Civility & Public Discourse

Speech has the power to divide as well as to unite, to conceal as well as to convey, to sting as well as to soothe. For political speech, this dual dimension is as much a source of promise as of peril. Our capacity to persuade and be persuaded is integral to our ability to live with one another without violence, force, or tyranny—in short, our ability to do politics at all. Yet this capacity can, with greater finesse and more lasting consequences than sheer violence, undermine political institutions.

This course considers the responsibility of citizens to cultivate and wield the power of political speech. Participants will discuss a range of selected readings on the topic. In doing so, participants will enact what they seek to understand: a serious and civil conversation about politics.

The Hertog Readings in Politics & Culture series addresses the need for thoughtful discussion of perennial political issues informed by careful reading of great texts. The program runs for six weeks. Dinner will be provided. The first five meetings consist in a seminar discussion of the selected texts, led by Hertog associate director, Mary Elizabeth Halper. The final meeting features a capstone speaker, Diana Schaub, who will speak on Frederick Douglass’s Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln.

Image: Cesare Maccari, Cicero Denounces Cataline, fresco, 1889

Faculty

Mary Elizabeth Halper

Mary Elizabeth Halper is the Associate Director at the Hertog Foundation. She graduated with B.A.s in Philosophy and in Classics from the University of Dallas and has since been devoted to liberal education in various forms. She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America, where she defended a dissertation on the political philosophy of Plato’s Protagoras and Gorgias.

Diana Schaub

Diana Schaub is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where her work is focused on American political thought and history, particularly Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, African American political thought, Montesquieu, and the relevance of core American ideals to contemporary challenges and debates. Concurrently, she is Professor Emerita of Political Science at Loyola University Maryland, where she taught for almost three decades.

Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session

Session I: The Purpose of Speech in Politics

Readings:

Discussion Questions:

Why would it matter whether rhetoric were an art or a knack? Why is it so tempting to think of speech as only an instrument?
What’s so bad about pandering? How does it obscure true beauty/health?
Could there be a way to use appearances without pandering? Could there be a way to appeal to the passions without pandering?
Why is anger the first passion Aristotle addresses? What is the power behind anger?
How does shame function in civic discourse? Can it play both a negative and a positive role?

Session II: Words & Deeds

Readings:

Thucydides, Peloponnesian War
- Pericles’s Funeral Oration 2.34–2.47 (pp. 110–18)
- Mytilenian Debate: Cleon v. Diodotus 3.36–3.49 (pp.175–83)
- Melian Dialogue 5.84–5.116 (pp.351–57)

Discussion Questions:

What is the putative civic end of Pericles’s speech? What other function might his speech serve?
To what passions does Cleon explicitly and implicitly appeal? What role does Diodotus’ defense of deliberative rhetoric play in the success of his counsel? What is the motivation for making the debate not about justice but about self-interest?—what is its effect?
How much does genuine dialogue depend on shared presuppositions? What must be minimally held in common in order for discourse to occur? Did the Athenians actually discourse with the Melians? Did the Melians with the Athenians? What is the purpose of this exchange of speeches, if not communication?
What is the Athenian conception and use of public discourse? How does it change over the course of the speeches? What accounts for this change? How does their conception of discourse relate to the structure of their regime?

Session III: Civility & Conviction

Readings:

Shakespeare, Richard II

Discussion Questions:

How does flattery figure into Richard’s reign and downfall? Does it affect how he manages “free speech” in his court? How? Is there a sense of censorship in his court (perhaps regarding the death of Gloucester)? How does flattery figure into Bolingbroke’s ascendancy (consider especially his courting of the common people)?
Is the duel a necessary evil, the limit of healthy discourse, or a sign of an intractable problem? What are the differences between the way Richard handles the issue of a duel and the way Bolingbroke does (Act IV, Sc. 1)? What does it mean for the issue of rightful authority that the most pointed matters are resolved by institutional violence?
How does divine authority limit and/or liberate speech? What are the accounts that can mend, at least temporarily, the public (and sometimes private) rift when this divine authority is deposed? What are the limits to the power of such accounts?
What is the connection between freedom of speech and honor? Is honor strictly private or public? How does regard for honor inform the use of political speech?
What characterizes the interplay between words and deeds throughout the play? Is there a wisdom for political deeds that is distinct from a wisdom about political speech?

Session IV: Friends, Neighbors, Fellow Citizens

Readings:

Discussion Questions:

Why is Lardner’s story funny? Why is O’Connor’s? How does the humor of each differ? Is not taking oneself too seriously as important as taking oneself seriously?
From what oppression does Mr. Shelton seek relief and how? Is his violation of civility an act of freedom? From what oppression does Rayber seek relief and how? Is his failure a failure of civility?
Does either protagonist enjoy the good that civility is meant to protect? How does each conceive of his role in civic discourse? And of civic discourse in his own life?

