51
Tim Milosch (Ph.D.) joins today’s episode for another edition of Report From The Front, conversations with people who are doing it right, to speak with Tim and Rick about his work with Braver Angels, a non-profit dedicated to political depolarization. They discuss the function and benefits of parliamentary procedure - What is it? How to practice it? They discuss how roles like “the chair” and having established boundaries help to diffuse the heat when a disagreement gets combative, and they consider the relationship between the skill of health debate and being a good citizen.
Transcript
Rick Langer: Welcome to the Winston Conviction Podcast. My name is Rick Langer and I'm the Co-director of the Winston Conviction Project. I'm also a, continue to teach at 51, even though I'm recently retired. And one of my favorite things to do is to host this podcast with my good friend Tim Muehlhoff. Tim?
Tim Muehlhoff: Rick, great to be back with you. You're coming to us from Colorado. What is the temperature right now, right there?
Rick Langer: Actually, right now, it's almost 70 degrees, this morning as you were on your way to 94, it was 42 degrees when I got up. So-
Tim Muehlhoff: And no humidity in Colorado, right?
Rick Langer: That is pretty much correct, yes.
Tim Muehlhoff: Wow. Okay. I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous. I am, but I'm not going to say it publicly.
Rick, consider some of these interesting statistics. Since the 2016 Presidential Election, nearly a third of people report they have stopped talking to a friend or family member due to political disagreements.
Same study. Nearly two thirds of Americans say they stay quiet about their political beliefs due to the fear of offending co-workers or managers, resulting in the losing of their job.
So today we've had this chilling effect happen, Rick, right? Deborah Tannen's idea of an argument culture. How do you navigate that?
Well, a lot of our students, a lot of our co-workers, neighbors, family members have said, "Man, the best way to navigate this is, I'm just going to zip it. I'm not going to talk about these things. I might have deeply held, private beliefs, but I'm not going to articulate any of those."
So we want to go in a different direction here at 51. We want to not run from our conversations. But we would rather talk about our conversation, our differences, right?
So we have a colleague with us. One of the cool things, Rick, about 51, we have some amazing colleagues, absolute scholars. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any of them. So we have Tim Milosch with us. Just a joke. Tim is a friend. The only reason I would kid.
Rick Langer: He was, he was.
Tim Muehlhoff: He was. He was a friend of the Winston Conviction Project. No, Tim Milosch is the Interim Director of Digital Learning and Adjunct Faculty Member in the Political Science Department. He also serves on the advisory board of the AI Lab, which would also be fascinating to talk to him about, the Civic Engagement Task Force, the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, and is a Faculty Fellow with Braver Angels College Debates and Discourse Alliance.
Wow! Tim?
Tim Milosch: I stay busy.
Tim Muehlhoff: You stay very busy. And you have kids.
Tim Milosch: That's just at 51.
Tim Muehlhoff: That's just that 51? He has a whole modeling career, is where we first met.
Tim Milosch: Look for me at SGA's Instagram account, come on.
Tim Muehlhoff: But Tim, here's the cool thing about all of that is, Braver Angels takes a different approach. Braver Angels is like, "Yeah, we have these differences. We're not asking you to tone down your differences, but we're asking you to communicate to each other in a certain kind of way."
So tell us a little bit about how you were introduced to Braver Angels. And the unique aspect for college students that you've been a part of, that you've been doing this now for a couple years here at 51. So bring up to speed a little bit, our listeners on Braver Angels and your part in it here at 51.
Tim Milosch: Yeah, so Braver Angels was founded around 2016. After 2016 Election, there was this sense of like, "Oh my gosh, polarization's a thing. And we need to do something about it."
And relevant to the statistics you were reading, Tim, instead of adopting that kind of conflict aversion approach that a good chunk of America adopted, Braver Angels recognized that that's not how you build a democratic society. That's not how you build a robust public square. And so, they went about developing events that basically helped reteach people or helped people relearn two things. One, navigating difficult conversations through active listening, empathetic communication, conversation, et cetera. But two, the way they went about doing it was through a modified Parliamentary Procedure. And Parliamentary Procedure is something that undergirds a lot of the just civil society stuff we do from some of the committees I work on, that you cited there. We follow rules of Parliamentary Procedure. Other groups around America at every level of society do, as well. And so both in a formal sense and in terms of informal, interpersonal communication, they're helping people relearn those tools to be equipped to engage in difficult conversations.
