3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

While every reason does not have equal merit, people believe what they believe for a reason, and you don’t often understand your own point of view until you appreciate the views of others who see the world differently. The most important consideration isn’t often what you know about a subject but what you might not know. This seminar course will be simultaneously enraging, enlightening, frustrating, and potentially life-changing as each week we take head on an issue that divides polite company in America or the world. Throughout the course, the goal is to identify a few of the best arguments on either side of an issue to help better understand it. Aside from honing our skills at objectivity, the course will help us learn how to identify points of common interest that might lend themselves to finding common ground. This course will not take a Pollyanna view on the ability to resolve pronounced, passionate divisions, but it will point us to some of the data we need to identify what could be in the ultimate equation that bridges or closes the gaps. In our polarized world, these skills are superpowers. And, who knows, we all might change our minds on some things through it all.