tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/what-do-these-courses-teach-us-18878/articlesWhat do these courses teach us? – The Conversation2015-07-23T09:47:47Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/423962015-07-23T09:47:47Z2015-07-23T09:47:47ZThrough the brewing class: what beer-making can teach students about business<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89242/original/image-20150721-24304-1xmb9ee.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What lessons are there in the beer industry?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rhett Brymer</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is a part of The Conversation’s series on unique courses. For other articles in this series, read <a href="https://theconversation.com/philosophical-toolkit-in-tow-scholar-travels-to-conflict-zones-42805">here</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-teacher-uses-star-trek-for-difficult-conversations-on-race-and-gender-43098">here</a>.</em></p>
<p>Next time you are in your local grocery store, step in to look a little more closely at the beer cooler. Amid the brightly colored, creative packaging lies the final battle for the ultimate goal – your purchases. </p>
<p>But, what battles were fought to get the beer to that particular cooler? More importantly, what might those battles say about larger trends in business today? </p>
<p>At Miami University’s Farmer School of Business, we designed an experiential class to go in depth with these issues, leveraging the lessons of the beer industries as a way to better understand larger trends in business strategy and supply chains. </p>
<h2>What can the beer industry teach us?</h2>
<p>Why beer? What is significant about the brewing industry? And what can students take away (besides a new appreciation for hops)?</p>
<p>The beer industry turns out to be a fascinating microcosm of the larger landscape of today’s business climate. Breweries are varied and transparent, prisms through which students get to see firsthand the strategies employed by the full spectrum – from tiny nanopubs to the <a href="http://www.brewbound.com/news/the-brewers-association-top-50-u-s-craft-breweries-of-2013">fastest-growing midsized breweries</a> to the <a href="http://www.agmrc.org/media/cms/coors_6C217F1EDB6E5.pdf">largest brewing facility in the world</a>. In other words, they offer the perfect opportunity to use a hospitable, popular setting to examine a plethora of questions facing the industry and individual businesses.</p>
<p>For instance, how can microbreweries survive given their paltry market share? (The average US microbrewery has a 0.0041% market share.) Who are they? And how do they compete against the global brands and scale of the macrobreweries? </p>
<p>We set out to find out for ourselves – and for our students.</p>
<p>During a three-week intensive examination of the beer industry, we toured 25 breweries and related facilities from Portland, Oregon to Asheville, North Carolina in a field study to get to know the intimate details of the industry’s supply chain. </p>
<p>And what did we find?</p>
<p>The overwhelming majority of new market entrants in the beer industry are craft breweries that sell to a very localized consumer base. </p>
<p>As the dominant market players concentrated on general markets, widespread distribution and global uniformity, there were many <a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/why-microbrewery-movement-organizational-dynamics-resource">geographic niches</a> for entrepreneurs to claim local identities. </p>
<p>Now, the craft and local nature of these new beers is <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/budweiser-ditches-the-clydesdales-for-jay-z-1416784086">capturing</a> the new generation of beer drinkers – indeed, 44% of drinkers aged 21 to 27 report never tasting Budweiser or Bud Light, two macrobrew icons. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89243/original/image-20150721-24266-1xscmcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89243/original/image-20150721-24266-1xscmcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89243/original/image-20150721-24266-1xscmcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89243/original/image-20150721-24266-1xscmcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89243/original/image-20150721-24266-1xscmcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89243/original/image-20150721-24266-1xscmcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89243/original/image-20150721-24266-1xscmcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In touring the beer industry, students start to understand it at a deeper level.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Newman</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead, <a href="http://libra.msra.cn/Publication/42770013/microbreweries-as-tools-of-local-identity">drinking local beer</a> has become part political statement – lowering carbon emissions and supporting local entrepreneurs – and part cultural experience – either as connection to a hometown or as a tourist destination. </p>
<h2>Application to the future</h2>
<p>In touring a few dozen breweries, students begin to understand the industry at a much deeper level. </p>
<p>They see up close the struggles the small brewers go through to survive. They understand the challenges of scaling up and maintaining complex businesses with national distributions. They recognize strategies and the logic behind them.</p>