So where 51 fits into that is Braver Angels is part of the College Campus Debates and Discourse Alliance, which, over the last couple of years has been part of a Templeton Foundation study to study the effectiveness of this approach. And so 51 is one of 10 campuses, and a growing network of campuses I might add, that is staging debates on campus, holding these open forum debates, teaching this model and procedure, and then gathering data through surveys to then send back to Templeton. They're doing a bunch of analysis and academic research on it, which is pretty cool to be a part of. 51 is the only Christian school...
Tim Muehlhoff: Is it really?
Tim Milosch: ... in the group, yeah. Which has made us a really unique voice in there. And shout out to just the 51 community, the students, my fellow organizers, my Student Fellows with this, they've done a great job organizing it. The feedback from 51 students is fantastic. And we have one of the highest response rates on the surveys in there. So we're...
Tim Muehlhoff: That bares well.
Tim Milosch: ... representing Christian schools quite well.
Tim Muehlhoff: Now I feel really bad about my opening joke about Tim. You are one of the people, you are.
Hey, but let me tell you a quick story. And then I want you to explain what this Parliamentary Procedure actually is.
So Simon Greer, he's been on our podcast. He's the National Director of Bridging the Gap. He put together a group of individuals to go to Israel, studied the Israeli-Palestinian disagreement. And we had people that were pro-Palestine, pro-Israel, people in the middle. We had Muslims, Jews, secular Jews, religious Jews, Christians, liberal Christians, conservative Christians. And one day, we decided to go for the genocide conversation. We decided to talk about a very sensitive topic, was what Israel was doing in Gaza, in fact, genocide. A woman named April from Braver Angels, who actually is trained in Parliamentary Procedure, she-
Tim Milosch: Yes, I know April, she's great.
Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, she's awesome.
Tim Milosch: She's amazing.
Tim Muehlhoff: She led this discussion in an alley, where you had two very strong personalities, one pro-Palestine, one pro-Israel, one absolutely saying, "You better believe this is genocide."
And the other one saying, "This is not genocide."
And I was thinking, "Oh my gosh, this is going to be a train wreck."
This is being filmed for a documentary. She incorporated Parliamentary Procedure, and I was blown away how well the conversation went.
Now, explain to people what that looked like when we say Parliamentary Procedure.
Tim Milosch: Yeah, so Parliamentary Procedure has a couple of key components here. One, you first have your two sides, there's no escaping or denying the fact that there are two sides. But one of the key elements here is having a moderator or a Chair of the debate. And there are particular rules of the road to engage in the conversation. First, everybody has equal time, equal access to speak. And so, you're not tilting the playing field in favor of one side or the other. And so we time it and that's the moderator's job.
Secondly, after someone speaks, the floor is open for people to have questions. And so they can ask questions, again, as equally as we can distribute it, equal amount of time. But once questions have died down, we go on to another speaker from the other side. And so you volley between the two opposing sides. That's the next piece.
The piece after that is, and this is really key, is that when people are speaking, they're asked to depersonalize their communication, what they're saying. So it's not about, "Oh, that person said."
Or if you know that person, "Tim Muehlhoff over there," you're asked to stay focused on what you really believe and express that. And if you don't like what someone said, disagree with what you don't like about that idea, not what you don't like about that person. And we do this by requiring people to address the Chair.
Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, I love, okay.
Tim Milosch: Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff: This is what worked so well in that alley. At first it sounds weird. Like everything-
Tim Milosch: And it's awkward, by the way. For people doing it for the first time, it can feel a little awkward. But-
Tim Muehlhoff: But Tim, it absolutely worked in that alley.
Tim Milosch: Yep.
Tim Muehlhoff: So you would say, "Madam Chairperson..."
Tim Milosch: Yep.
Tim Muehlhoff: ... because it was April...
Tim Milosch: Yep.
Tim Muehlhoff: ... "I would like to ask..."
Tim Milosch: The speaker.
Tim Muehlhoff: "... the speaker..."
Tim Milosch: Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff: "... this question."
And at first I was thinking, "Oh, my come, but it...
Tim Milosch: Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff: ... it brought down the emotion.
Tim Milosch: It does...
Tim Muehlhoff: It really does.
Tim Milosch: ... big time.
