By Avery Causley-Ingram / Editor in Chief

Various professors and known Chicago leaders, including our own President, Ali R. Malekzadeh, held a university wide town hall discussing the importance of civil discourse.

On Nov. 13 at 12:30 p.m., in the Ida B. Wells lounge President Ali welcomed students, faculty, staff and more to join a group of panelist as they discussed this relevant topic.

The moderator of this panel was Craig Dellimore, a former political reporter who helped facilitate this panel with Roosevelt professors David Farris and professor Stephanie Farmer as well as Jim Nowlan a politician, professor, essayist, and author.

President Ali begins by opening with a land acknowledgment recognizing the Three Fire (Ojibway, Ottawa, and Potawatomi) tribes this land inhabits as well as mentions Roosevelt’s mission and founding principles including civil discourse, social justice, equity and accessibility. 

The conversation began with what civil discourse means and why it is important. Not only at Roosevelt but looking at the wider scope in politics today.

Professor Farris talks about how navigating tensions in our current political state is hard. He also goes onto thank his students about modeling that civil discourse for others even in the current political upbringing which is all this generation has known.

The topics of this panel ranged from social media impact, opposing political views within the classroom, free speech and the risk’s Roosevelt University takes in regards to funding based on the universities mission and goal.

Professor Farris talks about the impact social media has had in his own classroom,

“I mean, I come around to the idea that social media is largely a destructive phenomenon, and that a lot of people in our political elite are suffering from what I like to call algorithm poisoning…you have to be able to engage regularly with the thinking and the views of the other side, even if you sharply disagree with them.”

The conversation then goes onto to mention how facilitating civil discourse in a classroom starts with making everyone feel comfortable and safe so that they can do so.

Professor Farmer also adds to this discussion by mentioning the idea of cancel culture and the impact of not using the correct term and how that influences these conversations. She also briefly touches on revenge politics at the national level of politics and the impact she see’s social media having in regards to her students.

“…it gamifies [your] thoughts, opinions. You get rewarded for the most outrageous thing. You get rewarded for the thing that can get the most shares. You get rewarded not for being measured, but for being extreme,” Farmer says.

Dellimore mention the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” which is a nine-page document initially sent to nine U.S. universities by the Department of Education on Oct. 1, 2025 by the the Trump administration. The document outlines a list of demands for continued partnership with the U.S. government under the guise of “reform.”

 “…What it says is it will be easier for you to get funding, for your programs, if you agree to the things in this contract and among them that you have basically  don’t have programs that stress diversity and inclusion, that you protect conservative values.  It very specifically says conservative values as opposed to just general free speech.”

They go on to discuss the worries this could have on funding the university and even the steps in which they’ve had to change titles of event’s as a poliminary action in case it could make Roosevelt a target and how this has effected the atmosphere of the institution.

“We are now in a position where if we were to say something that’s just growing authoritarianism, question mark, we could get our funding removed at Roosevelt University. We would die as an institution. So this is what is really scaring me to the extent that like, yeah,  if they are now formalizing  the way, what we can talk about,  and if we do not toe their line, they can render us extinct.  They can render us like, you know, we’ll be dead as an institution,” Farmer says.

The panelists then opened it up to questions. The first question was,  We are already seeing both academics and politicians have to contend with (Artificial Intelligence) AI and its only growing popularity. What, if any, future does AI have in education and in politics? 

Nowlan then answers this question, “Well, I worry significantly about the role of AI in critical thinking. And I don’t have a good answer other than we’re going to have to try to monitor this incredibly fast-moving transformation from a human-dominated world to a digital world. And we’re going to have to call on important people.”

The second question asked was, “Why now, why are we doing this now? I’ve been here 10 years and what I’m gathering…is that it’s sort of…hearing like over the past 20 years, the left control the media and the left control the universities, and that was fine…but now…as soon as were getting the threat from the right, now we’re worried about free speech.”

Farmer reponds by saying, “I think liberals we learn some lessons from this moment. If you filled in cancel culture, if you build in a way to exclude people of political tools, don’t be surprised when those tools are going to be turned against you, right?”

The individual then responds, “…My point is, I really hope that we’ll look more inward as opposed to at the other side and go, what have we been contributing to this? No matter what side your on.”

President Ali then ends this panel with reiterating the message of learning how to respect others views in a time of such political polarization.