The Boston University Dean of Students Office held its first ever Student-Faculty Forum on Tuesday night titled “Lessons from Charlottesville.” Tuesday night’s discussion was the first in a series of talks that will allow students and professors to work together to tackle important contemporary issues, BU professor and organizer Virginia Sapiro wrote in an email.
“I picked ‘Lessons from Charlottesville’ as our opening topic because it raises questions of such profound importance for the functioning of our society,” Sapiro wrote in an email before the forum, “and I believe students are searching for the best understanding they can get, and especially for ways to guide their actions and involvement.”
The discussion began in the Metcalf Ballroom with brief introductory comments from the five BU professors on the panel, who explained their perspectives on last month’s Charlottesville protests in relation to their respective areas of expertise. The speakers’ interpretations were followed by a Q&A session.
Walter Fluker, one of the speakers and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership, explained to the audience that in order to prevent the events of Charlottesville from happening again, people should establish a “democratic space.”
“Creating democratic space means that we must allow opportunities for differences and perspectives in the ways in which we protest,” Fluker said. “Subversive civility allows us to civilize political contestation and to subvert complacent consensus. We did this well in the civil rights movement and I think we can do something like that now.”
The discussion between students and faculty offered a new perspective that was different than the ones usually offered by conventional media, history professor Nina Silber, who spoke on the panel, wrote in an email.
“It seems vitally important that we have forums where we can talk about these issues,” Silber wrote, “and not just rely on sound bites and gut political reactions to analyze these kinds of events.”
The next forum, titled “Understanding North Korea and Possibilities from Diplomacy to Nuclear War,” will take place sometime in October, according to Sapiro.
Several of the people who participated in the first forum said they think the speakers made good points, but some thought more was needed to make the discussion truly effective.
Alyssa Kreikemeier, a second-year doctoral student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and one of Silber’s students, said she particularly enjoyed hearing the perspective Spencer Piston, a political science professor.
“I’ve been following the news and what’s happening in our country, and I think it’s an important time for dialogue,” Kreikemeier said. “The best remarks came from [Piston], who was willing to address more of the high-level concerns about pluralism and about empathy.”
Adia Armstrong, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, said she was hoping the speakers would be more proactive to complement their didacticism.
“It could have been more of a conversation instead of a ‘Let me make a statement and have everybody in the audience reaffirm what I’m saying [kind of situation],’” Armstrong said. “What are we doing to make this conversation progressive and change it from a conversation into a little action where we can see change and progress?”
Hafzat Akanni, a sophomore in the College of Communication, said she appreciated the intentions of the event, but felt disappointed by the homogeneity of the small audience.
“If we really want to invoke change and we really want to do something about the situation we’re in America, people need to come out to more of these events,” Akanni said. “In order to progress as a society, or even a university, we need to be able to talk to people who don’t think similarly to us, because I feel like only by learning and understanding where they’re coming from will you be able to then build a better bridge.”