Session V: How, What, & Why of Civility in Speech

Readings:

Discussion Questions:

What accounts for the power of language? How does how we speak affect how we think and about what we think? What is the point of aiming for beautiful speech?
Is our public discourse only a manifestation of our public health? Can it assert—or reassert—the “vital connection” between the institutions of society and the values which are supposed to govern the private lives of our citizenry?
Is there an inescapable tension between the truthfulness and beauty of speech? Between the justice and civility of speech? What is the source of that tension? If it is inescapable, is it manageable? How?

Capstone Speaker: Douglass & Lincoln

Readings:

Alumni Spotlight

Elliot Kaufman

Elliot Kaufman, who grew up in Toronto, realized he wanted a career in ideas after spending a summer with the Political Studies Program. He works for The Wall Street Journal as the paper’s Letters Editor.

“Hertog opened my mind to what was possible; I saw that ideas aren’t just something you study at university. They can launch and sustain careers.”

Elliot Kaufman

Current Position:

Letters Editor, The Wall Street Journal
Past:

Robert L. Bartley Fellow, The Wall Street Journal; National Review
Education:

Stanford University

How did you first hear about the Hertog Foundation? Why did you decide to apply?

I think I came across it on the email list for The Stanford Review. The Hertog program almost sounded too good to be true. I couldn’t believe that there were opportunities out there like that—let alone that they would even pay you to take them up.

At the time I was halfway through my freshman year at Stanford, and I just thought that the stuff I was learning was interesting and the professors were okay, but it wasn’t what I was expecting: the discoveries that would make me rethink what I had come in with, really challenge myself. Hertog sounded like exactly what I was missing, even at a school like Stanford.

Talk a little bit about your career path. How does Hertog fit in to your professional goals?

Looking back on it, it doesn’t seem like that much of a surprise that I’m in journalism and working for The Wall Street Journal. I started reading the newspaper very young.

I arrived at Hertog with some vague notion that I would end up working in “business.” I walked into my apartment that summer, and the three other guys living with me—two were entering Ph.D. programs in political philosophy and the other one, the slacker of the bunch I guess, was entering Columbia Law School. They put me—18 years old, the youngest student in the entire program – with the cohort’s three oldest students.

It was such a gift. Hertog opened my mind to what was possible; I saw that ideas aren’t just something you study at university. They can launch and sustain careers. And at the end of summer my roommates joined together to buy me a book, The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom. A summer of Hertog and then reading that book—together the experience changed my life. I realized I was missing something, and it helped me to redirect.

What sticks out in your memory about your educational experience with Hertog Programs?

I had some amazing professors who got me to ask questions I hadn’t even considered, that I didn’t know anyone was considering. It had a huge impact on me. Among those I would name Robert Bartlett on Aristotle and Darren Staloff on Lincoln.

Reading “What is Political Philosophy?” by Leo Strauss on the first night and then discussing it with my roommates—that’s the memory that stands out. It’s the intellectual excitement: Keeping the education going over dinner with my roommates, then coming back to the room and still continuing the conversation, and really living with the questions and readings.

I keep in touch with my roommates and several other people in the program, and they’re all over the place – in DC especially, New York City and elsewhere. It’s an amazing network of people.

Overall, what is your impression of Hertog Programs?

You get sharp kids who challenge each to think deeper and consider new arguments together. You have teachers who bring the issues alive by treating them as fundamental, as human questions. I didn’t have that elsewhere, and I was grateful to be able to experience in the summer what my university should have given me.

Do you think Hertog Programs are beneficial for young people interested in journalism?

The world of reading great books and the world of opinion journalism are not entirely shut off from each other. I find that the best opinion journalists, even if they don’t advertise how many books they’ve read in every single column, it helps inform their writing and can give them an extra edge.

On a more practical note, when I needed to find a job, one of the first people I emailed and spoke to was [Hertog director] Cheryl Miller, who was helpful in introducing me to people all over New York and D.C., and my phone call with her probably led to five other phone calls.

Another thing is meeting people your age, many of whom are going on to similar activities, like you are going out into the world together. Especially for people like me who are not from New York or DC and are moving there. Just having that network, that can be very helpful, too.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years? In a similar job, or embarking on something different?

I think something similar—really I hope I can stay at the WSJ. Certainly, something that allows me to edit and write. One of the great things is that there are so many conservative magazines in New York and DC that need people to write and edit and to understand that kind of intellectual landscape and do well in it.