Yeah, because what it does is, it diffuses the potential for saying something personally offensive because you can't, right?
Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah.
Tim Milosch: And I might add, Chairs are trained to intervene if someone starts to go down that road.
Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, yep.
Tim Milosch: So you're on a short leash to begin with. And if you want to be combative about it, well, we don't have to let you talk, either. So Chairs do have an ability to just keep speakers on track, and keep the discussion on track, on the idea, and on what's, because the objective is, we're trying to move corporately together towards truth. And recognizing that people have different perspectives there, it's going to help us move in that direction together, faster if we can at least allow each other to get their perspectives out before we start pulling the knives out and stuff.
Rick Langer: I've had the privilege of joining Tim's group several times to hear students in debate participating myself and all of that. And I just want to underscore the wisdom of a structure like that, that creates boundaries. It creates a sense of, someone's in control. It doesn't just deescalate the comments, but it lowers the fear level, because you feel like a third party is in control, you know what will happen, you know the boundaries.
And one of the things that throws me is that moderator is not Tim, it's one of the students.
Tim Milosch: Yeah.
Rick Langer: And so the students are learning to do this kind of moderation. And I think that is one of the great gifts that we are giving our student body is learning that kind of set of skills because I think we think that you can't control those kinds of things. And it's really powerful not just to see somebody else do it, but they have the experience of saying, "Oh, wait a minute, if we agree to some rules ahead of time, and if I tend those rules, we can have a way better discussion than I thought."
Tim Milosch: And it goes to the point that conversation's actually a skill that you can get better at, you can work on; or, you could be terrible at, right? So, as a skill, you can grow in it. But, as with training any skill, there needs to be a degree to which you don't just do whatever feels good, and whatever feels right, or whatever's comfortable. You actually allow yourself to be put inside certain limitations so that you work within those limitations to learn what you can and can't do. And that helps you develop the ability to be a more effective communicator.
Tim Muehlhoff: So how do you pick these moderators? To me, that's the ballgame.
Tim Milosch: Mm-hmm.
Tim Muehlhoff: So what qualities would you look for in a good moderator?
Tim Milosch: Curiosity. So good moderators, I think, are genuinely curious to, so they embody the very values we're trying to model, to teach, to inculcate. They're individuals who really are curious to know what people think about something they're not.
Don't get me wrong, my Student Fellows have excellent thought lives. They think deeply about things. They have opinions about things. And I'm really thrilled this year with my two Student Fellows because, they came to us, but they were also participants in debates prior.
Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah.
Tim Milosch: And so they've been on both sides of this. And they really understand the model and appreciate what it does.
So I think curiosity is the number one thing. And then just a desire to want to have a good conversation. And out of that, grows a desire to help their classmates learn how to do that, as well.
Tim Muehlhoff: And I think it's cool that everybody knows the rules heading in. Because what we have found with the Conviction Project when we work with churches, organizations, there needs to be structure like
Book of Proverbs, "The word spoken in the right circumstance is compared to fine jewelry."
And you're setting the circumstance.
Tim Milosch: Yep.
Tim Muehlhoff: And everybody knows it.
Now, that moderator has to be fair. Woo, if it starts it, this reminds me a little bit of marital counseling, where there could be a perception the therapist is favoring one perspective. And that's just a death knell to the therapy. So this person really has to do it by the book and be fair.
Tim Milosch: Yeah. And we strive to do that to the best of our ability. Obviously, we're human, and so people could probably nitpick, and everything like that. But actually, we haven't had that happen in our debates, which has been pretty cool. The participants in the debates are very cooperative, for lack of a better word, but they really engage with the structure.
To your point earlier, Tim, about it feeling awkward and very formalized, and like, "Are people going to go for this thing?"
That's actually one of the things, because we do debriefs at the end of each of our open debates. And that's something that students routinely comment on. They really like the structure.
Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, yeah.
Tim Milosch: They really like having an understanding of what the purpose of the conversation is, what their roles are as speakers, having a Chair that they could refer to, so if they want to say something, but they're uncomfortable saying it directly to the person, they can. All those things are something students really appreciate. Which, it does have that counterintuitive, "Who knew?"
Who knew, yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff: Well, you didn't know until you tried. And so, here we are. It's pretty cool.
