us are not worth talking to.
• We seek to disagree accurately, avoiding exaggeration and stereotypes.
• We look for common ground where it exists and, if possible, find ways to work together.
• We believe that, in disagreements, both sides share and learn.
• In Braver Angels, neither side is teaching the other or giving feedback on how to think or say things differently.

No one may be teaching, but everyone is learning. One of the priorities I adopted from that NAIS presenter for teaching citizenship is to cultivate the skill and inclination to practice “cognitive empathy,” understanding why other people think the way they do. That, combined with epistemic humility — appreciating our own intellectual limitations — leads to political curiosity, and the aha! moments for which Braver Angels leader (and Exeter assembly speaker) Mónica Guzmán named her 2022 book, I Never Thought of It That Way.

After I met Guzmán at a principal’s dinner in the fall of 2023, I decided to finally join Braver Angels and attend its June 2024 convention in Kenosha, Wisconsin. When I registered for the convention on the lovely lakeside campus of Carthage College, I was handed a name tag with a blue lanyard. Like all the civic dialogue groups, the 15,000 paying members of Braver Angels skew left — or blue in the Braver Angels argot. But unique to the Braver Angels, every convention, debate and workshop must be equally divided between blues and reds (righties), with a few (somehow unaligned or centrist) yellows mixed in.

Over the next three days I encountered the three Braver Angels approaches to conflict: dialogue, debate and communion. Most of my experience at the conference involved dialogue and communion.

This was the friendliest group of people. Guzmán’s political curiosity infused every interaction: We chatted across the lanyard line while waiting for a session to begin, while walking the paths between sessions and during meals in the dining hall. These encounters confirmed the argument of another depolarization outfit, that Americans on opposite sides of our great divide have “More in Common” than our differences. I even made some friends — yellow lanyards who write for conservative publications — that I’ve kept in touch with.

If all Americans could attend one of these conventions, we might not solve all of our problems, but we would stop hating each other.

I sat in on different kinds of Braver Angels debates, one in which “the point isn’t to win; it’s to understand the other side a little better”; and another in which the goal was to come up with a list of policy ideas both sides could agree on. The most momentous debate took place at a plenary session among all the convention goers to choose an issue to focus on in the coming year. Immigration won after a vigorous — but civil — discourse.

The only disappointing debate was the one between Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which happened on the first night of the convention. We gathered to watch in the assembly hall. It led all 750 attendees to agree on one emotion: dissatisfaction with the options our two major political parties were offering us.

Of course, there’s a selection bias that made this group unrepresentative of the American electorate. Not likely to attend: Twitter trolls and others who see the solution to America’s problems in defeating political “enemies,” not in finding common ground or reaching compromise with “rivals.” But they make up only 33 percent of us, according to a More in Common poll.

I agree with David Blankenhorn, Braver Angels’ founder and president, who said in his plenary address, “Democracy is government by talk, and when conversation ends, the only thing left to advance your argument is force.”

Maybe if every high school in the country would teach cognitive empathy, along with epistemic humility and other elements of “The Braver Angels Way,” we could produce a generation of citizens that might reverse the tide of polarization and save democracy.

Bill Jordan has been an instructor in history at Exeter since 1997. He has been adviser to The Exonian student newspaper, dorm head of Amen Hall and chair of the History Department. He has directed Exeter’s Washington Intern Program since 2020. His essay was published in the 2025 spring issue of The Exeter Bulletin.