<p>Yet, they still have to grapple with large, unanswered questions:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How many local breweries can the US sustain? </p>
<p>Will we see a bubble in the beer industry as more <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/101142795">investment money</a> pours into brewing?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In response to declining light lager sales domestically, the major breweries have turned to acquiring smaller craft brands like 10 Barrel, Elysian and Leinenkugals, <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/15/news/companies/beer-sabmiller-meantime/">mirroring efforts</a> in the food industries as “big food” yields market share to local, niche brands.</p>
<p>Similarly, independent craft brewers, like New Belgian and Sierra Nevada, have become <a href="https://www.brewersassociation.org/insights/brewery-consolidation/">national brands</a>, bringing together the opposing forces of scale economies and local branding, replete with high connection with consumers, small batches and nimble product offerings. But can rapidly growing craft breweries keep their local feel? </p>
<p>So, some of the questions we ask are: will acquired local breweries continue having craft appeal with new macrobrewery ownership? What are the quality implications for regional craft beers once they are part of a larger company? </p>
<p>Interestingly, unlike the big companies, small beer manufacturers tend to view each other as more <a href="http://blog.stonebrewing.com/index.php/collaboration-not-competition-a-look-at-craft-beer-culture/">collaborators than competitors</a>, and openly share stories of assisting a competing brewery when in a pinch. </p>
<p>Because of the craft beer market growth, <a href="https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics/national-beer-sales-production-data/">increasing revenue</a> at individual craft breweries has not had to come at the <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2014/02/26/rewery-revolution-heats-up.html">expense of other craft breweries</a>. </p>
<p>Instead, thousands of craft breweries have formed alliances, such as the Brewer’s Association, to <a href="https://www.brewersassociation.org/current-issues/brewers-association-and-beer-institute-send-joint-letter-to-members-of-congress/">lobby on behalf of smaller breweries</a> to position themselves with better laws, taxes and regulations, in turn decreasing the advantages of large incumbents.</p>
<p>This leads to yet another question: will the collaborative ethos of smaller craft breweries turn ugly when craft beer sales begin to decline? </p>
<h2>What’s in a bottle of beer</h2>
<p>The bottle of beer on the grocery shelf seems so simple. Yet, it is the result of an intricate orchestration of materials and logistics that takes seeing to grasp. </p>
<p>Producing glass from train cars of sand; securing contracts for hop futures to avoid severe shortages; malting your own barley; breeding superior strains of yeast; locating plants on top of preferred aquafers: all sourcing strategies used to achieve an edge on the competition. </p>
<p>Students respond avidly when they see an industry in such great depth. They appreciate how complex running a business truly is regardless of size. </p>
<p>They are stunned at the variety of company cultures, and become more comfortable in finding one right for them. They see the fruits of an idea, an entrepreneur and hard work, compelling confidence in many students to start their own ventures. </p>
<p>Students in this class get to experience the “real stuff,” outside the sterility of a classroom, and outside their disciplinary bubbles. As prominent activist and food writer <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/products/9781846148033/cooked-natural-history-transformation">Michael Pollan recently wrote</a>: “One of the problems with the division of labor in our complex economy is how it obscures the lines of connection.” </p>
<p>Being out in the field and being challenged with the complexities of several real businesses each day helps make those connections. So, we do these tours each year. We embark on our next field tour in January 2016.</p>
<p>Although numerous programs on the science and techniques of brewing have <a href="http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/beeradvocate-magazine-98-march-2015.263602/">cropped up</a> nationwide, few have explored the breadth and depth of the business in all its intricacies and connections. </p>
<p>Single-industry classes, such as this one, allow students to see the lines of connection between business functions, across the niches of a marketplace. They also allow them to explore the complexities of supply chains and cooperative strategies that structure the modern-day economies that these graduates are entering.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42396/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The beer industry is a fascinating microcosm of the larger landscape of today’s business environment. Students can examine a range of questions facing businesses, through the beer industry.Rhett Andrew Brymer, Assistant Professor of Management , Miami UniversityW. Rocky Newman, Professor of Management, Miami UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/430982015-07-22T10:26:51Z2015-07-22T10:26:51ZA teacher uses Star Trek for difficult conversations on race and gender<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89211/original/image-20150721-24291-1g8685r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can Captain Kirk's struggle for belonging and identity become a tool for teaching?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/4922578504/in/photolist-8uZv6b-8uFehN-9Nke5x-9No5oL-9No3U7-7Pu4ih-9No2rf-uRxNMX-ooCwCd-9LjCyg-s5GeMt-6aXNBs-5C51hV-vTTj-botCkn-9NGYZA-9NwrEg-9NA8FD-9LBudB-9ND6qW-stRTL9-kHRt3-kW3rK2-6sHHpn-9NwACM-9ND1jY-9NxKaD-9ND4FA-9NAfyg-bd8jFK-garsey-hMdFed-8Tm2oR-fQPLbZ-pDvr2Y-9DJ3bt-hM4hTv-hMcATc-hLURxf-hMfETZ-hMfmWC-hM3Yx1-hMrGLC-hM4wis-hMdfBs-hM5afU-hM5KsZ-hM4Ejq-hMcWgZ-hM3nVg">James Vaughan</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The television series <a href="http://www.cbs.com/shows/star_trek/">Star Trek: The Original Series (1966–1969)</a> debuted one year after my immediate family and I relocated from the Harlem district of New York City to an area of South Central Los Angeles in 1965. </p>
