Israel

Larry Schooler navigates a workplace conflict about Israel. 

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Transcript

  When We Disagree is a show about arguments. How we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves.  Arguments are social.  I don't just mean that we often get our reasons and our language from other people, and I don't just mean that arguments between people are, by definition, part of a public dynamic, a back and forth.

I mean that the arguments we make, our public commitments, signal to others that we are part of a group. If I make specific arguments about abortion, or guns, or Hollywood, or Bud Light, or a country music artist. I'm aligning myself with a group or other groups. Arguments signal to others that I'm part of and willing to defend my group, and arguments signal to my group that I'm public in my commitments and that I'm evangelizing on our behalf.

In recent years, the phrase virtue signaling has become prominent in some circles. Virtue signaling criticizes public arguments, especially those on social media, as insincere. You don't really care about the MeToo movement, for example. You're just trying to win brownie points. Or burnish your reputation by pretending to care. 

Hypocrites deserve a call out for sure. But what this criticism misses is that all of our public arguments have an unavoidable signaling function to groups and group membership. And most importantly, when we think about how to make better arguments, how to be persuasive, how to And how to form connections with people outside of our immediate orbit.

The rewards we get from believing and publicly stating certain arguments aren't just rational. In other words, I don't believe what I believe simply because that's the way the facts line up for me. I get socially rewarded for my arguments. I get group membership, which is incredibly powerful for the human animal.

So if I'm asking someone to give up their beliefs and I'm only using rational arguments in my defense. I might not get very far because in the end, I'm not just asking them to change their mind without realizing it. I might be asking them to be alone. Our guest today on when we disagree is Larry Schooler, father of two, husband of one.

He's also the assistant professor of practice at the university of Texas at Austin. He is an expert in conflict resolution, collaborative leadership. and deliberation. Larry, tell us an argument story.  

So, I mean, I should start by saying that, you know, I am a, uh,  proud Jewish American. You know, I've spent my entire life, uh, active in Jewish life and Judaism is a core part of my identity. 

It shapes a lot of how I spend my time and certainly how I make decisions and more specifically, you know, I first went to Israel when I was 17 and had a formative experience there, came back from Israel and, you know, became more religiously observant and ended up going back a year later and. Uh, as luck would have it about  10 years after that, met my wife in the Negev desert.

Uh, you know, we were both Americans that were just touring and, uh,  she was thirsty. I had water. Anyway, we, uh, it was, uh,  It was more than just a holy spiritual place. It was also a place of destiny. So, you know, we even took our honeymoon there two years after we met, um, and reunited with some of the people that had been on that trip.

So it's always been a place that Goes beyond just a exotic destination, um, for me. And so obviously when it comes to what's happening now, um, I feel it differently than I think some people might feel it at the same time you mentioned in the introduction that I, you know, work on conflict resolution and me being a third party neutral is also core to my identity as a, as a working professional and as a.

as a professor. And so I'm not somebody that's going to be marching. I'm not somebody that's going to have, you know, yard signs or posters, you know, I'm not somebody that's going to be sort of publicly, uh, affiliating in the same ways that others might that feel the same way I do. And so that's part of, I think what was at the core of this argument was the way in which my colleague had gone about expressing his point of view on the topic.

Yeah, and I want to get to the kind of back and forth that you had with this colleague, too, and the way in which that mirrors the kind of global debate about what's happening in Israel and Gaza. But it also, if I'm, and forgive me for putting words in your mouth and thoughts in your head, but it also sounds like you're having somewhat of a conflict yourself, too. 

Which is that this is something near and dear to your heart. This is a place that is  interesting beyond measure to you and your family.  And at the same time, the protests that are happening are not protests that you're necessarily aligning with. As uh, in your practice, in your professional practice.  

So it's interesting when it comes to the protests because I think there's a part of me that  really appreciates the way that a university campus can often function as something of a  Sanctuary for the expression of speech that's often shunned in, say, corporate America or K 12 classrooms or just other public places.

And  so there is, like I say, there is a part of me that just values that about, you know, A university about my university, and I, I'm not somebody who recoils at anyone that protests, uh, for a cause that I disagree with. You know, I, I, I'm very much a fan of, of philosophers who talk about how important it is to have You know,  views that you disagree with come to the fore and be able to reckon with them, not just, you know, snuff them out. 

