The Long Game of Better Arguments: A Historian's Take on Public Disagreement

Sarah Igo, the Andrew Jackson chair in American history at Vanderbilt University and the faculty director of Dialogue Vanderbilt, explores why some people rarely experience heated conflict and what that reveals about how we argue. Drawing on her research into privacy and public life, she makes a bold case: over time, reasoned arguments can actually reshape culture, even if the process is slow and uneven. Igo contrasts the generative disagreements of academia with the more chaotic clashes of public life, asking what we lose when arguments abandon evidence and curiosity. The conversation digs into how institutions like universities can model better discourse and why that matters now more than ever. It’s a thoughtful, quietly optimistic take on disagreement as a force for intellectual and democratic progress.

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Transcript

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. Some phrases, end thinking rather than encouraging it. It's just human nature. That's how things are. God works in mysterious ways, even agree to disagree. These are semantic stop signs and they can halt inquiry precisely at the moment when we should be digging deeper.

In disagreements, semantic stop signs. Let us avoid difficult questions via invoking thought. Terminating cliches that feel profound, but really don't explain much. Semantic stop signs. Pervade relationship conflicts we're just different people ins discussions about specific problems. It is what it is.

Prevents problem solving. Everything happens for a reason, avoids addressing actual causes. These phrases feel like wisdom, but function as intellectual surrender. And they [00:01:00] stop us from examining why things are as they are, and whether they could be any different. Workplace culture relies on semantic stop signs sometimes that's above my pay grade INS initiative.

We've always done it this way, prevents innovation. It's company policy stops questioning these phrases. Protect the status quo by making inquiries seem pointless or even disallowed. Why think when thought has been pre terminated? Organizations stagnate behind walls of semantic stop signs that make change seem impossible or inappropriate.

And political discussions hit semantic stop signs all the time. It's complicated. Dismisses calls for explanation. Both sides are bad ends. Comparative analysis politicians are all the same. Prevents discrimination between the options and opinions. These phrases masquerade as sophisticated neutrality.

While actually representing a kind of intellectual laziness, they let us feel wise for not thinking, rather than doing the hard [00:02:00] work of understanding. Understanding semantic stop signs can help us push past false end points when you hear one ask. But why? When you catch yourself using one dig a little deeper, what are you avoiding?

Sometimes the most important conversations happens after someone says, it is what it is, and someone else says, but what if it isn't? I'm Michael Lee, professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on When We Disagree is Sarah Igo. Sarah is the Andrew Jackson chair in American History at Vanderbilt University.

She teaches and writes about modern US cultural, intellectual, legal, and political history with special interests in the human sciences, the sociology of knowledge and the public sphere. Her most recent book is The Known Citizen, A History of Privacy in Modern America, and she's also the Faculty Director of Dialogue Vanderbilt their campus-Wide Civil Discourse program.

Sarah, tell [00:03:00] us an argument story. 

Sarah Igo : Okay. The first thing I'll tell you and first I'll the very first thing I'll tell you is my thanks for inviting me onto the program, even though I'll note that it caused me some anxiety and I'll tell you why is that it actually was really hard for me to come up with a good.

Disagreement or rather a conflict or disagreement or an argument that has really stuck with me over time. And I have a hypothesis about why that is that I'll share and then maybe we can talk about it. So I'll start with a, I teach history. I'm an a historian of ideas, an intellectual historian.

And so I'll start with a little bit of intellectual biography. So I grew up in a household of five kids. A very traditional family in many ways. Middle class family. And I'd say I've four sisters. It was a lot to manage for my parents.

In a remarkable way modeled deep patience and good humor with [00:04:00] us all the time and with each other. I cannot remember a time in my whole childhood where someone raised a voice in our house, which is amazing, and I've actually checked, fact checked this with my siblings and. We, my parents were married for 59 years and I don't remember a single argument that I overheard between the two of them that got that got angry.

That wasn't more than a kind of bicker. And I think probably that fact has shaped me in certain ways, maybe even shaped how I've gone about my career in that I really, I really value being on good terms with people. I really work to not disagree in heated ways with other people, whether it's colleagues family members, friends people out there strangers.

So it actually coming onto this podcast made me think about why that was and if that was dysfunctional or functional that I think I. Have managed to live out my life without a lot of really fierce arguments [00:05:00] with people.

Michael Lee : If I could pause you for just a second, I really appreciate that you opened with mom and dad because oftentimes we, we get to mom and dad after we've talked about the conflict on this show, and then that's the portion of the proceedings where I pretend to be Jungian or Freudian psychoanalyst.

