It's Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics

by Robert Jensen

It's Authentic Discussions about Tricky Topics offers a path toward a deeper, richer public conversation than might seem possible in today’s polarized political climate.

It's Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics offers a path toward a deeper, richer public conversation than might seem possible in today’s polarized political climate. Robert Jensen writes for those who yearn for debates based on evidence, reason, critical self-reflection, and mutual respect. The book offers a model for how to engage others rationally without discounting the powerful emotional component of our lives; how to think for oneself and at the same time recognize that thinking is a collective enterprise; and how to defend strongly held political positions while inviting critique. It’s Debatable demystifies intellectual life and encourages rigorous thinking by ordinary people, to better equip citizens to participate in political life.

Jensen has logged 10 years in journalism and 30 years in academia, along with decades of community organizing in feminism and on the left side of the political fence. As a journalist, he learned to write clearly and concisely. In his teaching career, he got pretty good at explaining complex things to students. In his public speaking and writing, he presented radical ideas in ways that didn’t scare off people. This book draws on all those skills.

In polarized times, many people want to step back from the intensity of political disagreements that seem to escalate in a flash, leaving no time for reflection and little room for constructive engagement. Offering a robust defense of freedom of expression, Jensen moves beyond platitudes to articulate intellectual standards that can help us clarify our political disagreements. Then he wades into some of the most contentious debates of our the insights of Critical Race Theory in a white-supremacist society, the confused and confusing ideology of transgenderism, and the nearly universal cultural denial of the need for limits to population and consumption.

Jensen’s defense of freedom of expression starts with thinking freely, which is a prerequisite to speaking responsibly, which is required for living authentically.

173 pages, Paperback

Published August 13, 2024

About the author

Robert Jensen is an emeritus professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in northern New Mexico with his wife, Eliza Gilkyson, a two-time Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter.

Reviews

[Russell Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a book which advances much in terms of productive ways to engage authentic debate with those whom you disagree. Rather, it is a mostly thoughtful, often (usually implicitly, but sometimes explicitly) self-referential book, in which Jensen lays out--always in a patient, rational, and consistent way--various controversial ideas about race, gender, the environment, and more, ones that have gotten him pilloried by certain groups over the years. I think it would have been better to have been all about the controversies, or all about strategies of debate, rather than both. Or maybe even better would have been a re-working of the book so as to emphasize Jensen's own self-understanding of himself as someone who has become, over the years, a creature of exactly the sort of environmental, social, and ideological factors which he insists always shape human thinking, far more than actual free thought and individual agency do. He struggled with a legacy of abuse and feelings of marginalization throughout his early years, and that made him very attentive to the ways systems of abuse and marginalization are built into the structures around us, leading him to become quite radical in arguments regarding race (he clearly recognizes white supremacy as a baked-in reality in modern Western capitalist states), gender (he is a radical feminist of the Andrea Dworkin sort, focusing on the sexual exploitation perpetuated by male-dominated industries and looking askance as the self-expression he sees as implicit to transgender ideology), and the environment (he rejects any kind of transhumanist or techno-utopian solutions to our environmental crises, convinced that the structural drive to exploit resources will invariably exceed the carrying capacity of the planet and thus doom perhaps 70% of the human species, and we might as well just accept that). I liked the book he co-wrote with Wes Jackson better, but it was good to be exposed to Jensen's ideas directly.

[Sally O'wheel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. Robert Jensen is very readable and sensible. He tackles these issues of our times courageously and articulately. More shame to the publishers for not printing Chapter 5 but thankfully I was able to access it on line.

I love the 3 revolutions: the Agricultural, the Industrial and the Delusional. We are surely in that revolution today. All of us. How could we function otherwise. Which is why the Extinction Rebellion key demand is Tell the Truth.

I kept thinking of people I know who I wanted to give this book to. In the end i have lent it to my friend who has read and appreciated Robert Jensen's book the Inconvenient Apocalypse. But when it comes home I will donate it to the Quaker book table because I do want this book to be read by others, especially those on the left.

[Kay Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

Patronising views from a guy who thinks he should explain to women why their views on feminism are flawed. He describes himself as a radical feminist and has some understanding of the scale of sexual assaults in the world but overlooks psychology of why women focus on survival rather than talking with him about such issues. His own publisher removed his chapter on gender ideology for being too rigidly anti trans but his narrow views on sex and gender underpin many other sections in the book. Not an open-minded consideration of different viewpoints.