Dear friends, welcome to another exciting edition of UW Law’s Gargoyle magazine. As always, we have lots of terrific stories to share with you.
I hope you’ll enjoy learning about all the incredible ways our faculty, students and graduates are reshaping the law and legal profession.
I continue to be inspired by the many ways in which all of you are making a difference through your work. Law in action lives through all of you!
One of the ways in which UW Law strives to help our current students make a difference is by preparing them to live and lead in a world characterized by sharp differences of opinion. As a scholar of democracy and election law, I’m acutely aware of the increase in political polarization over the past several decades. It’s become increasingly difficult to have conversations across the lines that divide us and to find the common ground upon which democracy depends.
This is something that’s especially on our minds here in Wisconsin, as a swing state in a presidential election year. When I speak to our incoming students at the beginning of each academic year, I always stress to them the importance of learning to listen to one another, especially those who have different viewpoints. This isn’t always easy to do. As our state’s only public law school, we welcome people who embody a variety of identities, backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. This diversity is one of the great strengths of our community.
It’s important that all our students are free to express their perspectives. That’s the essence of freedom of speech. One of the things that law school teaches students is how to thoughtfully exercise that right, by learning to make well-reasoned, evidence-based arguments. But to get the most out of our learning environment — and to meaningfully participate in it — we also need to listen to each other. That means hearing things that we vigorously disagree with, things we may find objectionable or even offensive, and learning how to respond thoughtfully.
I often say that we learn much more from people we disagree with than we do from those with whom we agree. At its best, legal education teaches students how to engage with one another, including how to have difficult conversations regarding matters on which we have different views. You may not persuade me, and I may not persuade you. But if we listen to one another and speak with mutual respect, we have the opportunity to learn and grow.
At UW Law, we are teaching our students to make a difference in the world. That means learning the law, of course. It means developing the skills of research, analysis, writing and oral advocacy that they’ll need to become successful lawyers. It also means learning to listen to and have difficult conversations with people who have different perspectives. As lawyers, we have the skills and opportunities to become leaders. And having respectful conversations across ideological differences is essential to effective leadership, especially in these difficult times.
I’ll close with a big thank-you to everyone who has supported the Law School financially over the past year. We depend upon the generosity of our alumni and other friends to keep the incredible opportunities we offer accessible to the next generation of lawyers — and help them become the leaders of the future.
On, Wisconsin!
Dan Tokaji