Learning Sciences Lunch and Learn with Sigal Ben-Porath, PhD “Speech and Inclusion on Campus”
Connect with colleagues during this in-person presentation at the GSE (Room 124). Pizza will be provided! Can’t attend in person? Join us remotely via Zoom!
Open expression and free inquiry are key components of a learning community: listening to diverse ideas, and trying out new perspectives, helps expand our knowledge as individuals and as a society. How does this requirement square with a commitment to inclusion and belonging, which is as central to learning? What are the boundaries of these different requirements, in K-12 and in higher education contexts? This talk will sketch out the obligations of learning community to both speech and inclusion. Questions about current challenges will be welcome.
Suggested Reading:
- Ben-Porath, S. How to depolarize your students. Nat Hum Behav 8, 186–189 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01801-8
Dr. Sigal Ben-Porath is the MRMJJ Presidential Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also a member of the philosophy and the political science departments, and the faculty director of the SNF Paideia Program for civic dialogue. Her recent books are Cancel Wars (Chicago 2023), Free Speech on Campus (Penn Press, 2017) as well as Making Up Our Mind (with Michael Johanek, Chicago 2019). She chaired Penn’s Committee on Open Expression 2015-2019, and serves on the boards of the Teachers Institute of Philadelphia, Middlebury’s Conflict Transformation Center, and Penn’s Project for Philosophy for the Young. In the past decade she has been offering guidance to college campuses on policy development and responses to controversies surrounding speech.