<p>This was also the year in which that latter metropolis erupted into riots that became known collectively as the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Fire_this_Time.html?id=cFgo3X7vdo4C">Watts Rebellion</a>. The television series became a form of escape from the surroundings of a depressing urban reality and envisioning a more tolerant future. </p>
<p>As it turned out, however, TV was not to be the key to that future. Rather, that entrée would be provided by many subsequent years of formal education that would spark in me an intellectual curiosity about the inner workings of the trek of life – engaging the tangibles of this world as well as the intangibles I imagined to exist beyond the stars. </p>
<p>It was through the arts and humanities that I attempted to grapple with the many intersecting questions I had about things that mattered most to me, such as race, gender and sexuality, as well as technology of the past, present and future. </p>
<p>Fast forward half a century – to where I help my students attempt to make sense of exactly those same relevant, complex questions.</p>
<h2>Teaching complex, contemporary issues</h2>
<p>After earning a doctoral degree in art history and teaching at the university level for 25 of those intervening years, I have observed a contradiction in the majority of students of this Generation Y: they seem connected and yet very distanced from the overwhelming complexities of the world around them.</p>
<p>The point of connection appears strongest in the area of popular culture. The disconnect, ironically, seems vested in a contemporary (sometimes blind) obsession with technology. </p>
<p>As a historian of art and visual culture by training, I wrestled with how popular culture and technology might be combined in a thought-provoking fashion with difficult and uncomfortable social and personal matters. How might these issues be made important to a student’s contemporary situation, to her or his daily experiences and encounters? </p>
<p>I found part of the answer by traveling back to the 1960s, when difficult <a href="http://www.penielejoseph.com/BlackPowerMovementDemocracy.pdf">social change movements around race</a> (<a href="http://www.penielejoseph.com/BlackPowerMovementDemocracy.pdf">civil rights, black power</a>), <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/28mwh3nk9780252067822.html">gender</a> (the <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/28mwh3nk9780252067822.html">women’s</a> <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/494.html">movement</a>) and <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_gay_and_lesbian_liberation_movement.html?id=8-qHAAAAIAAJ">sexuality</a> (<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470674871.wbespm296/abstract">the gay and lesbian movement</a>) were in full swing and paralleled the <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/9780061176289/space-race">national obsession</a> with <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-rosen/our-obsession-relationshi_b_6005726.html">technology</a>, the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=d8Wl-dgSgK8C&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=space+race+martin+j+collins&source=bl&ots=Jq6bGdBVkC&sig=Cooj_IQAMaADd7d9-AUzkpHiGYg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDIQ6AEwA2oVChMIkLaGmLTsxgIVQZYeCh0-hgHv#v=onepage&q=space%20race%20martin%20j%20collins&f=false">space race</a> and <a href="http://mrpopculture.com/what-is-pop-culture">indulgence</a> in <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442214965/Globalization-and-American-Popular-Culture-Third-Edition">popular culture</a> as a way to both escape and liberate ourselves. </p>
<p>The result of my time travel was the creation of a new course for the 21st century entitled “Roaming the Star Trek Universe: Race, Gender, and Alien Sexualities.” The course explores the Star Trek universe of science fiction television as one way to probe critical issues of race, gender and alternate forms of sexuality. The response to the course offering was overwhelming. </p>
<p>But why would students be interested, and why teach such a course in today’s complex world? </p>
<h2>Why does it matter?</h2>
