A college president who supports programs to fight climate change faces a climate change denier.
Tell us your argument stories!
A college president who supports programs to fight climate change faces a climate change denier.
Tell us your argument stories!
Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When We Disagree is a show about arguments. How we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. I'm interested in the metaphors we use to talk about disagreements. Of course, there's the ever popular metaphor of an argument as a fight, or a boxing match, or a war. But I'm also interested in a metaphor that's a little more abstract, but just as important.
Arguments are something we get into. I'm sorry I got into it with you last night, for example. The metaphor is a container. A trap, a boxing ring, a tunnel, a car, or a coffin. Some structure. Something with walls, floor, and a roof. Something that limits our movement, narrows what we can see and hear, and confines us in a space.
Something we have to get out of or escape from. And when we talk about arguments as something we get into, we're emphasizing movement and change as well. We're saying that we're [00:01:00] leaving our typically open, free way of being and communicating for something closed and restrained. I'm Michael Lee, Professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston.
Our guest on When We Disagree is Andrew Hsu, President of the College of Charleston. Andrew, tell us an argument story.
Andrew Hsu: Alright, Mike you know to tell you the truth, I'm actually having a bit of trouble remembering all the conflicts that I've had, because as you can imagine, as a higher education administrator, if I remember all the conflict situations I've had throughout my career, I would have gone insane already, so um, But, but I do want I do want to mention one but before I go into that one example that I just remembered just now to [00:02:00] me there are two types of conflicts, right?
So You, you could have a conflict that is very rational, and, and the other type of conflicts are purely emotional. Now, there, there might be conflicts that are, are a bit of both and, and a little bit in between, but, but I think to me at least the conflicts that I've gotten myself into are mostly emotional.
in those kind of two categories. The conflict that I remembered, the reason I remembered it so clearly, this was from 20 years ago, was probably because of the intensity of the reaction uh, of my, of the person who got into a conflict [00:03:00] with me. So at the time, I was an associate dean for research at an engineering school.
And uh, I thought it would be a great idea to form a renewable energy research center on that university campus. And, and of course, in order to have a renewable energy center you have to have all kinds of expertise, right? Anywhere from political, legal, to chemistry, to engineering, and, and so forth.
So I tried to build a coalition, And, and of course, one of the person I naturally go to is, is our chemistry department chair. And, and he happens to be a an expert in hydrogen chemistry. And, and I thought, you know, renewable energy, a lot of hydrogen, it would be great. [00:04:00] It made a lot of sense.
So I, I went to him and, and had a conversation and he said, yeah, it's a good idea. So, and I said, okay. After I had enough faculty members on campus in expressing interest I went back and, and just sit in my office and, and came up with a draft of a proposal. And my thinking was, okay, I, this is just a first draft.
I'm going to send the. Twelve ish faculty members that were interested and get feedback. Uh, and of course, in, in that proposal, I talked about global warming and, and things like that. And all of a sudden, you know, really almost that same night, at late at night, I received a blistering, email message, extremely angry saying something [00:05:00] about, I'm trying to, you know, impose my political view on everybody else.
And, and, and that was from our chemistry faculty. And I was thinking, you know, I don't really have a political agenda. And, and why was this person So And, and then I realized that there are some of these political issues that are really not rational and they're more emotional oftentimes. And, and global warming is one of the issues that You, you either believe it or you don't believe it and, and to the ones who do not believe it, it's just all propaganda.
It's, you know, even though you could make it into a rational discussion, but for someone who is [00:06:00] somehow emotionally attached to this issue, they're not. I'm not going to accept any or, or engage in any rational discussion. So what I did to try to resolve that issue, of course, is I went to his office and, and I basically sat down and, and said, you know, There is no political agenda.
I'm just trying to have a draft that I thought would make sense and, and, you know, tell me what you think we should say to make this a stronger proposal and, and not as controversial. Uh, to make a long story short, in the end, we did establish a Renewable Energy Center, and no, I was never able to bring that faculty along because he just disagreed fundamentally with a lot of the premises of needing renewable [00:07:00] energy.
So, thank you. This is why I brought up at the beginning, there are two types of conflicts, right? And to me, at least. You know, as an engineer, I'm used to dealing with the rational conflicts. You know, as engineers, we review data, we look at facts, and, and we still argue about what the conclusion is. And, and oftentimes as engineers, we don't even agree, even though we're looking at the same set of facts and, and data.
Um, But my conclusion is that when an argument or disagreement or conflict is emotional, you know, examples of emotional conflicts you know, for example, identity or religion, and, and whenever those kind of things are involved, there's no rational control. Okay. uh, discussion. Everything is emotional.
[00:08:00] And when emotional conflicts happen, the only thing that you can try to do is really to get to know each other at a personal level. But still, you may just have to agree to disagree and part your ways that way. So I guess that that was sort of the the conflict situation that I remembered from 20 years ago, but I truly don't remember many of them.
