Excellence Unveiled: Jed Atkins
The director and dean of the School of Civic Life and Leadership talks about its mission, courses and the importance of fostering a free speech culture.
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Each month, WCHL will feature stories highlighting Carolina excellence from outstanding Tar Heels to share why they’re passionate about their work and shine a light on their important contributions to the community, state and beyond.
Tune in to Excellence Unveiled during morning, noon and evening drive times to hear their stories and find out what ignites their passion for their work. Excellence Unveiled is an exclusive program on WCHL, sponsored by UNC-Chapel Hill. You can listen to WCHL at 97.9 FM or 1360 AM.
Read a transcript of the segment below.
Chancellor Lee H. Roberts: Welcome to Excellence Unveiled, sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I’m Chancellor Lee Roberts, and it’s my pleasure to shine a light on our talented Carolina community and its outstanding work. This month, we feature Jed Atkins, director and dean of the UNC School of Civic Life and Leadership, to talk about the importance of open dialogue and how the school is helping to advance it.
Jed Atkins: Jed Atkins, dean and director of the School of Civic Life and Leadership, also known as SCiLL. SCiLL’s mission for civic education renews the promise of Carolina’s founders, who established UNC as our first public university on the premise that the young people of our state would benefit from an education that looked to their happiness and helped them understand their social duties in a pluralistic society. Carolina’s founders understood that the human search for meaning was linked to living productive lives in a democracy. And so SCiLL promotes this vision by fostering a free speech culture that enables students to explore their own worldviews and those of others in a spirit of curiosity and charity by considering the best of what’s been thought and said together about human and civic flourishing, and by understanding the shared institutions and civic values that unite us as citizens. And then, finally by practicing the habits of speaking and working and living alongside folks from very different backgrounds and perspectives.
Scholars and studies show that America is polarizing at a rate faster than any other major democracy. And, increasingly, members of our two major political parties report describing members of their out-group not as wrong about policy but morally wicked or evil. And public trust in universities, like most of our institutions, are at a very low point. But with challenges come opportunities for the University to help our citizens grow across our deepest divides. SCiLL, like Carolina in general, serves the people of a purple state. Carolina represents the political, religious and moral views of our state, and our state represents the diverse political, religious and moral views of our country. So SCiLL aims to educate generations of thoughtful citizens who can speak and work and live in a pluralistic democracy and imagine the impact of such a civic education after 40 years. Our students who are able to think and speak and act with those from different backgrounds, I think, will change North Carolina, our country and the world.
The IDEAs in Action is Carolina’s general education program, which many of our minor courses in SCiLL service. So an important requirement for us is Communication Beyond Carolina, which many of our civil discourse courses in our minor fulfill. Professor Chris Lundberg’s Think, Speak, Argue course helps students develop skills in thinking critically and speaking more persuasively and negotiating conflicts more effectively. And these are really critical skills for participating in our democracy today. Professor John Rose will offer a course, How to Think in an Age of Political Polarization, which helps students speak across and about our most divisive social and political issues and do so in a spirit of friendship and charity and humility. This is a nationally renowned course that he started when he was at Duke. We hired him away from Duke, and it has been exported to 70 different universities around the country.