And so, it's awesome, too, that just starting last semester and last spring, we actually started moving these debates into classrooms. So we're doing them in classrooms now for different faculty who want to encourage that kind of discourse in their classes. So it's been awesome to see that.
Rick Langer: And Tim, let me ask you a quick question, and then I'm pretty sure I know the answer to the question, but then have a follow-up on it. Do you, in any way, identify a winner and loser of the debate?
Tim Milosch: Nope.
Tim Muehlhoff: Ooh.
Tim Milosch: Nope. Hopefully, if everything goes well, everybody wins, because everybody learns something. Everybody is, like I said earlier, moving towards truth together. And so it's an everybody wins scenario.
So it's not to disparage competitive debate. I was on the 51 debate team when I was a student here. I helped coach that team. So, I'm a big fan of competitive debate. A lot of the skills I learned, in terms of active listening, came through that.
But that being said, that is one of those activities that's not for everybody. And we're talking about a skill set here that is absolutely necessary to being effective citizens. And so everybody needs to be able to do that. You don't need to be able to win a debate, but you do need to be able to have a debate. And I think that's the distinction we're trying to make.
Rick Langer: And I think one of the things that's helpful about that is just picturing, could you imagine if I was coming through Southern California, said, "Hey, Tim, let's get together and go to Starbucks."
And we sat down and had a conversation about the election, or theology, or whatever it was. And at the end of the time, we had a vote to decide who won. If I knew that was coming, the whole conversation would feel different, right?
And one of the things that, I remember having an experience where I had just, actually, I had just come from moderating a Braver Angels workshop. So this is another thing braver Angels do, is they'll take together a right-leaning and left-leaning people, a red-blue workshop, and spend a day together with, basically, equal numbers talking about things about your differences. So I was a moderator of one of those things.
And I was chatting with somebody that night. And he asked me, "Well, what's the point of that if you don't change anybody's opinion?"
Tim Milosch: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Rick Langer: And I think we've talked about some of these things before on our podcast. But one of the things that really hit me as I've partly seeing your students in action, and a few things I've done within my own classroom that are a bit similar, is realizing that one of our problems with convictions is that they tend to be half done. They're like the banana bread that you put in the oven, you're wondering if it's done, you pull it out, and you need to poke the little toothpick in there to see if the goopy stuff stays on or not. And if not, you put it back in the oven.
And the reason I tell that story is because there was no problem with the banana bread not being done, as long as you put it back in the oven. And I think one of our problems is a lot of our convictions are kind of half done. I don't want to call them half-baked, because we have a really bad connotation with that. And I would argue that actually we fear that they're half-baked, so we don't talk about them. But the way you actually cook a conviction is by talking about it.
Tim Milosch: Mm-hmm.
Rick Langer: So it's like we pull the banana bread out of the oven, we check it, "Oop, it's goopy."
And then we never put it back in because it was goopy. And you're afraid that someone will find out it was goopy. And I'm saying, "Put it back in the oven, have more conversations."
And particularly with people who either, don't agree with you, or don't agree with you completely, or, even if they agree with you are willing to ask, "Hey, I agree with you, but I've always wondered about this, and I've been afraid to ask. Do you have any perspective on the following question?"
And what ends up happening is your conviction becomes much better formed. You can afford to hold it more deeply because you've thought it through more clearly, and discourse suddenly becomes less intimidating, you're more likely to flame or get angry at people, because you've felt that your position pretty well. And yeah, you can still learn things, but you're not sitting there on pins and needles thinking that, "My banana bread's raw," to put it that way.
Tim Muehlhoff: By the way, goopy, that is a technical debate term. I just wanted to, some people might have been lost by that.
So what topics have you been brave enough to jump into?
Tim Milosch: Oh my gosh, guys, we've had so many good ones. So, actually, the very first one we had on campus that Rick attended, we were looking at the resolution of something along the lines of, it was along like, civil discourse is overrated.
Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, yeah. Oh, wow.
Tim Milosch: That was the topic.
We've done one on AI. That was a 51-specific one. We just said that 51 should adopt a university-wide policy banning the use of AI in the classroom.
Tim Muehlhoff: Banning AI?
Tim Milosch: That one was very well-attended. We had students, faculty, staff. It was great.
Tim Muehlhoff: Right on.
Tim Milosch: It was so much fun. And that one truly covered a lot of ground. We went very deep, students, and faculty, and staff alike. It was really, really great. So we did that.