Michael Lee: I'm interested in this faculty member, this intransigent faculty member's reasons because surely this is a person who has thought about this issue. has come to a conclusion. This person probably thinks that they're being rational.
Andrew Hsu: Right. So, I'm sure, you know, as a chemist he probably sees global warming differently and thinks that it's It simply is just a national or [00:09:00] sorry, natural fluctuation in global temperature and, and uh, any discussion of human being induced global warming is just political propaganda.
I'm sure in his mind, he has every reason to believe what he believes. But, but to me I do believe that to many people global warming is an emotional issue and it's a political issue and therefore it's emotional.
Michael Lee: What sort of arguments or reasons did this faculty member give you in the email other than the accusation that you were imposing your political viewpoint on other people?
Andrew Hsu: Yeah, no, there was no other other explanation. Simply the fact that he doesn't want to be part of something that is, could be uh,
Michael Lee: Uh huh. And why do you think this one, I mean, you, [00:10:00] you mentioned you've been in higher education administration for quite some time, conflict is a fact of life. Why does this one stick with you so much?
Andrew Hsu: So I guess one, it was really towards the beginning of my administrative career. I was a new newly appointed associate dean, and this was one of the first major initiatives major collaborative initiatives I started on, on the campus, and, and I was inexperienced, so to me, that came as a, a major shock.
I didn't know people could, could do that. react to something like that in that manner, but I think obviously I've learned that lesson and I became more careful when I did it. From then on, when I talk about things to make sure that I don't touch the, the hot [00:11:00] buttons that could trigger emotional responses.
But, but also, I guess, once I became more experienced as an administrator I'm more used to having conflicts or arguments and, and I try to forget as, as much as possible because I do think that, you know, if you dwell upon the conflicts in the past that could prevent you from moving forward. And, and to me really what happened in the past is less important because you can't really change the past.
Uh, but it's the present and the future that is more important. That's, that's why I tell myself, I guess, Intentionally or consciously to forget about conflicts once it's, [00:12:00] it's served, it's it's um, served, served its um, function or what, what the word. You try
Michael Lee: to have a short memory. Right. About it.
Right. Um, I'm, I'm curious about this, the reason it stuck with you in the sense that you felt like you were a new administrator, you were trying to pacify, anybody who has an objection and you were shocked that this was an objection and you were shocked at the strength or tenacity of the objection.
Andrew Hsu: Yeah, I guess two things surprised me because I was so new at this.
One it surprised me that the reaction could be so fierce, so strong. And the second thing that surprised me was almost like there is no compromise, right? So I always thought that, you know, if I don't have a political agenda, we [00:13:00] should always be able to just work out some language that we can all agree to.
But I guess I didn't realize when someone is emotional, that becomes impossible.
Michael Lee: Did it in any way challenge your faith in the ability of two reasonable minds to find a suitable compromise?
Andrew Hsu: I, I certainly did you know, I think you know, if you look at the current political atmosphere in the country we see our country becoming increasingly polarized.
And, and certainly I think both sides are, you know, Reasonable people and, and both sides think that they're rational, but yet, because we allowed things to develop into all [00:14:00] conflicts are emotional conflicts, and therefore, it just seems like we, we can't compromise anymore.
Michael Lee: The terms, and to return back to the framework you started with, rational arguments and emotional arguments, it can be such a political thicket, because On one level, it seems plainly obvious what a rational argument looks like and what an emotional argument looks like.
But on the other hand, to be told that you're arguing emotionally from someone who thinks that they're rational can feel very much like an insult. Right. And who are you to tell me that I'm emotional? Right. And you're rational. Right. But then also, confusingly, sometimes, It's really important to be emotionally involved in your arguments.
So, for instance, global warming activists would think that the climate is at stake. The planet is at stake. Our humanity is at stake. So, of course, we're not going to treat this just like a numbers game and argue rationally. We need to be emotionally invested in the outcome of our disputes. So how do you separate all that out?
When is it okay to be emotional? When is it [00:15:00] okay to be rational in these kinds of arguments?
Andrew Hsu: Well To me, I think you know, as an engineer, I don't, I don't mean to sound cold, but I think emotional arguments tend to get us nowhere. You can never win an emotional argument if both sides are emotional.
So, I think, The only way to, to handle, as I mentioned earlier, the only way to handle emotional arguments really is people have to get to know each other on a personal level and, and think less as a group. And, and also I do think that as much as possible, we need to figure out how to move. [00:16:00] emotional arguments towards more rational arguments because without doing that, I just think, I just don't think we will get anywhere with, with our discussions.
Michael Lee: Andrew Hsu, thank you so much for being on When We Disagree.
Andrew Hsu: Thank you. Great to be here.
Michael Lee: When We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse Kunz and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at whenwedisagreeatgmail. com.