Sigal Ben-Porath speaks about how information spreads outside conventional news sources. “You have a really open [media] landscape where people like Joe Rogan can hustle,” she says. “The incentive structure is built around rage rather than thoughtful engagement. At the same time, society’s values are changing. Societies are not like atomic clocks. We change and evolve over time.”
Howard Stevenson on the impact of trauma on Black communities nationwide: “We found that if there has been a police shooting in that neighborhood that a lot of people in the community will experience trauma…Witnessing oppression has an impact on everybody.”
Penn GSE’s Sigal Ben-Porath joined Yale University’s Jacob S. Hacker, UCLA’s Martin Gilens and Vanderbilt University’s Larry M. Bartels in The Scholars’ Circle interview to discuss the decline of democracy in the U.S., its causes, and its cures.
Richard Ingersoll expressed concern about lowering the bar for teachers. “Remote sometimes might be much more preferable to getting some substitute in there who’s basically babysitting,” he said.
Jonathan Zimmerman said that bills banning the teaching of so-called “critical race theory” in schools could create more problems for conservatives than they solve. “I understand the danger of indoctrination in our schools, about race and everything else,” he said. “But the solution to that problem is to present multiple perspectives in our classrooms, not to bar certain perspectives from them.”
Jonathan Zimmerman opined that the role of an educational institution is to make its students more aware, informed and thoughtful adults through structured dialogue – not necessarily to discipline them for words spoken and actions taken in the past.