<p>Certainly, this is not the first nor last course to be taught on Star Trek. However, what makes it different, or at least unusual, is its open-ended interest in the intersecting dynamics of race, gender and varying forms of sexuality. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89213/original/image-20150721-24291-15g9ce3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89213/original/image-20150721-24291-15g9ce3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89213/original/image-20150721-24291-15g9ce3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89213/original/image-20150721-24291-15g9ce3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89213/original/image-20150721-24291-15g9ce3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89213/original/image-20150721-24291-15g9ce3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89213/original/image-20150721-24291-15g9ce3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The stories and characters of Star Trek can teach students many things about today’s complex world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/4919013338/in/photolist-8uFehN-9Nke5x-9No5oL-9No3U7-7Pu4ih-9No2rf-uRxNMX-ooCwCd-9LjCyg-s5GeMt-6aXNBs-5C51hV-vTTj-botCkn-9NGYZA-9NwrEg-9NA8FD-9LBudB-9ND6qW-stRTL9-kHRt3-kW3rK2-6sHHpn-9NwACM-9ND1jY-9NxKaD-9ND4FA-9NAfyg-bd8jFK-garsey-hMdFed-8Tm2oR-fQPLbZ-pDvr2Y-9DJ3bt-hM4hTv-hMcATc-hLURxf-hMfETZ-hMfmWC-hM3Yx1-hMrGLC-hM4wis-hMdfBs-hM5afU-hM5KsZ-hM4Ejq-hMcWgZ-hM3nVg-hM3sk8">James Vaughan</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>As a persuasive tool in imagining the possibilities of the future, Star Trek has the power and pull to immerse the individual completely through stories and characters that give meaning and purpose to our collective sense of identity and existence. </p>
<p>For instance, in the original series episode, called “Let that be your last battlefield” (1969), the conflict between two bi-colored humanoids named Lokai and Bele leads to questions of racial and political friction, assigning racial designations and bringing out the tensions of identity politics.</p>
<p>As with real life, there are no pat solutions but many consequences. </p>
<p>The science fiction genre, as part of popular culture, provides a seductive means of examining the intersections of the concerns of race, gender and sexuality in exciting and daring new ways such as, for instance, using Klingons as metaphors for Muslims and Vulcans for Jews. </p>
<p>The linking of past, present and future through subjects such as slavery, racism, colonization, feminism, reproductive technologies, homosexuality/homophobia, spirituality and religious fundamentalism, just to name a few, stimulates critical reexamination of today’s very real problems. </p>
<p>One way to do this, for example, is to ask probing questions so to get students thinking about ways in which interspecies conflicts among humans, Vulcans, Romulans, Klingons, Andorians, Betazoids, Cardassians and Bajorans, to name a few, are portrayed and how they mirror or parallel disagreements between today’s nations, races, genders, religions and classes. </p>
<p>The idea of creating futuristic spaces, places and experiences that are modeled on past and contemporary situations poses questions about the possibility of achieving optimistic futures and the inevitability of being left with pessimistic ones.</p>
<h2>Science fiction is about everything</h2>
<p>Counter to stereotype, science fiction is not only about the future of technology and science, but encompasses what the <a href="http://www.centerforfutureconsciousness.com/sf_novels.htm">writer and educator Thomas Lombardo</a> <a href="http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000220421/Contemporary-Futurist-Thought.aspx">calls</a> “the future of everything” – the future of society, culture, ethics, the environment, the human mind, races, genders, sex and sexuality. </p>
<p>It is in respect to the complex narratives about thoughts on the future of everything from a variety of perspectives that the Star Trek universe presents a challenge and is overwhelming even when restricted to the intersecting matters of race, gender and sexuality.</p>
<p>Of these three concerns, race is perhaps the most difficult to figure out. There is a constant struggle over what race means, and, in most instances, its definition and significance remain unresolved. </p>
<p>There are a host of characters from the Star Trek universe that speak to the logic and illogic of race, signaling the importance and timeliness of racial matters today. </p>
<p>Characters in the television series who are readily identified by the color of their skin include Uhura, Worf, Geordie Laforge, Guinan, Captain Benjamin Sisko and Tuvok. All of them can teach us something about contrived racial (and gender) categories that also go beyond skin color. </p>
<p>However, in order to think more deeply about race, we also have to look at what the series says about the power of whiteness and its tendency to reinforce racial as well as gender stereotypes.</p>
<p>Captain Kirk of the original series, the Prime Directive, and the United Federation of Planets all come to mind here. Characters such as Mr Spock, B’Elanna Torres, Odo and even Commander Data reference the complexity of ethnicity and racial mixtures disguised as hybrid alien species struggling for identity and a sense of belonging in an extended humanoid and technological universe.</p>
<h2>Relevance to our lives today</h2>
<p>These issues and the struggles they impose are important because they continue to resonate with us today and have direct bearing on the quality of our lives.</p>
<p>The process of teaching and learning about race, gender and sexuality through science fiction stories and technology in television and film can be challenging and even daunting. </p>
<p>But Star Trek may well be one of the more significant ways (even boldly so) through which to not only teach and learn about the past, the present and the future, but to willfully shape the contours of the latter. </p>
<p><em>This article is part of a series on unique courses.
