Establishing a Healthy Approach to Inclusion
The heart and soul of Dent, a growing community that I steward, is the civil discourse that takes place twice a week in the Dent Forum. Our inquiry focuses on the values and incentives that underlie our economic, political, and cultural institutions.
In many ways, Dent is modeled after The Junto, a group that Benjamin Franklin established in 1727. He deemed The Junto as a club of “mutual improvement” whose purpose was to address questions of morals, politics, natural philosophy, and business. The conversations were, as Franklin described in his autobiography, “to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute or desire of victory.” The members of The Junto were drawn from diverse occupational backgrounds. Unsurprisingly for that time period, they were all white men.
Dent’s inquiry strives to define a shared view of the society we want to someday inhabit. As such, our discourse must include voices representing all segments of the society to be served. If our conversations exclude certain constituents, we have failed before we’ve even begun.
In recognition of its vital importance for Dent’s mission, inclusion is one of our four shared values. However, when I look at who shows up to the table when our conversations occur today, Dent looks a lot more like The Junto than what it…
