Berkley Center

At Georgetown Law School, I teach Religion and the Work of a Lawyer, a seminar that aims to help law students reflect on how they will carry their personal values, whether they be grounded in religion or other sources, into their professional life.

Law students often have a tendency to reach for the jugular of an argument. At times this leads to the unfortunate habit of perceiving people and relationships only through the conflictual and myopic lens of whether they agree or disagree with the person they are engaging in conversation.  

The “circumference exercise” aims to help them reflect on how to break some of these habits. The exercise encourages them to reflect on the prospect of encountering another person’s argument or position with appreciation for the “circumference” of circumstances, pressures, or conditions that might be informing one’s response or expression, so as to gain deeper perspective and access a more complex response. 

I draw on the board a picture of a square, which represents an argument, and then a circle around the square. I challenge the students to resist focusing immediately on the square, but instead, to back up to appreciate what surrounds it. 

I illustrate this movement with a line from Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, “It’s Quiet Uptown,” the song that describes Alexander and Eliza’s efforts to put their family back together in the wake of marital infidelity and the death by duel of their eldest son: “If you see him in the street, walking by himself, talking to himself, have pity… He is working through the unimaginable.” 

What might be the hidden “unimaginable” that informs another person’s argument or attitude? The brief written exercise instructs the students to think of an incident in the past, or to be attentive for an incident in the coming weeks, in which they found or will find themselves working to discern the appropriate response to an exchange or encounter involving ideas or positions different from their own and/or that may have felt hurtful to themselves or others. The encounter could be very simple, or very complex. It could be one that they consider to have gone well, or one where they wished they could have done better. 

The next step is to flesh out the circumference: What are the elements that helped them to understand the grounding or source of the other person’s position or expression? What was the context for this speech that might have conditioned how it was received? How might it have placated or exacerbated a sense of harm? 

They are then invited to describe the elements that informed their response in the moment, querying: What limits (in myself, in the other person, in the nature of our relationship, in other circumstances, due to the presence of other people, etc.) might have conditioned what could have been or should have been said or done in this specific context? 

Finally, students are asked to consider, in light of this reflection, the habits they hope to cultivate in response to future encounters with similar tensions. One possible prompt for this question is to give a brief description of the cardinal virtues: prudence, courage, temperance, and justice.

Two-page (double-spaced) papers were turned in only to me as the professor. From this set of papers, I gleaned and thematized the core insights that had emerged, and shared them with the class in the form of a two-page memo, stripped of all personal details. 

Students focused on a variety of circumstances, and all went into considerable depth. Discussing intergenerational and intercultural tensions within families, one of the core insights was that students need to give themselves time to work these issues through for themselves. Many expressed a desire to continue to hone the capacity to listen deeply as a path to a greater sense of peace in the midst of effort to understand each other. Recounting misunderstandings between friends, several expressed the desire to get to a place (and head space) where they were less worried about appearances and the perception of others, in order to cultivate more sincerity in their relationships. 

Reflecting on clashes between political perspectives, several emphasized that at the same level as learning how to listen and understand another person’s perspective is the work of finding the courage to articulate one’s own perspective. Several students also recognized that completely conceding to another person’s perspective for the purpose of avoiding outright conflict is just as unhealthy as unnecessarily picking a fight.

Several students focused on the topic of same-sex marriage and respect for people who identify as LGBTQ, and the tensions they have encountered in intergenerational settings and within religious communities. Ideas for a way forward included making greater efforts to understand religious and cultural contexts that might inform the perspective of those that might appear close-minded, and searching for better ways to communicate deep concerns about the pain and exclusion of LGBT family members, friends, and colleagues. Other suggestions for constructive conversations in this realm included cultivating the patience needed to not jump to conclusions, being careful with tone, asking thoughtful questions, and being gradual in laying the foundations to build the kind of trust these conversations require. 

In all contexts, many were on the lookout for the “sweet spot” between temperance and courage, and many expressed particular interest in delving into how prudence can be a guide for attention to what might be appropriate in a particular context. Several also noted the importance of taking conversations offline, especially to foster the kind of listening that can open out toward nuance in divergent positions.

In a highly competitive educational environment it is not unusual for students to feel that they are “walking by themselves, talking to themselves.” Perhaps for this reason, their accounts of their capacity for empathy and their creative ideas for further cultivating such habits of mind were a much-appreciated source of hope and healing.