Tomorrow: A view through the brewing class</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43098/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Smalls does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What can Star Trek teach us about today’s trek of life?James Smalls, Professor of Art History, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/428052015-07-14T10:10:37Z2015-07-14T10:10:37ZPhilosophical toolkit in tow, scholar travels to conflict zones<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202202/original/file-20180116-53292-185n64h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How can we incorporate philosophy in our daily lives?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/5784920249/in/photolist-21PHCFS-6CQ2L7-6y5h3e-qXhBCm-9Pcefi-douqBJ-hihrkG-CzJHfk-fpSTdz-7R6zmi-8VTmVC-fpSUsM-9ujeng-rrAXY-9vdNmB-6x8Wvv-okkiNU-8LnqMT-eMtX6D-XNVoLe-eMtXbR-HGcrGH-7iaTGY-fpehct-fpegWa-DMdvzE-21WmHE7-KB8z9d-eMT8J9">Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past few years, I’ve organized philosophy workshops around the world: with students at Palestinian and Indonesian universities, Hasidic Jews in New York, teenagers in Brazil and an <a href="http://www.canadahistory.com/sections/eras/newfrance/theiroquois.htm">Iroquois community in Canada</a>.</p>
<p>I chose the locations deliberately along various lines of conflict: Israel and Palestine, Islam and the West, religious orthodoxy and urban modernity, social and racial divisions in Brazil, and the struggle of Native Americans with the legacy of colonialism.</p>
<p>These conflicts raise fundamental questions: does God exist? Is piety worth it? Can violence be justified? What is social justice and how can we get there? Who should rule? And what does political self-determination require?</p>
<p>One aim of these workshops was to show that philosophy is useful to articulate such questions more clearly and to explore and refine answers to them.</p>
<p>In the discussions, viewpoints often clashed. A second aim of the workshops was to show that such clashes are a good thing – as long as they don’t turn into violence but fuel what I call a “culture of debate”: an intellectual space for debating issues we deeply care about, but also deeply disagree on. The widely differing cultural and religious backgrounds of my interlocutors allowed me to test this idea on the ground. </p>
<h2>Why do we choose to be just?</h2>
<p>Here are two snapshots from the workshop discussions:</p>
<p>One workshop took place in 2006 with Palestinian students at <a href="http://www.alquds.edu/en/">Al-Quds University</a> in East Jerusalem. Among others, we took up the question Plato raises at the beginning of the Republic: are we better off being just or unjust?</p>
<p>This is a radical question for a Muslim (or a Jew or Christian for that matter). You can discuss what a just person does, but not doubt whether walking on “the straight path” (as the Quran puts it) is a good thing.</p>
<p>My students took care not to stray from the straight path. During a break, Bisma, one of them, showed photos in class, some of which the male students and I weren’t allowed to see because she appears in them without the veil. To be seen unveiled by men is considered illicit.</p>
<p>But when I asked the students if they cherished justice itself or just its rewards, they were confused. Are people pious because they want to secure a spot in heaven or because they’re really convinced of what religion prescribes? </p>
<p>I then explained <a href="http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/jcanders/Ethics/ringgygesreadexcerpt.htm">Plato’s thought experiment</a>: “What if you had a magical ring that makes you invisible, so you can commit whatever injustices you like without fear of punishment?” Bisma said that with such a ring, she’d be tempted by injustice. So Plato got us to probe a fundamental question: why do we choose to be just or pious? </p>
<h2>Can we trust our convictions?</h2>
<p>At another workshop I met with <a href="http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/crossroads/religious-and-confessional-spaces/yeshayahu-balog-matthias-morgenstern-hasidism">Hasidic students</a> in Brooklyn in 2009. We read, among others, the account that the medieval <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-ghazali/">Muslim theologian al-Ghazālī</a> gave of his crisis of faith when he lost trust in the authority of “parents and teachers” – that is, the beliefs and values stemming from the contingent circumstances of our <a href="https://www.aub.edu.lb/fas/cvsp/Documents/reading_selections/CVSP%20202/Al-ghazali.pdf">upbringing</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">Socrates and his disciples.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>That happened when he realized that he might have been just as fervent a Jew or Christian as he used to be a Muslim, had he been brought up in a Jewish or Christian community.</p>