And at the same time I think that the protests around israel's involvement with gaza and hamas's attack on israel have  had a lot of problematic elements including The rhetoric aimed at either Jewish people or people who support Israel. And, you know,  I, I think that if my kids were older and we're on a college campus, they would probably be frightened by the way that some of these protests have been carried out, both from the standpoint of the rhetoric and from the standpoint of, of doing, you know, some physical harm to campus buildings in some places.

So  I, I,  I received the protests as an important marker of American democracy, as an important sign that we are, you know, a free country where people can express their views. Um, and Also, a sign of a somewhat worrying trend around speech aimed at either Israelis, supporters of Israel, or just Jewish people, um, all of that, I think, is, is mixed in along with, um, The way law enforcement is or isn't supposed to, to manage a volatile, uh, situation like that.

So there's kind of the, the peacemaking elements or the peacemaking layer. There's the free speech layer. There's the anti Zionist, you know, perhaps anti Semitic layer. There's a lot there for sure. 

And maybe that's a good transition to the lead, which we've now buried, which is the exchange with your colleague.

So what was your colleague's point of view? What was your point of view? Give us kind of a back and forth of the arguments that you exchanged. 

You know, my colleague. Had posted a message right around Passover, the Jewish holiday of Passover that initially said, you know, I want to wish everybody a happy Passover.

And part of my thought, I'm glad that is getting recognized. We often gloss over, you know, holidays that aren't celebrated by the majority. Um, and then he went on to say something to the effect of,  I look forward to the end of the genocide in the next year or something to that effect. Um,  And there were a lot of, you know, so to speak likes and, and, you know, kind of thumbs ups to that, um, across the,  the rest of the members of the group there.

And  I was  very upset. I mean, I don't know how else to describe it. I'm sure there's more flowery language, but I was upset, I think partly because. of what he said. I can't pretend that the substance didn't bother me, but I was really also upset by the way he chose to express himself. And that's really what I chose to focus on when he and I finally had a chance to, uh, to chat. 

The linking of the argument against what he said is genocide to Passover.  

Well, actually, I mean, so that was the, that was the, um, the trigger, if you will. But what I really ended up  talking with him about, because I, I knew  given  a bunch of other interactions that, that an effort to get him to agree With my view of the hostilities in the Middle East was a fool's errand.

I mean, we're just not our country and our, in our world, I don't think is at a place where, um, changing people's minds is, is very worthwhile. Um, at least not in a one off conversation with someone that I'm not particularly close with. But what I did think was important was to talk about the way in which the message was delivered, because.

To me, when you post something in a, in a channel that's available to everyone who works at a particular company,  my only way to  sort of come up with a parallel to that is if I'm sitting in my office and someone comes into whatever the shared space is, let's just say the lobby or the bullpen and says something in a very loud voice, 

I don't I don't 

know.

I don't know.  I want to come to the office to do my work, not to discuss somebody's  political persuasion. And I wouldn't myself, you know, run into the middle of the office and say, you know, something  in any way, you know, unrelated to the work that we do. I might say like, I'm having a baby or something, you know, but I wouldn't say I support such and such because  that's just, you know, for me, that's not. 

An appropriate space for that kind of thing to happen where I, as the spectator, become an unwitting  participant in that now, if he were out on the street holding a sign and yelling something like that, then I would say that's his constitutional right. And he should keep on doing it. But by posting it where he posted it.

And by having so many people sort of, you know, kind of pile onto it, uh, I felt completely isolated, you know, totally unseen and, and, uh,  and, uh, ignored. And so really the focus of the conversation that I had with him was about that, uh, less the sort of  substance of his argument or his contention that, you know, the Israelis are, you know, Or, uh, undertaking a genocide and more about how we choose to express ourselves and the way that those expressions can land on people in ways maybe we don't intend.

And did you express that in, in a public forum or face to face? 

Yeah, I chose not to express it in the public forum. I mean, I, I'm sure I typed three or four different, you know, posts and deleted them, uh, or left them in draft and then decided,  um, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna escalate this further.

I'm gonna have a conversation and, and, you know, to my delight, he was open to that. And so it was a, a virtual conversation, but it was face to face in the sense of being able to see each other. And so that's what, that's what transpired was a direct. Okay. Face to face private conversations. That's 

super interesting.

You obviously have a differing opinion about the hot button issue on, on planet Earth right now, but you also have, to the point of this specific conversation,  a different point of view about what kinds of arguments are appropriate to make at work or in public at work.  

