Higher Education in Focus meets Brian Palmer

Brian Palmer, Associate Professor at the Department of Theology. In 2022, Brian received the university's Distinguished Teaching Award in the fields of Theology, Humanities, and Educational Sciences. In 2023, Brian also received a special honorary mention for contributions in the spirit of Martin H:son Holmdahl, for having “explained the importance of civil courage to generations of students with a unique pedagogical ability.”

What kinds of courses do you teach?

Before coming to Sweden, I taught at Harvard University in the United States, where I led courses on civil courage and social engagement that brought in up to 600 students per term. When I was recruited to Uppsala University, I was tasked with developing liberal arts courses exploring civic participation in the public conversation. These courses were intended to address ethical and humanistic issues and to be open to students from across the university.

Today, I teach in three master's programmes, including International Humanitarian Action, and I am also responsible for several stand-alone courses. Many of these courses deal with existential risks, such as the risk of nuclear war or even human extinction. To avoid allowing pessimism to dominate, I combine existential questions with other themes that engage students. At the moment, for example, I teach the courses Love and Sex in the Shadow of Catastrophe and Beauty, Humor and Pleasure in the Shadow of the Bomb.

What is important to you in your teaching?

One frequent aim is to demonstrate the beauty of altruistic risk-taking. We explore the moments when, through courage and generosity, human beinga are able to shine magnificently. In 2013, together with the noted author Ola Larsmo, I wrote the book 101 Historical Heroes (in Swedish), in which we tell the stories of people who, without resorting to violence, took risks to protect others and defend human rights. To me, humanity is rarely more beautiful than this.

I have always been fascinated by people who take risks in pursuit of a more humane society, and I often invite guests to my courses who bring diverse experiences and passions. Recently, for example, students met with a senior representative from the Red Cross, who spoke about the organization's work to prevent sexual violence in South Sudan. The goal is not to steer students in a particular direction, but rather to offer an encounter that may affect them in different ways. Some students said afterwards that they would like to work against sexual violence in the future, while others felt discouraged by the brutality of the story and said that they would never want to attempt such dispiriting and unsettling work.

Ultimately, intellectual learning alone is not always the most important thing, such as simply gaining information about an organization's work. What matters is that students have an experience that moves them. Some of my most rewarding pedagogical moments have occurred when a course touches on existential, ethical, and spiritual aspects of life that lie beyond formal learning outcomes and programme objectives.

One such moment occurred when a guest speaker described conversations with Tibetan monks who had been persecuted and tortured by Chinese police. A female student from Western Sahara asked an unusually large number of questions about the torture, and eventually it emerged that she herself had been tortured by Moroccan police before fleeing to Europe. When I suggested taking a break, one of the students stood up and asked whether she would like a hug. The student from Western Sahara said yes, and soon a line of students formed, offering hugs one after another. In that moment, a deeper understanding emerged of human compassion and of how people are connected to one another.

Would you say that the intellectual and the emotional go hand in hand?

Sometimes strong emotional reactions are the most appropriate response when confronting certain realities. I remember a student who burst into tears during a lecture about U.S. nuclear-armed submarines capable of destroying an entire continent. I try to acknowledge students' emotions and encourage them to reflect on how these emotions might lead to meaningful engagement.

For me, such pedagogical moments embody a concept of education rooted in deep humanism: caring for and loving one another and the world, while striving to protect one another.

Can you give examples of how you involve students in your teaching?

When we host guest speakers, I want students to have the power to determine the focus of the discussion, so we use an interview format, with no lecture at all. That is a way for students to lead a “public” conversation in the classroom. The greatest challenge is resisting the temptation to place myself at the centre and instead relinquishing control to the students, but I find that this creates a more dynamic and lively discussion. Students often come up with completely unexpected questions.

Students prepare their questions in teams, which then interview the guests before opening the conversation to the entire class. Taking responsibility for these discussions becomes a form of leadership training, while the guests' life stories and perspectives challenge students' preconceptions and habitual ways of thinking. I also encourage students to select reading materials for the interviews and to include texts that offer perspectives different from those represented by the guests.

One thing that is important to me is that students should be able to remain open and curious, without feeling judged. To look at a person through an evaluative lens is the opposite of truly seeing that person, as the French-Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz has put it.

To foster students' intrinsic motivation and joy in learning, I aim to ensure that as many course activities as possible are not graded. To me, humanism stands in contrast to competition: it is a kind of invisible underground network that contains a utopian belief that community and care are possible. Or, as philosophy professor Agnes Callard wrote in a New York Times column:

“The task of humanists is to invite, to welcome, to entice, to excite, to engage. And when we let ourselves be ourselves, when we allow the humanistic spirit that animates us to flow out not only into our classrooms but also in our public self-presentation, we find we don’t need to defend or prove anything: We are irresistible.”

The New York Times, December 2, 2023

Finally: What characterizes an open classroom discussion?

As I mentioned earlier, I seek to promote an exploratory approach by presenting different perspectives on how we can understand the world. During my time at Harvard, I learned the importance of openness and tolerance toward differing opinions. In an age of polarization, I did not want to exclude certain students, but rather to welcome everyone, regardless of political orientation, whether conservative or left-liberal, while safeguarding free and open discussion.

This remains important to me today. There have been occasions when students have not wanted to engage with certain viewpoints and have sought to shut down discussion, but I do not accept that. Rather than avoiding controversial topics, I welcome them.