Yes. Which I'm very much not. Yes. And so you open there. So here we are. So well done, Sarah. Thank you. 

Sarah Igo : You're welcome. It's not normally where I would start, honestly. I don't actually think about these things very much, but it was your podcast that made me wonder about whether I. Whether that formation, as I said, has shaped how I like to argue or how I like to think about disagreement.

Because actually, I'm in a field in a career where argument is the coin of the realm, right? So I love arguments. However, I realize I love a particular kind of argument. Okay? I love an academic argument. One that is a reasoned argument, one that doesn't get personal, that is really about, logic to some extent about evidence, about [00:06:00] ideas.

And I realized that. Academia being a professor, being a faculty member, teaching students is this amazing opportunity to be in disagreement pretty regularly with people. Without that feeling disagreeable or feeling anxious. Instead it feels really exciting. It feels like something that is pushing us forward intellectually that is helping us have better ideas is helping us solve problems.

And, in fact is necessary to solve problems in a way that meets the trickiness of a lot of the problems we deal with in, whether it's in scholarship or in, life or in the public square. 

Michael Lee : Yeah, and this is a, a real place of curiosity for me. When I first created the show, just to get very meta, I thought people were gonna have very specific memories of conflicts in their lives because they're important to all of us.

And I wouldn't say the majority of folks that I've asked on the show, but many people I've told about the show or asked him on the show said I'm not the [00:07:00] kind of person who would have a disagreement. That was really sticky for me. And I always thought that was, to be frank, somewhat avoidant.

Perhaps they weren't realizing it. Yeah. Yeah. But as I hear you narrate your anxiety or discomfort or whatever was sticky about the question to come on the show, I am curious to ask you this, which is I asked you to come on the show precisely because you are a prominent historian who has dealt with lots of historical disagreements.

You are also the faculty director of Dialogue, Vanderbilt, and so you deal with conflict and disagreement. Programmatically. Obviously a very thoughtful guess. So the question I asked was, what's a disagreement that sticks with you? Did you hear me? Did you hear that question as a question that was trying to get to an emotional or disagreeable disagreement?

A hostile disagreement? Or did you hear that as an academic disagreement? Because I asked it very much thinking that you would come and talk about an academic disagreement. But here we are and I'm this, 

Sarah Igo : I did hear it. Conflict that [00:08:00] affected me personally. I think that's how I heard the query. So I'm glad to know that, my expanded definition of what this might be about is actually not an expansion at all. It's what you had in mind. 

Michael Lee : Precisely. Precisely. 

Sarah Igo : Yeah. 

Michael Lee : I thought you'd come and talk about reconstruction or whatever it is. 

Sarah Igo : Yeah. The topics that I have worked on are all about intellectual fights, really.

About my earlier work was about the history of polling and surveys, but was really about, how did Americans argue over who is in the mainstream? Who is average, who was normal? My next book on privacy was really about how did Americans really hear, just thinking about US history, since the Civil War argue about and thereby change.

What we thought about privacy. What were its contents? What were its boundaries? Was privacy a matter of one's property in person or one's reputation or eventually one's data or one's psyche? And those are real arguments that have had consequences over time. They usually weren't.

One-off fights. In fact, they [00:09:00] never were. I think that's partly what's so interesting to me as an intellectual historian is that you see people change their minds quite radically over stretches of time in ways they wouldn't have been able to see perhaps happening, but where you get real cultural change over time because of arguments, because I would say usually because of reasoned arguments rather than arguments that are off the cuff that are un evidence.

That are made in the heat of the moment, but good, logical, reasoned arguments over the time I think do win out. And maybe that's the optimist in me. There's probably a temperamental thing here too, I do think those arguments win out. They don't win out always. They don't win out evenly that is there or in a linear fashion, I think, but.

But I do think I've become, I have been fascinated really in my whole career by the way people change their minds or a culture changes. Its mind about, all kinds of things. Yeah, again, normality about, how do we think about the federal government? That's the project I'm [00:10:00] working on now via writing about social security numbers and how Americans relationship to them has changed over the last 90 years.

Yes, so intellectual argument, academic argument I think is something I, look forward to, and I'm excited by, in a way that I am not eager to get into the other kinds of fights that seem to be swamping our, political life that are I think not good arguments often. They're bad conflicts and bad disagreements. 

