We are not very good at disagreement: we view our adversaries not only as wrong but increasingly as evil, we resist notions of forgiveness, and we distrust institutions that try to mediate our disagreements.

The book’s narrative flow follows the course of an academic year. Each chapter addresses a question for each month:

August: How Do We Learn Empathy?
September: Can We Know What’s Fair?
October: What Happens When We Can’t Compromise?
November: Can We Have Difficult Conversations?
December: Can We See People Instead of Problems?
January: Can We Trust Faith?
February: Can Anything Be Neutral?
March: Where is the Line Between Wrong and Evil?
April: Is Forgiveness Possible?
May: Can We Be Friends?

The questions arise out of the curricular and extracurricular rhythms of my life. In the classroom, these questions are framed through cases and discussions from my courses in Criminal Law (which explores how and why we punish people who have done bad and sometimes horrible things) and Law and Religion (which tackles the constitutional framework for how we speak and act on the deepest questions of meaning and existence in a democratic society where not everyone shares our convictions).

The extracurricular parts of my life also affect how I come to see the issues in Learning to Disagree. As I like to remind my students, professors are people, too. Inevitably, my own experiences and idiosyncrasies make this book what it is. Yes, I teach students and write books. I also navigate complicated family dynamics, freak out in awkward social settings, and slip on blueberries.

The stories and vignettes are meant to complicate your assumptions, introduce arguments from “the other side,” and illustrate how people can recognize good faith disagreements without surrendering their most strongly held beliefs. This book is about holding in tension clarity and ambiguity, tolerance and judgment, confidence and uncertainty. It’s about what each of us confronts in our daily encounters with others who differ from us.

Learning to Disagree won’t tell you what to believe, but it will change the way you engage with disagreement.

Available now on Amazon or anywhere books are sold.