Learning to Disagree With Professor John Inazu

Anna Donovan: Welcome to Applying Yourself, a law school admissions podcast from Washington University’s School of Law in St. Louis. My name is Anna Donovan, and I’m a director of admissions. And today we have a very special guest, Professor John Inazu.

Professor Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at WashU Law. He teaches criminal law, law and religion, and various First Amendment courses. He writes and speaks frequently about pluralism, assembly, free speech, religious freedom, and other issues. John has written three books. We are going to be talking about his newest book today, and published many opinion pieces. He is also the founder of the Carver Project and the Legal Vocation Fellowship, and he is a senior fellow with InterFaith America.

Thank you for joining us, Professor Inazu.

John Inazu: Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

Anna Donovan: Fantastic. So jumping in, could you start off by telling us and our listeners a little bit about how long you’ve been at WashU and any upcoming courses that you are teaching?

John Inazu: Sure. So I have been at the university about 12 years, and about six years ago, I moved into a joint appointment, so I’m halftime in the law school and halftime at the John Danforth Center in Religion and Politics where I teach undergraduates.

So my teaching is always split between the two, which is actually kind of fun because it’s two very different student populations. In the next year, I’ll be teaching a Law and Religion course to law students. That’s sort of the two religion clauses of the First Amendment and then two undergraduate seminars, one on questions of pluralism and difference and another that’s sort of a political theory seminar where we do John Rawls and some other kinds of critics of Rawls and that sort of thing. Yeah. That’s coming up.

Anna Donovan: Excellent. Do you have any of your undergraduate students who want to go to law school?

John Inazu: Well, it turns out, this is a great question for an admissions podcast, it turns out that some of our best students are WashU alums.

Anna Donovan: Yes, I 100% agree.

John Inazu: Yeah. I thought you might. And sometimes I teach undergraduates at WashU who then come to the law school and are students. So it’s a nice pipeline and we should do more of it because our undergrads are great.

Anna Donovan: Absolutely. Hopefully, they are seeking out your specific courses in their 2L and 3L year.

John Inazu: Sometimes they do, yes.

Anna Donovan: For sure. Absolutely. Well, there’s a lot of different stuff for them to take, so, you know.

Tell us a little bit about your background before you came to the law school.

John Inazu: Yeah, so I actually have a very roundabout way to law. I was an engineering major in undergraduate and kind of discovered that that wasn’t really my cup of tea, but I had to do it for scholarship reasons. And so I finished out with a civil engineering degree and then went to law school just to escape engineering, basically. I knew nothing about law, had never talked to a lawyer.

Law school was fine, although I wasn’t very good at it. And then when I got into legal practice, I spent my first four years of practice at the Pentagon. That’s when it kind of really clicked for me and I realized, I like this law. I’m good at litigating. I’m a good practitioner, but the Pentagon was so fast-paced that I thought I really wanted to be in a more reflective setting. So from there, I clerked for a year, went back to grad school, did a PhD and then got into law teaching. And that turned out to be great because I love teaching, I love writing, and having worked at the world’s largest bureaucracy, the university is not that bad in comparison.

Anna Donovan: That’s good. That’s good. That segues perfectly into my next question about your new book, Learning to Disagree, which shares stories from your life and role as a law professor. Can you share with us a little bit about how law can teach us about disagreeing with others?

John Inazu: Yeah, so to me, and this book kind of emerged out of just reflecting on my own experience teaching our students and being part of the law school community and realizing that the ways in which we bring students into the profession of law is exposing them to two sides of an argument around very complicated issues and teaching them how to argue both sides, understand the other side, work back and forth between arguments.

This is what you do when you read a majority and a dissenting opinion of a really hard case. And through that experience, you realize these are really smart people who know the law, who care deeply about these issues, and who see these issues quite differently, differently enough to split their views about how the case should come out.

And I think the more you experience that as a law student, you realize, oh, these issues that maybe I thought were really black and white or really cut and dried are much harder. You learn as a law student to lean into the areas of gray, which is hard, but really important. And then to be effective as a student or a practitioner or a litigator, you really have to know how to unpack the other side of an argument to understand it not in its weakest form, but its most charitable and strongest form so that you’re able to understand your own position and how and why your position should prevail before a decision-maker or a judge.

Anna Donovan: Yeah. And how do you see this kind of evolving with your students, kind of starting at the beginning of the semester versus kind of the end of the semester?

John Inazu: Yeah, so that’s a really great question. This is kind of key, I think, to what the experience of teaching is and also what informs the book. You don’t start out with trust on day one, but you build trust over time and week after week and day after day of not only studying common materials, but you have a shared conversation with people. And even those people who don’t end up becoming, you know, friends and collaborators, they’re still, they move from total strangers to people who are in it with you in a shared experience.

