Open Conversations: Creating a Culture of Hope through Dialog and Discourse in Contentious Times

Go Back

Session Type: Lightning Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: N/A

Room: Plaza A

Floor: Lobby Level

The U.S. is in an era of extreme political polarization, and these social fractures hamper democratic engagement and movements toward justice in society. These divisions can harm sound education, professional formation, and progress toward inclusive and just communities and society. Effective, competent, and ethical lawyers should be able to engage across difference and controversy with care, creativity, and confidence, and law schools and legal clinics should prepare students for this difficult work. To confront these challenges and to provide opportunities for students to engage in each other, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law has held Open Conversations since 2015. The first Open Conversation was a response to the Ferguson uprisings and prevailing sense that students needed an opportunity to express themselves and address each other around divisive, even traumatic, issues that are not always addressed in their classes. Since then, Open Conversations have become a regular feature of law school life and have addressed a wide array of issues: school shootings and gun control; #MeToo and gender justice; human rights and the Olympics; COVID and vaccine policies; religion and the law; abortion and reproductive rights, among other trending and polarizing issues of our time. Baker and Cooper lead and moderate Open Conversations as part of the law school’s diversity council. They will discuss the objectives, theories, history, and practice of Open Conversations. This will include in depth discussion of the decisions around timing, location, and food at these event and the critical importance of ground rules, conversational harnesses, and effective moderation. They will discuss successes and failures to illuminate lessons learned and the broad effect in the culture of the law school. They will invite participants to share comparable experiences at their law schools and will demonstrate how an Open Conversation works during the session.