Yeah, pardon me for interrupting.

Yeah, I think, I think there's a part of me that just is sensitive because when you grew up Jewish in general, but also in the Southern part of the U S where there are fewer Jews than say New York or Los Angeles, um, notions of kind of separating church and state kind of become a little bit more significant to you because, you know, there were plenty of times where I just felt left out by not being Christian or not, you know, kind of doing the things that.

Christian society did. And so when it comes to something like this, it's, it's hard for me not to kind of link it to those childhood experiences where, you know, once I left Jewish day school in the sixth grade, I suddenly became aware that most of the world wasn't Jewish and that, you know, my community was very small and that my experiences would not be shared by tons and tons of people.

And I would often have to explain myself to various. You know, entities and, um,  And in this case, you know, the thing that made it especially frightening, I think, was that this rhetoric and this, what I would say, breach of boundaries, um, happened by, was another Jew. And so, it wasn't that he was,  per se, advocating for something that I didn't agree with.

Completely disagreed with. It was that he, he shouted it to me. That was, that was my receipt of it. He was sort of shouting for me and for the many other  Jewish members of the team to hear it. And we were then put into an impossible situation in my view, where our silence could mean agreement, um, of course, you know, that, that if we didn't say something and stand up to him, you know, that somehow we were saying that that yeah.

that holds water with us when it clearly didn't. And so, um, I just felt that this was,  you know, either a teachable moment or just a moment where I needed to practice some of what I preached relative to managing conflict with another person. 

So under your interpretation of  argumentative appropriateness in the workplace.

What is allowable and what is unallowable? In other words, where would you draw the line? Let's take something that's not so, so deeply contentious, a hot button and, um, triggering for you. Talk about, let's say, congratulations to the Dallas Mavericks for winning the NBA finals. Right, right. And then, and then all the way up to the election and then all the way up to a state law you don't particularly like or a political issue in the workplace as it relates to  Title VII or disability or something of the line. 

Well, I, I hate to sort of lean too heavily on the golden rule, as they call it, you know, do unto others as you would want done unto you. But, I mean, to me,  You mentioned sports in particular. I mean, I, I have a good time with that in my, you know, in the couple of organizations where I work, you know, I enjoy either getting razzed or razzing people when my team, you know, defeats their team and so on.

Um, when I hear something that.  Makes me, uh, uncomfortable because it represents a,  a statement that I think is divisive, uh, that isn't unifying, that doesn't align with what it is that we're there to do, um, That's when I get  concerned and I'm reluctant to say, well, you can never say anything quote unquote political because frankly, the entirety of our existence, I think, has become political.

You could make some comment about rooting for the Mavericks being political because of Mark Cuban's political or something, you know, so I don't, I don't think we can,  I personally think it's very risky, uh, to go to a place of saying, don't say anything political because everyone can, um, Become a beholder and identifying what that is.

But I think  it's helpful to ask yourself before you say something in a public setting, um,  what would someone who disagreed with this think and feel if they heard me say this? Um, and I think it's really important to remind ourselves that just because I'm typing it and not saying it directly to someone's face.

It could still have the same effect as if someone walked right up and said it in my face or blurted it out in an all team meeting where we were all sitting around the same table. Um, and so  I guess I, I guess my answer to your question is less sort of topical and sort of like only, you know, sports, no religion, no politics and more, you know, you know, How do I express myself in a way that either is consistent with what this company or this organization is about as an organization, which usually has a mission and vision and values, and, or, um, won't alienate people with whom I'm expected to collaborate, you know, because in most workplaces, collaboration is expected.

And I'm sure it's, Not hard to imagine what it does to someone's willingness to collaborate when they hear someone else say something that is  offensive or just really problematic to them and and like I said I mean, I think we're living in a world where the the range of things that can have that impact is very vast and so There's some people who come back and say I guess you're telling me never to say anything about anything Um, and I guess my response to that would be I don't think so.

I think what i'm saying is You  Recognize how your words will land and, and either accept that risk, uh, or, um, moderate them in a way that gets some of what you want to say across without, um,  risking alienation. 

I want to, I have some questions about your kind of Dr. Larry Schoolers interpretation of workplace appropriateness.

And we'll come back to that in a second, but I want to make sure that your, your colleague with whom you were disagreeing is on the record here too. So you come in and you say. What you said offended me. I also didn't particularly like that you said it in a way that was unaccountable and public at the same time, which is kind of doubly irritating.