We've done one on climate change.
We've done one just this last week, we did one on non-violence and whether or not that should be normative for the Christian life.
Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, wow.
Tim Milosch: We've done immigration policy, women in positions of leadership in the church. Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff: Holy cow.
Rick Langer: Yeah. And the lesson is that you didn't need to shy away from those kinds of topics...
Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah.
Rick Langer: ... even though students were leading it, students were doing it. You can create that a structure...
Tim Milosch: Well, and...
Rick Langer: ... where...
Tim Milosch: ... And what we do, too...
Rick Langer: ... they become stronger because of it.
Tim Milosch: ... is we poll our students. So we have a mailing list from students who've participated in these. And so, we routinely reach out to them and poll them on potential topics of interest. And so, we're not generating these topics to discuss in a vacuum.
And got to give my shout to my students who have worked on these. They've done a really good job because they don't just poll students who have attended the debates, but they're also keeping their ears open on campus, talking to their friends, and just gathering that information. So we're really, in a lot of ways, selecting topics that are being brought from the grassroots on campus, which I just am thrilled about. This is where some of our student leaders have done some really good work.
Tim Muehlhoff: And I love the fact that we're reclaiming words.
Tim Milosch: Yep.
Tim Muehlhoff: I'm a rhetoric professor, and man, rhetoric has been put through the wringer like, "Hey, don't give me that rhetoric, that empty rhetoric."
Tim Milosch: Yeah, in debate, similarly...
Tim Muehlhoff: Similar.
Tim Milosch: ... very negative connotations.
Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, "I'm not interested in a debate. I don't want to debate this issue."
Tim Milosch: Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff: I think it's so cool with an upcoming generation of Christian communicators, we're reclaiming both of those words...
Tim Milosch: Yep.
Tim Muehlhoff: ... and saying debate can be very, very productive.
Tim Milosch: Mm-hmm.
Tim Muehlhoff: And I love that. So how can people find out more information about what you're doing specifically at 51? And then how can they find out more information more broadly?
Tim Milosch: Yeah, so, if you want to find out just more about the work of Braver Angels and the Debates and Discourse Alliance, definitely go to the Braver Angels website.
But, for what we do on campus, there's two places. So, part of our work with Braver Angels entailed working with another organization that's partnered with Braver Angels on this, Bridge USA, to build a student club, to organize and facilitate our on-campus activities. So that club is Bridging 51. And they're the ones who set up, and organize, and sponsor the on-campus debates. And we supply the Chairs and the support for professors who want to do this in the classroom.
Rick Langer: And the pizza. Don't forget the pizza.
Tim Milosch: Yeah, and the pizza. And the Amazon gift cards that go with completing the Templeton-funded surveys, it's awesome. So yeah, it's pretty fantastic.
So, contacting Bridging 51, for faculty who want to put this in their classroom, they can email...
Tim Muehlhoff: That's so cool.
Tim Milosch: ... me directly. I'm in the 51 Directory.
And, yeah, and people are welcome to attend our monthly open debates. They're posted around campus, they're on social media, and they can see them on the screens in the CAF or wherever.
Tim Muehlhoff: Let me close with this question. For the pastors that are listening, could you see this working in a church?
Tim Milosch: Yes. And Bridging 51 and myself, we're interested in helping churches do that.
Rick Langer: Yeah, I think that's a great thought. And I think that would be a wonderful thing to do, within this context in a church. It is a structure that is not dependent on a university, or a church, or a club, or whatever. It just is a way of talking about difficult issues. So that's wonderful.
Thank you for having joined us for the Winston Conviction Podcast. We really appreciate it. We'd love to have you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, Google Play, wherever it is that you get your podcasts.
We'd also love to hear from you. If there's some things you would like to talk about, or, for example, what we just did with Tim these last minutes was to just hear from somebody who's doing something right, doing something good, doing something to make things better. And that's one of our favorite Reports From the Front segments that we have. And it'd be great to hear from you, if you know some people that we don't know that would be good for us to meet and to introduce to a broader audience.
So, thanks so much for joining us. If you would like to subscribe to our quarterly newsletter, you can check us out at WinsomeConviction.com and find it there. Or, that's also where you can give us any comments, or feedback, or questions like that.
So, thanks again for joining us for this episode of the Winston Conviction Podcast.