Michael Lee : I, I've heard some of those and I know many people who are fearful of those. And I wanna ask you for a second about your argument that good arguments went out in a sense that the public sphere is kinda winning. But I'm gonna put that aside for just a second and talk about your preference for academic arguments versus what you characterize as fights, I noticed, and I I'm an of course an academic and I have seen many academics have a real personal animus with one another. I've also seen academics who are deeply conflict averse. In fact, many academics I find to be a little debate [00:11:00] averse to a fault. And I'll also share that you're participating in historical discussions that we know from the wider culture are deeply contentious.

And so on the one hand, it seems like a pretty even easy split to make. An easy distinction. There are arguments in the university case that happen according to a set of rules, more or less, that are reasonable, that are logical, that are methodological, that are about evidence. That are about interpretation.

And then there are arguments that happen outside of our space that are completely ungoverned and are hostile and emotional. But looking closely it, it doesn't often work that way. So I guess my question is if you know that the distinction is not quite as neat why such a strong preference for one over the other?

Sarah Igo : It's a good question. I suppose it's because I have made my life and career about education rather than winning particular. [00:12:00] Policy battles. Although I do think. Over the long haul. Looking back at American history again, and not in any sort of linear fashion, I do think good arguments have made an enormous difference in thinking about all kinds of political questions.

But when I think about the kinds of arguments I would like us to be having in the public realm they would look like. My classrooms, they would look like a seminar room. I'm thinking about my class that I'm teaching right now, which is just full of disagreement, full of very different people coming together to think through their ideas in an incredibly respectful and curious way.

And I think that for me is the model. And I realize it's a false model for democratic society, but. Nevertheless, it is a model for how people learn from disagreement, [00:13:00] learn from hearing things that they and tolerating, and then maybe sometimes taking in ideas, views, opinions critiques that they couldn't have heard if they weren't in a kind of.

Intentional bounded setting. So I suppose maybe the better way for me to describe it is my model for what a kind of ideal type model for what democratic discourse should be like. Even if I recognize that it. Is not. And you're right. University is not as if universities are utopias of disagreement.

Both there's conflict avoidance, there's looking for conflict just like there is anywhere else. And I will say, whe, if I were forced to come up with a conflict that has stuck with me. It was here at Vanderbilt. It was entering into academic administration and suddenly realizing how much suspicion attached to whatever I might, attempt to do create. We were I was charged with a big curriculum reform. 

That came [00:14:00] just by virtue of not discussion, but I think position and and brought home to me that many of the the kind of the viness of, public culture is there. Of course ample conditions for that in any organization, including higher education.

And I, I had to withstand quite a lot of critique from some colleagues who I thought I had these deep wells of respect and trust with for some of the things that I was proposing. So that was really what came to mind. Were those kinds of what I saw. Fairly or unfairly as non, some non reasoned, right?

Or some quick to judge kinds of arguments being made about things that I was proposing and actually trying to really get a lot of feedback and interest in merely because it was coming not from Sarah the historian in your department, but from someone now sitting in the dean's office.

Michael Lee : That's right. You mentioned these unreasoned arguments, these kinds of reactions and you, and that applies specifically and institutionally, but also [00:15:00] culturally and historically. You made two statements earlier that I wanted to follow up on, and these are big ones, and these are also relevant to a big debate about the role of the public sphere and history.

One, you said that in a sense, good arguments more times than not, or over the long haul can win out kinda a sister argument to king sense that the moral arc of the universe is long and bends towards justice. Later you've rephrased it as good arguments make a difference, which is a little bit less outcome dependent.

Sarah Igo : Yes. 

Michael Lee : This is quite a hot dispute in and of itself. In other words, is history just one damn thing after the other Is history written by the victors, which is a phrase I hate, but you get where I'm going with it. Do good arguments make a difference over the long term? It sounds like you have a kind of faith in reason, if not a faith in the rational human animal or the way that our public sphere operates that.

Undergirds those arguments. Talk a little bit about that. Faith is, am I characterizing that fairly? Where does that come from for [00:16:00] you? 

Sarah Igo : You are characterizing it fairly. And I suppose one way I could answer that is to say that I ca I could not do my I could not do the work that I do without having that faith.

So it may be a very pragmatic kind of belief in if I, there would be no reason for me to be standing in a classroom and writing books and sharing ideas that. Conferences and if I didn't think that those kinds of arguments had an efficacy, had a way of moving beyond me or beyond that specific communication out more broadly.

