Ep. 44: Mike Lee on Civility, Rhetoric, and Disagreeing Better
About this episode
Lura Forcum and Lauren Hall interview Mike Lee about improving disagreement through debate and dialogue.
Lura Forcum and Lauren Hall interview Mike Lee , director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston and host of When We Disagree , about how to improve disagreement through both debate and dialogue. Lee argues dialogue requires letting go of winning to humanize conflict and preserve long-term relationships, while debate uses evidence and stress-testing to clarify issues and strengthen arguments; done well, each supports the other. Hall shares a pandemic-era student government conflict involving Slack disputes, Blue Lives Matter symbolism, privacy, and free speech, which revealed the need for dialogue alongside principled adjudication. They discuss conflict avoidance on campuses, perspective-taking and mentalizing, structured on-ramps and accessible topics to make disagreement less threatening, and whether media can scale healthier models via parasocial contact. Lee ends with optimism about people’s hunger for connection and the return of sunshine in Charleston. Thanks for reading We Made This Political Podcast! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. 00:00 Dialogue vs Debate 00:41 Podcast Introductions 02:20 Civility Initiative Explained 03:30…
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