Assembly Insights: The Art of Civil Discourse

Assembly Extract from Mr Alex Frazer, Head at Bancroft’s
Presented on Monday 25 November 2024

Over half-term my family and I had the opportunity to visit the United States – Washington DC and New York City. As part of the trip, I had the pleasure of hosting an informal dinner for a group of Old Bancroftians living in and around New York – some for their whole adult lives, some for just a few months or years. There was a range of ages, so I met people who had left the School in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. It was fascinating to hear the stories of their schooldays and wonderful to understand the successful paths they have taken, thanks to their Bancroft’s education.

Another thing that happened: we were walking up Fifth Avenue, one of New York’s most famous thoroughfares, when we saw this…

Mr Frazer plays a video of President Trump’s motorcade

That was about a week before the presidential election, and Donald Trump was making his way to Madison Square Garden, a famous indoor arena in the city, where he gave a campaign rally later that afternoon. At this point I should make clear that teachers, and that includes Headmasters, should not be revealing their political beliefs to pupils. So I shall restrict my comments to some of the issues that I think arise for all of us from the way in which President-Elect Trump conducted his campaign, rather than giving my opinion on any of his actual policies or positions.

To contextualise the election campaign, it’s worth taking a moment to understand how US presidential elections work. They take place every four years and, with some exceptions, every adult US citizen has the right to vote. But the result is not as simple as adding up all the votes across the country – known as the popular vote – and declaring a winner. No more so than is the case in a British General Election.

Instead, the United States use what is known as an electoral college system. This basically means that the people’s votes are counted in each state and then a number of electoral college votes representing that state is added to the national total. Whoever wins the state gets all the electoral college votes allocated to that state, regardless of how close the win might be. Whoever gains more electoral college votes from right across the country becomes the next President.

The number of electoral college votes is roughly proportionate to the size of each state’s population. So California, which has the largest population at 39 million people, has 54 electoral college votes. Whereas a state with one of the smallest populations like Wyoming gets 3. Wyoming, by the way, has about 580,000 inhabitants – the population of Redbridge and Waltham Forest combined – living in an area twice the size of England.

Here’s a map showing how the electoral college votes came through – red is the Republican Party, so Donald Trump, and blue is the Democratic Party, whose candidate was the current Vice-President, Kamala Harris.

There are 50 states, plus the District of Colombia, and in the vast majority the level of support for one party over the other is clear and does not tend to change. This means the election result depends on how people vote in what are called swing states or battleground states, where the two parties are closely matched.

If a relatively small number of voters in a swing state change allegiance from one election to the next, the outcome for the state will be different and its electoral college votes will go to the other candidate. Multiply that over a few of the swing states and the result from four years previously will be reversed.

There were considered to be 7 swing states in this election: Arizona and Nevada in the South West; Georgia and North Carolina in the South East; Pennsylvania in the North East; and Michigan and Wisconsin in what is somewhat confusingly called the Midwest. As you see from the map, Donald Trump won them all.

Most of the campaigning, especially getting closer to the election, is concentrated on the swing states for reasons that should now be clear. Trump’s rally in New York wasn’t an attempt to win in New York State but an issue of prestige by speaking on one of the nation’s most iconic stages, and of course the broadcast value.

Politics is sometimes a dirty business, and I’m not saying that the Democrats or their candidate Kamala Harris behaved perfectly. But Donald Trump chose to express himself on the campaign trail in a way that gives rise to the concerns I want to address for all of us this morning. Regardless of what anyone might think of his policies and his political beliefs, many people have been gobsmacked by the kind of language Trump has used in campaign speeches, broadcasts and social media posts. Here are just a few examples.

Trump has had a lot to say about immigrants in the run-up to this election. For instance…

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

This was supposed to be about illegal immigrants from Haiti in a small city in Ohio, but there was no evidence whatsoever that this had really happened. But the line created the impression of scary people behaving in a frightening and inhuman way – crossed with a bizarre black humour.

On immigrants more generally, he said:

“They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They’re coming from prisons, from mental institutions — from all over the world.”

It’s bad enough to imply that most immigrants come to the US from prisons and mental hospitals – another baseless claim designed to frighten people. But to talk about poisoning the blood of the nation is deeply sinister because he is actually borrowing a phrase from Hitler’s book ‘Mein Kampf’.

Trump has also denigrated his political opponents in highly personal terms. He referred to the Democratic party as the “enemy within” – again, stirring up fear, and undermining the validity of the electoral process. He said of senior Democrat politicians:

“We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics.”

Where this matters for all of us – and let’s remember, Donald Trump is not the only guilty party – is the threat posed to what is known as civil discourse. This is the term used to describe speech-making, discussion and debate on issues in public life, with the word “civil” traditionally indicating that the subject is something of broad interest to society. But the other meaning of “civil” – in other words, civilised, polite and measured – is relevant too.

Debate and disagreement are of course healthy for any society, big or small, and for the development of our independence of mind as individuals – something we should all aspire to. The key question is how we go about it. In free and open debate, we should realise that expressing disagreement with someone else’s position can and should be done in a way that still conveys respect for that other person as a human being, no matter how passionately we may feel about the issue at hand.

In any discussion, disagreement or argument that we might be having – between friends or family, or in more formal roles and settings – it is simply not right to make another person feel bad for having a different view, to insult them, to say their opinion makes them stupid. Equally, it is not right to make things up to bolster an argument when you know full well you have no evidence for the claims you are making – and doubly so when the claims are designed to make people afraid and thereby cowed into agreement.

Finally, it is utterly unacceptable to bring racism, sexism or any other form of discrimination into the argument – actually, to do so is the lowest of low blows and the preserve of someone who has no ability to argue a point on its merits.

I hope that everyone here can see the sense of what I’m saying. But it’s hard to remember sometimes, when we are surrounded by oversimplified and unproven soundbites on social media, or when elections are won by people who don’t seem to abide by those standards of civil discourse. Some might even say: if a powerful person can speak like this, can belittle individuals and groups, can authorise invective and abuse, why can’t we?

Well, it comes down to integrity – that internal drive to be true to ourselves and to set ourselves the highest standards in all that we do, regardless of what is going on around us. Integrity is one of our school values and therefore I hope, as Bancroftians, you will join with me in standing up for civil discourse and conducting any debates or disagreements you may have in a manner that is always respectful to others.

Thank you for listening.