Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: New Books Network

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler
Guest: Professor Lara Hope Schwartz
Episode: Try to Love the Questions: From Debate to Dialogue in Classrooms and Life
Date: December 18, 2025

Brief Overview

This episode features Professor Lara Hope Schwartz, author of Try to Love the Questions: From Debate to Dialogue in Classrooms and Life. The discussion explores how college classrooms can shift from adversarial debate toward constructive dialogue, the skills necessary to foster thoughtful inquiry, the importance of explicit classroom norms, and how these skills translate to life beyond academia. The episode highlights both systemic challenges and actionable strategies for educators and students alike, centered on the transformative power of questions and empathetic engagement.

Guest Introduction and Background

• [03:05] Professor Schwartz teaches at American University, with a background in law, civil rights advocacy, and justice work. She founded the Project on Civic Dialogue.
  • “I’m a lawyer by training. I come to my teaching from life in advocacy, particularly civil rights and access to justice.” — Schwartz ([03:05])
  • She emphasizes making her classes explicit, supportive, and inclusive.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Need for Explicitness in Teaching

• [06:49] Schwartz underscores being explicit with students about expectations and classroom culture.

  • Quote: “Nobody’s going to be surprised that I want to help them because I tell them. And so I think that keys into a primary piece of teaching advice that I give, which is just be explicit.” — Schwartz ([06:49])

• [07:16] She reflects on transformative encounters with professors who made students feel seen, shaping her own approach:

  • “Just tell people what it is you want and what we’re doing here … This is a conversation with students and it turns out faculty as well, about what we can do together and how we get that done.” — Schwartz ([07:16])

The Book’s Title and Its Origins

• [11:45] Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, Schwartz frames the importance of loving uncertainty and embracing questions.
  • “The thing is to live the questions rather than looking for the answers … you'll actually live your way into the answers by loving the questions.” — Schwartz ([13:03])
  • She emphasizes the value of trying, intellectual humility, and viewing dialogue as an ongoing process.
  • “The try is key here. This idea that we’re going to be this work in progress ... much of what I want to teach and share about dialogue is this trying.” — Schwartz ([14:47])

College as a Unique Dialogue Laboratory

• [18:03] College is uniquely heterogeneous, bringing together people from diverse backgrounds, challenging assumptions about monoculture and inviting discovery.
  • “Any room that includes multiple people will involve multiple perspectives … you’re only going to do that if you look for it and if you design conversations in the ways that find it.” — Schwartz ([18:49], [20:58])

From Debate to Dialogue: Skills for Good Faith Conversation

• [21:42] Schwartz articulates that productive dialogue is a skill, not an innate ability:
  • “What we do together when we’re communicating, listening, writing, engaging in dialogue ... is a skill to be learned, and it’s a skill that can be taught.” — Schwartz ([21:59])
• Such dialogue requires discipline and humility:
  • “There are pieces of our dialogue that reflect that we’re human and we’re working with other humans ... and we’re going to learn from them what works for them, what doesn’t work for them and why.” — Schwartz ([25:21], [25:43])

Expressive Liberty: Rights, Responsibilities, and Campus Culture

• [26:32] Schwartz draws on Jurassic Park’s “could” versus “should,” cautioning that legal rights do not guarantee wise or productive use of speech.
  • “Please stop to think if you should. I don’t think we make a campus better by inviting some jerk who has a radio show to spew insults about other people.” — Schwartz ([28:59], [29:09])
• She notes recent events where excessive administrative crackdowns on speech are as problematic as unchecked provocation ([29:16]–[31:46]).
• “When you’ve put your thumb on the scale and made it very clear to a whole community that some topics are completely verboten ... think if you should.” — Schwartz ([31:35], [31:46])

Safety, Disagreement, and Misconceptions

• [34:08] Schwartz rebuts the tendency to conflate disagreement with lack of safety:
  • “Disagreement and lack of safety are not the same ... when we describe discomfort with being disagreed with ... in the language of safety, we really do ourselves an enormous disservice.” — Schwartz ([34:12], [34:56])
• She urges that preserving the capacity for open engagement is essential:
  • “My hope would be that people across the spectrum of ideology ... could together agree that we need to preserve our capacity to hear one another and have our ideas engaged with in good faith.” ([36:46])