And that way over the course of a well-taught semester where you encourage different viewpoints and different voices to speak, the collective that emerges from the class is a space that allows for deeper engagement and more serious disagreement. And then, of course, the challenge is we don’t actually get that opportunity in most of society and most of our daily lives. So we have to figure out how do we learn from this relatively privileged experience of the classroom and take that out and model it to the rest of the world.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, excellent. And do you see a difference then between maybe like 2Ls you teach and 3Ls? Is there kind of a difference as they are kind of moving through law school as well?

John Inazu: Well, certainly from the first years to the upper years.

Anna Donovan: Sure, sure.

John Inazu: First year, sure. Yes. Big change. Because really, like in the first year, you’re learning a new language in kind of every sense of the word. Literally new vocabulary and the way sentences work feels different than a previous educational experience. But by the time you’ve kind of understood a bit of the craft and how law works, then you’re able to engage in higher levels of sophistication. You’re able to unpack maybe some of the policy arguments that fall behind the doctrine.

And you get more confident with what you know and how you argue in a certain mode of conversation. So I do think that you helpfully, you know, grow in your skills, and I think the best kind of progression in a legal education is one in which, by the time you’re about out of here and into practice, you really are asking those deeper questions in smaller settings and more sophisticated ways.

Anna Donovan: Yeah. And do you also see, I guess, kind of trends of types of disagreements or how students are, I guess, either talking about things or approaching things maybe 12 years ago versus today, kind of reflective of sort of either what’s happening out in the world, or is it really just kind of related to what you’re teaching in the class? Does that make sense?

John Inazu: It does, yeah. So I mean, I think there are noticeable generational changes all the time, and of course, we have the generational differences being more compressed. You know, so even think about technology and how the 18-year-olds today experience technology different than the 24-year-olds, and technology is changing very quickly.

I think one difference is that people today, students today coming into law school, have been raised completely in an online world. And to the extent they’ve been habituated into social media, jabs back and forth, you almost have to relearn a different mode of communication. And I find, I mean, we’ve got amazing students here, generous students, smart students. And when you get them in the actual classroom talking to each other, they can handle a lot of disagreement. When they’re talking on social media, maybe on the group chat or something, it can get a little dicier.

And so I think it’s – we as educators and the people working here, it’s on us to kind of encourage the in-person, face-to-face communications that allow for these more nuanced back-and-forth exchanges.

Anna Donovan: Yeah. And how do you keep your class productive in those disagreements or those conversations?

John Inazu: Well, they’re not always productive, so you have to allow for some sort of meandering of sorts. But I think part of it, it goes back to that trust-building point that we were discussing earlier, that when you allow for a conversation to continue, when you encourage follow-ups and questions.

So if you hear something that doesn’t make sense or sounds wildly inappropriate, rather than just dismiss that person or judge them, maybe you can have a follow-up conversation. You know, why is it that you come from this particular perspective? Or how could you – why would you think of the situation in this way, and if you are actually asking that question curiously rather than judgmentally, then you can open up a continued dialog and maybe learn something new.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That goes into a lot of how we kind of do admissions and build our classes, pulling students, you know, maybe different generations, but also different backgrounds, you know, work experiences, and hopefully that lends itself to maybe not necessarily productive, but, you know, the type of discourse and learning, you know, where you’re not in class with someone who’s just thinking exactly the way you are.

John Inazu: Yeah, I mean, and I’m not just blowing smoke here when I say this. I think you all do a great job of building a diverse and pluralistic class that helps and reflects these kinds of conversations in the classroom. And not every school is like this, right? I think people come to WashU with the expectation that they will encounter difference in the classroom and different life perspectives, age and stage, religion, politics, everything else. And that’s, to me, what a pluralistic university is about at its core.

And, you know, I think from the admissions stage to the placement stage, when people are serious about that goal, then it reflects well in the student body that you build and cultivate.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, well, thank you. We do try really hard. And we, you know, ultimately, you know, once they come into the law school, they, you know, they are in your capable hands. But hopefully, you know, really doing a lot of learning in that 1L year.

So jumping to your previous book, Confident Pluralism, which discusses how people can work through differences, can you talk about how your new book may build kind of onto, I guess, that type of work?

John Inazu: Yeah, so the book that I wrote in 2016, Confident Pluralism, really looked at how in a society with pretty significant differences over things that matter, with differences that aren’t going away anytime soon, how do we learn to live together across those differences? What are the constitutional but also the personal and civic ways that we approach difference, that we protect difference, that we allow for different ways of being to flourish in the same political society?

