In a time of political division, finding common ground means creating opportunities to hear each other's stories and opinions — but it doesn't mean banning politics from social media platforms.
That was the message delivered Tuesday afternoon by three panelists, including David Lazerdistinguished professor of political science and computer science at Northeastern, during the second discussion in a series organized by nine Massachusetts colleges titled “Dialogue and Action in an Age of Division.”
“I think that in a democracy you have to talk about politics. Sometimes you need to be loud and angry about politics,” Lazer said.
Fears of misinformation and the alienation of division may prevent people from connecting, but retreat is not the answer, he said. “We owe it to each other to talk and listen. It's very difficult at the moment.”
Lazer was joined on the panel by Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor and Professor of Government at Harvard University, and Alexandra Pineros-Shields, Associate Professor of Racial Equity Practice at Brandeis University.
The discussion, titled “Coming Together Across Differences: Finding Common Ground Across Identities and Political Divides,” was moderated by Layli Maparyan, executive director of the Wellesley Centers for Women and professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College.
Asked if the media is to blame for fueling division, Allen said that while she doesn't want to simply blame the media, “people learned many years ago that two things sell particularly well – anger and sex. For this reason, our media sphere is full of these two things.”
“So the question in a way is, 'how can we, the audience, communicate the appetite for stories that really focus on the story of helping each other?' Allen asked.
The history of the world is a history of cooperation, but that's often overlooked, Pineros-Shields said.
“Communities cannot survive unless they really work together. But that is not the history that is primarily taught, but rather the history of conflict,” Pineros-Shields said.
She said that as part of a community group that worked with the Lynn (Mass.) Police Department in the past, she learned to rely on “radical vulnerability” to come to terms with implicit bias — and the importance of spending “a lot of time getting to know each other, listening each other's stories”.
“It's really necessary to build trust,” Pineros-Shields said, adding that each meeting with police included at least half an hour of “what we say one-on-one.”
Working together to create change requires a kind of muscle built by overcoming challenges, he said.
“Every time we came up against another muscle, we had to go back to the drawer. And that built the solidarity muscle,” Pineros-Shields said.
Allen, whose grandfather started one of the first NAACP chapters in north Florida in the 1940s, had a very personal history of political divisiveness.
In 1992, her aunt ran for Congress in California with the left-wing Peace and Freedom Party, while her father ran for the US Senate from Southern California as a Reagan Republican.
“They were used to the most heated arguments and discussions at our table,” Allen said.
In addition to remembering these “incredible arguments,” he said, “I also learned, however, about the practice of engaging in differences, real differences of perspective. A few things were very clear to me. Although they quarreled fiercely, they never broke the chains of love. They held sacred the dignity of this man before them.
“Well, you're probably thinking, 'Daniel, how the hell does this relate to today?' And, by the way, Danielle, those were your family members. So of course they have that bond, that sense of commitment to each other's humanity.”
That sense of humanity has crossed political lines in recent years to form a voter supermajority — more than two-thirds of voters — to restore voting rights in Florida to people who have served felony sentences, Allen said.
And about four years ago, 75 percent of voters in Mississippi voted for a new state flag that didn't have the Confederate emblems, he said.
People turn common purpose into concrete results “by building relationships, forming coalitions,” he said, “by really doing this work of keeping that basic commitment to human dignity front and center.”
The ideas expressed and misinformation shared on social media do not always respect human dignity.
It's important that social media platform operators don't react by shutting down political discourse to avoid dealing with difficult issues, Lazer said.
“Social media, for all its problems, has also been a tool of protest” and political mobilization, said Lazer, who co-authored a new paper titled “Black networks matter.”
He said platforms like town halls are powerful tools to help people reflect on each other's experiences instead of seeing each other as some kind of caricature.
“Dialogue and Action in An Age of Divides” was organized by the provosts of Northeastern, MIT, Harvard, UMass, Brandeis, Tufts, Boston University, Boston College and Wellesley.
Panel discussions in the series feature faculty experts from the schools and focus on modeling constructive dialogue around difficult issues.