Critique of “Intellectual Diversity” Theory

• [37:15] Schwartz challenges red/blue, liberal/conservative binaries as oversimplified and destructive in higher ed:
  • “I don’t believe that humans have preset identities of liberal and conservative … these categories are completely undefined in intellectual diversity discussions and … just don’t hold up.” — Schwartz ([38:29], [38:47])
  • She provides the example of vaccine politics’ shifting associations ([39:00]–[39:44]).
• Instead, she advocates building inquiry around meaningful, complex questions, not static ideological camps:
  • “What I propose we do instead ... is to look at questions from a much more expansive and inquiring lens rather than the polarized lens of red and blue, black and white, yes or no.” ([41:39])

Developing the Mindset of Inquiry

• [43:37] Five key skills for inquiry:
  1. Learn to love the questions.
  2. Understand rules and norms of conversations.
  3. Listen and read with generosity and grace.
  4. Communicate to be understood.
  5. Engage in self-reflection.
  • Professors aren’t grading ideology—what’s assessed is inquiry and mastery of material, not belief ([43:37]–[44:57]).

Why Most Students Aren’t Prepared for True Dialogue

• [46:04] High school settings restrict speech, reward right answers, and rarely scaffold collaborative inquiry or disagreement.

  • “The primary modality of showing that you are academically competent ... doesn’t consist of showing humility.” — Schwartz ([49:16])

• [50:30] Key Supreme Court cases (e.g., Mahoney) illustrate the uncertainty and limitations surrounding student speech and underscore why students enter college unpracticed in dialogue ([50:30]–[53:55]).

Creating Dialogue-Ready College Environments

• It’s essential for faculty to scaffold dialogue, make expectations explicit, and avoid assuming prior knowledge.
• Reflection and transparency benefit both students and professors: “When I tell people ... here’s how it’s going to go—people rise to the occasion ... I teach it better, I scaffold it better.” — Schwartz ([57:11], [57:30])
• Continual self-reflection and feedback fuel improvement and transformative learning.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Intellectual humility is very hard. And one of the hardest things that we can do ... is just listen, just making space for other people, making space for what’s to come.” — Schwartz ([15:19], [15:29])
• “College brings together people in conversation like nowhere else ... and that fact gives you a lot of hope for humanity.” — Gessler ([17:59])
• “We’re only going to [find diversity of thought] if we look for it and design conversations that find it.” — Schwartz ([20:58])
• “What we do together ... is a skill to be learned, and it’s a skill that can be taught.” — Schwartz ([21:59])
• “If you’re a student group and you want to invite a speaker, you should really think, if you should.” — Schwartz ([30:56])

Episode Conclusion

The Joy and Importance of Dialogue

• Schwartz describes the joy of watching students grow through scaffolded, explicit dialogue, emphasizing the reciprocal nature of teaching and learning.
• She underscores that focusing on how we teach, not just what, yields "magical" results ([59:22]–[59:28]).
• Personal growth as a feedback recipient and facilitator shaped her understanding of dialogue as both generous and transformative.

Final Hopeful Note

• [60:10] Schwartz hopes for listeners to find "a little bit of hope," recognizing the unique, truth-seeking endeavor of higher education amid attacks and crises.
  • “What we do is special because it’s a truth-seeking endeavor ... Many of the part of the reason we’re under attack is that we are unafraid and we are tasked with facing the kinds of truths that people in power often find inconvenient. And so we need to keep doing that.” — Schwartz ([60:50]–[61:16])

Timestamps by Segment

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------| | 02:26 | Guest introduction and background | | 06:49 | Be explicit as a teacher | | 11:45 | Title inspiration: Rilke and "loving the questions" | | 18:03 | College as a heterogeneous dialogue space | | 21:42 | Defining & teaching good faith dialogue | | 26:32 | Free speech: can vs. should | | 34:08 | Disagreement is not the same as lack of safety | | 37:15 | Critique of monocultural "intellectual diversity" | | 43:37 | Mindset of inquiry: five essential skills | | 46:04 | Why students lack dialogue skills on arrival | | 50:30 | Student speech court cases & their implications | | 56:02 | Schwartz's growth through feedback and teaching | | 60:10 | Hopes for higher ed and listeners |

For New Listeners

This episode offers an accessible yet profound guide for anyone invested in education, dialogue, or social engagement. It’s especially valuable for educators seeking to foster transformative, inclusive classrooms and for students & citizens aiming to become better questioners and listeners, both inside and beyond academia.