MICHEL DEGRAFF: So if I were to teach this course to a group
that would be much more diverse than what we have here at MIT--
because I think--
so when we taught this course this past Spring,
most students came with a very open mind
trying to understand the way, indeed,
race and language create these hierarchies that are not
good for the country, not good for the world,
and how to create more inclusive societies.
But if I were to teach this course
with a more diverse ideological set of students, what I think
I would do is to include more texts from, say, a more
conservative perspective.
In fact, some of the students often they
would bring in clips from, say, Breitbart
or from Rush Limbaugh, voices that are very conservative
and some of them even on the outright extreme.
And we use that for teaching moments.
But if I were to teach this class maybe
to a more diverse group, what I would do
is to not take views so extreme, but take some scholarly work
that could advocate, say, for building walls
and then try to examine them together in a respectful way.
So that way even students on the right and on the left
could have a respectful dialogue and try
to look at the data that might support a particular view
versus the other.
And that would be a challenge.
But I think eventually that would be a good challenge,
because one common motif throughout the semester
was how do we take what we learn here in this course
and make it available to the wider public including
those who might want to build walls and not bridges?
How do we translate all these very important knowledge
of these important findings about migration,
about equality?
How do we translate that in a way
that it can be discussed in the wider sphere?
And this remains a challenge to the very end of the class.
There was no clear answer on how to do that.
But I would hope that if we were to teach to a broader audience,
we would come up with the right way to do it.