And this new book, Learning to Disagree, is maybe more of an applied version of similar ideas. So how is it that we actually, in interpersonal communication, you know, whether it’s at the Thanksgiving dinner table with your relatives or the water cooler at work or wherever it is in ordinary life, when you encounter people who you’re going to have to be in some sort of relationship with, and you have very different views of the world. And how do you actually engage in conversation? How do you know when to speak and when not to speak? How do you know how to ask questions curiously, how to move toward empathy?

Those are the kinds of things that the new book illustrates, and I think in a more of a narrative or story-based way than some of my earlier work.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, excellent. So kind of touching off of, I guess, both of those together, would you say that there is a way to disagree well? Are there times when you’re just like, we got to agree to disagree and maybe kind of move, move past, move on from some of it?

John Inazu: Yeah, I think there are times for all of it. And I do think that when you’re in a place like a university or a law school, we’re built into the experience time to think through arguments and perspectives and to read deeply and to meet people and learn who they are. Then I think that, you know, maybe you could even think of it as a matter of responsibility. You have the most responsibility to try to learn and listen and be present with other people.

And lots of life doesn’t really give you that opportunity. You know, you’re busy working a lot of hours at the law firm or raising a family or caring for your parents or whatever it is, and time gets squeezed out of the day. And sometimes you just have to say, you know, not today. I can’t handle the conversation today. And actually in the book, I talk about experiences in my own life where I say, I just kind of realize this is not the time I can have this conversation. I don’t have the emotional bandwidth or the time or whatever it is.

And I think part of good disagreement is knowing when you’re at your limit or you have to wait for another time. So someone who disagrees well is not someone who always engages, but someone who engages at the right times and has a kind of prudence about both the mode and the frequency of engagement.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, excellent. So kind of a pivot, something we were discussing a little before we started the podcast, which is a WashU connection to your book. Your new book is illustrated by an art school professor here, John Hendrix, at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts. Can you talk a little bit about your collaboration with Professor Hendrix?

John Inazu: Sure. So, I mean, John is a close friend. We’ve known each other a long time. Our families hang out together. And he’s just an incredibly talented human being. He came to WashU after being on the illustration page of The New York Times and has not just kind of an intellectual academic mindset to how you do the craft of art making, but also a real gift at bringing things into visual acuity and helping people see things in different and new ways.

And so when I was sort of cooking up this book, I knew that if he had the time that I would love to have him illustrate the book to try to crystallize some of these experiences. And he did an awesome job. So each chapter starts out with an illustration by John that sort of summarizes a key point of the chapter in ways that I could never do and in ways that I think makes the book more accessible on an even broader level than it would otherwise have been.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, awesome. I encountered him in my time as undergrad and Taylor, who produces our podcast, has worked with him as well in her graduate program. So very, very cool.

So kind of to close out at the end of a lot of our podcasts with guests that we have, we like to touch on St. Louis. So could you tell us, you know, your favorite thing to do in St. Louis, your favorite restaurant, or just, you know, why you love St. Louis or?

John Inazu: Yeah, I mean, I really have, like I said, I’ve been here 12 years and I’ve really come to love this place and the city. Lots of different opportunities and places to be. I love sort of my proximate neighborhood. So I live just off campus in between the university and the Delmar Loop where there are lots of restaurants, bars, and coffee shops and just being able to walk during the day from the law school, you know, take a short walk and get to any number of restaurants that have everything from Indian food to barbecue to Chinese food and being able to have meetings there, coffee meetings, happy hour meetings, lunch meetings.

It just gives a richness and a fullness to the day that I wouldn’t have in lots of other jobs or lots of other universities. And the walkability, but also just the variety of places proximate to the university and the law school is a real, a real upside of the job.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, absolutely. We are surrounded by so many great neighborhoods and I think a lot of our students that come from the coast, like, don’t necessarily think of, I mean the Midwest, but also St. Louis as like a walkable city and having access to like little bars and restaurants and stuff like that in neighborhoods. Obviously our plug always for people to come and visit and check it out, but your neighborhood is excellent. I know we have students that live over there as well.

John Inazu: Yeah, a walkable city with really good food. What more do you want?

Anna Donovan: Yes, that is everything.

To wrap it up, so for anyone who also wants to continue to support local business in St. Louis, you can pre-order Professor Inazu’s book at Left Bank Books here in St. Louis. It comes out April 2nd. You can pre-order it other places as well. But thank you so much again for joining us today. We really appreciate it.

John Inazu: Thanks, Anna. Great to be with you.

Anna Donovan: All right. Bye.