So it is probably a a working assumption that I need, honestly to feel that, this work matters, especially perhaps at a time when so much criticism is being hurled at higher education, at professors, at faculty who are, charged with indoctrinating students and, just doing small bore [00:17:00] research because it furthers their careers. That's not an inspiring vision for any faculty member I know, or nor does it match the professional idea that they have about themselves. And this may be getting a little off from your question, but I think that.

It's really important at this moment in higher education to make the case and to examine our assumptions about how we're doing things if we're doing them well. And I think some of that rests on whether we believe that. Helping students learn how to make good arguments and making good arguments ourselves matter, to not just to our classes or to our research, but to the public sphere that we participate in.

I, I am just I guess a partisan of the university as one of the places where we can and should, be doing that work 

Michael Lee : well in your faith, for lack of a better word, your reasoned faith seems as you're characterizing it to be rather broad, really capacious Catholic with a lowercase [00:18:00] C because it's not just a faith and reasoned discourse, but it's a faith in lots of different kinds of audiences over time to be receptive to those.

And so there is a model of knowledge production and communication that is more speaking to the choir. That is. I research the things that I research. I argue the way that I argue to help X, Y, and Z. Demographics, interest groups better articulate themselves as opposed to studying the long arc of many people arguing about normality or privacy and saying that over time, better arguments for all of these populations, one out.

Those seem to be very different kinds of pursuits, but both within the academic realm. 

Sarah Igo : Yes. I wouldn't wanna overemphasize, I suppose the pure power of reason out there. That's obviously, that would be perhaps delusional if you look around at the world. And, reason need not a certain kind of academic logic or reason need not win out [00:19:00] everywhere.

Nor c could it, I think there are many different modes of argument out there and you know better than I, that. Different kinds of arguments work with different sorts of audiences, different kinds of people can make different kinds of claims. But I think I would carve out a special place for universities and for academic kinds arguments.

In helping establish conventions and provisional certainties about what we could know and how we might know things better in lots of different realms and that therefore we need to be, tending the capacities that allow us to do that kind of work. Which, is certainly about being able to hear challenges productively rather than defensively.

Michael Lee : Lemme ask you one big final question, which is my favorite thing to do. You've spent a career studying how Americans disagree with each other about powerful political and social ideas. About normality or typicality about privacy and so forth. What is it like to sit in between historical Americans arguing with one another and hear those arguments on both sides, and as a historian, track them, but then also in some sense adjudicate them?

Sarah Igo : I love being able to. Track how ideas are changing. I don't know if I would say that I am adjudicating exactly. I think I would say that I am trying to pay [00:21:00] really close attention to how arguments are made. How they gradually sometimes imperceptibly change over time to transform themselves into something else.

If that's not too abstract. I think, so let me be more concrete. When I was writing this book on privacy. It was so interesting to me how charismatic a word privacy was and how everybody wanted to claim it. In, or not everybody, but many different groups with many different agendas wanted to claim it.

And that claiming of that idea, changed it over time. Widened it, broadened it. Even in moments when people said privacy is gone. In fact, people had managed. Ordinary people in professions, people in schools and government. Lots of different corners of American society had in fact made privacy bigger than it was before. Including things that had never been thought of before as being particularly private. Your school records would be one [00:22:00] example. Really trivial example, but an important one because before the 1970s, nobody thought Susans or parents should be able to look at what someone said about you in school.

You know that comes only after a lot of activism and a lot of rethinking of what, stored records and computerization we're doing to our notions of privacy. So at any rate I find it really interesting to think about that slow and uneven and sometimes imperceptible process of change in how we think about things.

Maybe it's a nice tonic compared to watching, like being a little less, I'm perfectly alarmed about lots of what's going on in the political world, but. There's something about that longer view that history gives you, and I've noticed this with my own students too, that might allow you to see that this is not we are not in circumstances that are permanent.

In fact, they will change and we will. Think our way and get our way, I think out of where we are now to someplace different. But we just won't always be able to see that process happening. 

Michael Lee : If journalism is the [00:23:00] first draft of history, what draft of history are you working on? 

Sarah Igo : I do work on pretty contemporary issues sometimes I think I'm working on certainly not the first draft, but but somewhere in the, the second or third perhaps, especially as a textbook writer who's trying to keep up with all these moves of the last few years.

Michael Lee : There I go. Thank you so much for being on when we disagree. 

Sarah Igo : Thanks so much for the conversation. I enjoyed it. 

Michael Lee : When we Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse k and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We disagree@gmail.com.