And so here I am to kind of  bury the hatchet, as it were. And so, here's what I think. The specific thing you said I didn't like because of X, Y, and Z. Also, Here's my interpretation of what I think is allowable, not allowable at work. And I would appreciate you golden ruling things before you spoke again.

What did the person say in return?  

Well, they thanked me for talking to them, which really is why I think I feel at peace here talking to you about it. Um,  Partly based on the fact that nothing changed in terms of his convictions. It's not as if he was cutting and pasting a slogan from somewhere he felt in his heart and was undertaking, if I remember correctly, a Passover Seder service at the protests that he attended.

Um, so, you know, his, his point of view was not something he came by to, you know, jump on anybody's bandwagon. And so it was really kind of, um,  I don't want to say gratifying, but it was, it was  sort of comforting to know that we both felt strongly and that neither of us, I think, was going to try to convince the other, that the other person was wrong.

You know, he didn't attempt to convince me of anything in Israel that I vehemently disagreed with and I, and I didn't him. And I also think that it illuminated.  a set of impacts from His comment that he wouldn't have necessarily known about And I did it in a way that didn't embarrass him and it didn't embarrass me um,  and so I think that his his reaction partly was to explain a little bit about who he is and who his what his background is and And how he comes by the position that he's taking but also to sort of see me in honor that I Thanks Come from a similar background and have a very different perspective to which I'm entitled.

Let me ask you one last question. I'm getting two versions of you in this conversation that I'm interested in hearing you kind of tease out.  First is there is a part of you that is a true believer. You feel very strongly in causes. You have very specific religious and political commitments. And in some cases you've dedicated your life, your family to the pursuit of those commitments.

And then there was another part of you that is keen on collaboration and appropriateness and the proper venue for the expression of those beliefs. That comes across a little bit when we talked about protests earlier, and it certainly comes across in your workplace philosophy of communication and in this interaction,  given those two sides.

Why was it important in this circumstance for this person to see you and hear you?  That's interesting.  

Well, I mean, I, it's interesting the way you characterize the, the two In me, because I guess the way I see myself is  a person of principle who live principles, but not necessarily someone who  is trying to encourage others to do the same.

I mean, other than my own children for perhaps I don't, I don't see myself as. Um, you know, a crusader for a particular cause or an activist for a particular cause, uh, the way I may have once, you know, when I was much younger, but, but I don't anymore. And that's partly because I've chosen a profession that, you know, I think really demands a certain amount of, of.

Neutrality, uh, and I've chosen to practice  largely in public spaces like, you know, community conversations and so on. And so I've just been very careful in how I express any of my own personal views. Uh, so as to, um,  enable me to continue to do that kind of work. Um, uh, but I think that, uh, From the standpoint of  the question around why act in this moment, um,  I think what you've, what you've identified is kind of that, that collision between  the part of me that was And infuriated that someone would say this about something that I care so deeply about and the real fear that  that statement in that setting could tear apart the organization that he and I were both a part of. 

And organizations have certainly split apart for less. Um, you know, obviously, you know, Businesses or nonprofits can dissolve for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with, you know, politics or external kinds of factors like that. And I think it'd be hyperbole for me to say that I thought that his one comment was going to bring the company down or something. 

But there had been a lot of consternation amongst several people that I spoke with just around the way that this was being managed overall. And to me, his comment was a, uh, a match. Um, and so I think I.  I feared it both in terms of  not being able to be authentically myself at the firm, but I also feared it from the standpoint of it setting some sort of standard or norm for how this kind of thing would play out.

And  I just felt that that, that needed attention. I need that needed someone to, to put that bug in the air to say,  let's think about how we do this in public, in collective, um, before we.  

You wanted to be authentic and to some extent potentially be a firefighter at the same time.  

I think so. Um, I'm not saying I was successful, you know, uh, I think I should own the fact that I didn't, you know, as I say, I didn't  do anything to refute any of what he was saying publicly or privately.

And. So, you know, did I really put the flames of someone fanning the flames of Israel as genocidal out? No, definitely not. Um,  he didn't, it's not like he went on and posted some retraction or apology or anything like that, you know, so I can't really claim any sort of victory, but I just,  I think it was important for my own conscience to feel as if  I was being true both to my values as a person and as a professional. 

Larry, thank you so much for being on When We Disagree.  

It's absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity.  

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 whenwedisagree at gmail.

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