CTL to Become CFE

On July 1, 2008, the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will be renamed the Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE) as part of a broader restructuring of the Center. The "new" Center's mission will cover not only teaching and learning but also faculty development of research and leadership skills.

Existing programs will continue as previously offered through the summer of 2008.

Starting in the fall of 2008, DDI will be conducting monthly seminars with Professor Randall Styers (UNC, Department of Religious Studies) as Faculty facilitator. In other words, the partnership between CTL and DDI will continue, though CTL will participate as CFE.

The Syllabus: Preparing Students to Engage in Difficult Dialogues

Teaching Islamic Studies in a post-9/11 world that was already freighted, pre-9/11, with identity politics, has given me some invaluable hands-on experience when it comes to managing difficult dialogues in class. One thing that I have tried to do is be pro-active on this score: to prepare students to expect to engage in difficult dialogues and, at the same time, to assure them that the classroom environment will be a safe one for frank discussion. Here is some sample language from my Early Islamic Civilization (beginnings to 1500 CE) syllabus that can be adapted for other courses:

A secondary concern of this course arises from its own institutional location within a modern democratic polity. Nothing we do in such an institutional setting is “merely” academic. Our charge as educators in such an environment is to make a contribution towards each individual’s development as a citizen capable of effective participation in an open society. We will therefore spend two weeks at the beginning of the semester thinking about how histories are written, by whom, and toward what ends. We will also consider how to identify various rhetorical strategies, assess their relative validity, and review the etiquette of argumentation. Throughout the term, we will have opportunities to apply what we have learned via classroom discussions, intellectual journals, the class listserv, and the essay portions of the written exams. These exercises will permit us to hone our skills as critical thinkers and to develop the habits appropriate to reasoned debate...

Notice that I try to capitalize on the fact that at Carolina we belong to a particular kind of educational community: a public university located in a modern democratic polity. We as faculty are not just educating future doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, Peace Corps volunteers, etc., but citizens. Voters. Therefore, students are not faced with the question of whether they will engage in difficult dialogues, but how. This approach to the problem helps students to see that conflict and controversy are normal parts of their education--because they are normal parts of doing business in a democracy. It also suggests to them that conflict and controversy are not necessarily negative aspects of life--if they are handled in an appropriate manner. Admittedly, that if is a big one: it is a challenge as significant as mastering the course material under scrutiny. As Ludwig Wittgenstein remarked in the Tractatus: "The facts all belong only to the task, and not to its performance." The task of teaching is more than "content-provision." There is a form to the content and, as Hayden White reminds us, "a content to the form."

Suggested Further Reading:

Rocheleau, Jordy and Bruce W. Speck. Rights & Wrongs in the Classroom: Ethical Issues in Postsecondary Teaching. Bolton, Mass: Anker Publishing Co., Inc., 2007.

Twale, Darla J. and Barbara M. De Luca. Faculty Incivility: The Rise of the Academic Bully Culture and What to do About It. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008.

Also of interest is the March/April 2008 issue of Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning (available at CTL and also on-line at http://www.changemag.org/). This particular issue (Vol. 40, No. 2) is focused upon "Fostering 'Difficult Dialogues'". The May/June 2007 issue of About Campus: Enriching the Student Learning Experience (Vol. 12, No. 2) is (provocatively) dedicated to "The Absolute Imperative of Social Justice Education." It, too, is available at the offices of CTL.

DVD Library

The Center for Teaching and Learning is developing a library of materials to assist faculty who wish to find creative ways to approach controversial topics. Towards this end, CTL has purchased a number of DVDs that are available for loan to faculty who may wish to screen them for classes or other occasions (e.g., discussion groups) related to the Difficult Dialogues Initiative. At present, our holdings are small (13 DVDs in all), but every film is thought-provoking and well worth viewing. What follows is a listing of the films with brief descriptions:

1. Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967), starring Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, and Katherine Hepburn. Produced and directed by Stanley Kramer. This film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards in 1967, and won two: Best Actress (Hepburn) and Best Original Screenplay (written by William Rose). Tracy plays a left-leaning newspaper publisher whose politics are put to the test when his daughter (played by Katherine Houghton) announces her engagement to an internationally respected African-American physician (Poitier).

2. A Patch of Blue (1965), starring Sidney Poitier and Shelley Winters. Poitier plays Gordon Ralfe, a black man who befriends a white woman, Selina D'Arcey. Selina is blind and so she is unaware that her new friend is of a different race; what she does know is that this new friend is far more loving and supportive than her own (alcoholic and abusive) mother (played by Winters).

3. The Birth of a Nation (1915), starring Lillian Gish, Henry B. Walthall, Mae Marsh, and Mirian Cooper. D. W. Griffith's controversial Civil War epic based upon Thomas Dixon's "The Clansman." A landmark in film-making, but also disturbing for its sympathetic portrayal of the rise of the KKK.

4. 12 Angry Men (1957), starring Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley. Directed by Sidney Lumet. A teenage boy is accused of killing his father and 11 members of his jury are convinced of his guilt--but one man holds out, equally convinced of his innocence.

5. Let Him Have It (1991). Dramatic re-enactment of the events that led up to a famous murder trial that took place in England in the 1950's. The trial resulted in the conviction and execution of a young man whom many believed to be innocent; indeed, he was posthumously pardoned by the British Crown.

6. Dead Man Walking (1995), starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. Sarandon plays Sr. Helen Prejean, a New Orleans nun who befriends a prisoner on death row (Matthew Poncelet, played by Penn). There appears to be nothing redeeming about Poncelet and his guilt for the brutal crimes for which he was convicted and sentenced to die is almost certain. Nevertheless, Sr. Prejean works tirelessly on his behalf. Directed, without sentimentality, by Tim Robbins.

7. The Thin Blue Line (1988). Errol Morris's dramatic re-enactment of the evidence that convicted Randall Dale Adams of the cold-blooded killing of a Dallas police officer in 1976. This film helped to secure the eventual release of Adams (who was innocent) and the conviction of David Harris, the teenage runaway whom Adams had befriended on the night of the crime.

8. Bowling for Columbine (2002). Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore's attempt to connect the mass murder perpetrated by two students at Columbine High School and America's "culture of violence."

9. The Verdict (1982), starring Paul Newman and Charlotte Rampling; directed by Sidney Lumet, with a screenplay by David Mamet. A down-on-his-luck ambulance-chasing attorney turns down a large offer of settlement from the Catholic Diocese of Boston in a medical malpractice case--on principle. Newman's closing speech to the jury is a masterful appeal to conscience.

10. The Mission (1986), starring Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons. A lavish epic depiction of the struggles between Church and State in 18th century Europe and the effects of these struggles upon the lives of indigenous peoples in the colonized regions of South America. A brilliant and moving film.

11. Why We Fight (2006). Eugene Jarecki's prize-winning meditation upon President Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 Farewell Address in which he warned his fellow Americans about the rise of the "Military-Industrial complex." Featuring John McCain, Gore Vidal, and others.

12. Inherit the Wind (1960). Starring Spencer Tracy, Frederic March, and Gene Kelly. A dramatic treatment of the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial" in which a school science teacher was prosecuted for teaching Darwinian theory.

13. Oleanna (1994). David Mamet directs his own screenplay regarding a male college professor on the cusp of tenure and his struggling female student. Their meeting behind closed doors yields mutual misunderstanding and a charge of sexual harassment. Starring William H. Macy and Debra Eisenstadt.