Why civil discourse? And why now? Well, many critically important issues have arisen in the last two years and many injustices are rightly being uncovered. Outrage is being expressed, with good reason; yet at just the moment when the world should be pulling together in our battle against a global pandemic and the disparities it has thrown into the light , it seems we are more polarised than ever. At a time when we are questioning the notion of binaries in all sorts of arena, argument itself has become trenchantly binary.
We have thought long and hard about the wording of the Civil Discourse programme. And, to be clear, ‘Civil’ has nothing to do with politeness, or a stereotypically female notion of being good girls; civil is about what is best for the greater good, and sometimes that might mean saying things which agitate and disrupt and yes, perhaps offend. And the programme is nothing to do with having, as Van jones put it in a recent discussion at the Chicago Institute of Politics, any truck whatsoever with bigots or bullies – freedom of speech has nothing whatsoever to do with freedom of consequences from what you say.
And in our work on the outline, the key phrase which we agreed upon was this: authentic encounters between hearts and minds. We need to be able to be ourselves and part of that is to be able to express ourselves authentically; but we also have to recognise that true dialogue involves our hearts AND our minds, what we FEEL as well as what we THINK. And that, therefore, we have the capacity to hurt others, not just offend them.
And of course this evening, we are delighted to welcome the broadcaster, presenter, author and businesswoman Genelle Aldred, who writes on this very topic in her new book ‘Communicate for Change: Creating Justice in a World of Bias’.
I have been quoting this book in my introductions to the Civil Discourse programme, and asking students to analyse sections of it. And I know we have a very keen panel ready to ask lots of questions of Genelle, so I’m not going to steal their thunder now; but I did want just to share with you one key extract from the book which for me is so pertinent to what we are all facing now in the way in which we have discourse with each other:
A consensus on how to disagree well; hear, hear Genelle. And one of the key ways, I truly believe, in which we need to learn to disagree well, is inter-generationally. I was at the girls’ school association conference this week and you may have seen there has been a lot of press coverage around the Chair, Sam Price’s, call to arms that teachers should listen to their students and answer their rallying cry for progress. Yes, absolutely, I thought – but what we need is the collaboration between people of different ages – the experience and wisdom the older generations bring to bear alongside the freshness and energy of youth. We must take a deliberately inter-generational approach, and that is what we are seeking to do here at Wimbledon. Let us disagree well in order to agree more – as Mandu Reid, the Leader of the Women’s Equality Party said to us last week: what’s the point of activism, if you don’t genuinely believe people’s opinions can change?
This was the opening speech for our Civil Discourse event held in school on 25 November.