<p>Jacob, one of the students, described a similar childhood experience: “I would get up very early to study Torah for a couple of hours before <em>shacharis</em> (the morning prayer). On the way to the synagogue, I noticed that Muslims were already praying in the mosque. So I asked myself: if we’re both passionate enough about our religion to get up while it’s still dark – how can I be sure that my religion is true and theirs is false?”</p>
<p>Experiences like al-Ghazālī’s and Jacob’s show that some of our deepest convictions may not be all that well-founded.</p>
<h2>Between war and peace</h2>
<p>Al-Ghazālī’s crisis of faith also helps to explain the value of what I call a “culture of debate.”</p>
<p>Consider the <a href="https://www.isca.ox.ac.uk/">bewildering diversity</a> of beliefs and values, all held with great conviction, across different times and cultures.</p>
<p>This should give us pause and make us wonder whether our beliefs and values are the correct ones even if we are convinced that they are. Don’t they often just stem from the circumstances of our upbringing as al-Ghazālī stresses: parents, teachers, and whatever other influences we happened to be exposed to: from media, fashion, and marketing to political rhetoric and religious ideology? A culture of debate offers us opportunities to test how well founded our beliefs really are. </p>
<p>Let me illustrate this through an example.</p>
<p>A while back, I became friends with Egyptian students when I was studying Arabic in Cairo. The better we got to know each other, the more we became concerned about our very different ways of life. </p>
<p>They wanted to save my soul from eternally burning in hell by converting me to Islam. I wanted to save them from wasting their real life for an illusory afterlife by converting them to my secular worldview. </p>
<p>“Can one prove God’s existence?” was one question we discussed. </p>
<p>I argued that one cannot; they offered a proof. I pointed out a flaw; they came up with an <a href="http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/avicenna-god">improved version</a>. The discussion ended inconclusively.</p>
<p>I didn’t convert to Islam, nor did my Egyptian friends become atheists. But I realized that I hadn’t properly thought through some of my most basic convictions – from my atheism to my idea about how to live. In the academic and social circles I normally move in, these convictions were not challenged in the same way.</p>
<p>So debates across cultural boundaries can take on the role of the <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/">Socractic gadfly</a> : if we engage someone who doesn’t share our cultural narratives, we must argue for our views. </p>
<p>A culture of debate steers a middle way between war and peace: We shouldn’t gun down people we disagree with, but we also shouldn’t get mired in multicultural complacency – as if our differences were no reason for disagreement in the first place, but something beautiful – a multicultural “mosaic.” </p>
<p>If we imagine the world engaged in a global conversation, there would be lots of issues we wouldn’t see eye to eye on: from God and the origin of the universe to how one should live, from gender differences and education to the relationship between political and religious power. </p>
<h2>Making philosophy part of our life</h2>
<p>Engaging people who disagree with us is a chance to examine the beliefs and values we normally take for granted. One way to equip citizens for productive discussions is to convey to them the practice of philosophy: philosophical techniques – logical and semantic tools that help us clarify our views and make and respond to arguments. And philosophical virtues – loving the truth more than winning an argument and trying our best to understand the viewpoint of the opponent.</p>
<p>The five workshops I organized and describe in my <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10447.html">new book</a>, Teaching Plato in Palestine: Philosophy in a Divided World, aim to show that integrating this practice of philosophy into our personal and public lives is indeed something worthwhile.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42805/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carlos Fraenkel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Does God exist? Is piety worth it? Can violence be justified? Philosophy can offer a way to engage with these questions on which there are often widely differing beliefs.Carlos Fraenkel, James McGill Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.