Conversations are the starting point of change. TED Talks are one form of conversational change agents. Another, Q Commons, came to Madison this past week at the Upper House, a new meeting place on the University of Wisconsin campus to talk about issues.
“We live and work in a great city, so much great stuff happens here,” said John Terrill, Upper House director, as he opened the evening. “Q is an opportunity to think and dream, how can we achieve more.” The event Thursday evening featured three nationally known speakers on video, interspersed with three live, local speakers.
Terrill introduced Q founder Gabe Lyons, on video, who reported that 60 cities around the country and around the world were participating in this effort at global brainstorming and working towards the common good.
Also on video, opening speaker Malcolm Gladwell addressed the issue of what it means to be an effective leader in society. The best selling author discussed the example of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples as a unique expression of power, and California’s three strikes law as an ineffective expression of power.
California’s crime rate was virtually unimpacted by the three strikes law, he noted. On the other hand, federal tax laws are obeyed almost universally. People respond better to laws that they perceive are fair, he observed.
“Just because you have true ideas, doesn’t guarantee success,” Gladwell said. “How you carry out your ideas is as important as your ideas themselves.”
Alec Hill, the president of Madison-based InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, talked about pluralism on campus and InterVarsity’s struggle with campuses instituting policies that led to the derecognition of some InterVarsity chapters.
Hill contrasted what he called “thick pluralism” and “thin pluralism.” The former allows each student club to retain its unique distinctives, which may bar some students from participating, while the latter insists that each club be required to become a microcosm of the school itself so that all students can participate.
“Ultimately thin pluralism results in bland conformity,” Hill said. “Thin pluralism undercuts the diversity of ideas that the university is supposed to be known for…what it portends for our culture is ominous.”
Jean Geran, a University of Wisconsin alumna, talked next about the organization she has founded called Each, Inc. Geran worked in the U.S. State Department for several years and discovered how easily children at risk are falling through the cracks of the bureaucracy that is supposed to protect them. She launched Each, Inc., three years ato to help develop better data management tools aimed at better protecting children at risk around the world.
“The child exploiters and traffickers are using technology, so we must also use it to create a global safety net for children,” she said.
The third local speaker was Noble Wray, former Madison police chief and now interim director of the Urban League of Greater Madison. His topic was, “Police and Community – Building Trust and Understanding.”
Wray has spent time visiting Ferguson, Missouri, and other 2014 trouble spots. He also recalled a series of 2008 listening sessions he attended here in Madison to discuss local policing issues.
“Every time they mentioned an officer by name, there was a higher level of satisfaction [with that officer],” Wray observed. “Trust is about relationships.”
Fairness and impartiality are important values for policing, and also to some extent transparency. “However, there is a reason that there is door on the bathroom,” he said.
Wray said Wisconsin’s incarceration rate is one of the highest in the nation. After chairing a governor’s commission on incarceration rates, he’s convinced more needs to be done to reduce recidivism by focusing on the process by which inmates re-enter society. “I can’t for the life of me understand why we’re not addressing that,” he said.
“Race is one of the most difficult and necessary conversations,” said CNN correspondent Soledad O’Brien, in her video presentation. “You cannot advance good if you don’t confront bad and confront how we got here today.”
Emmy Award-winning produced Mark Burnett was the final guest on video. In his interview with Gabe Lyons, Burnett talked about being a Christian in Hollywood. “We are the noisiest Christians in Hollywood,” Burnett said. “We’re not putting anyone down by what we do. And being a Christian means we have to be the best in what we do.”
About 100 people turned out for Madison’s first Q Commons. Some I talked with afterwards said that it might have been better if there was a connecting theme through the presentations. But it was also observed that the format of Q Commons and Ted Talks seems to be less connectivity and more seed planting to get conversations started.
Q Commons will return to Madison next September. Upper House is located at 365 East Campus Mall, on the University of Wisconsin campus.