In an ever polarized political climate, Loretta Ross wants to call people in instead of calling them out.

On Wednesday, Oct. 23, the author, educator and activist held a talk titled “Calling In at a Time of Political Division” at Furcolo Hall’s Carney Family Auditorium. During the talk, Ross provided a thorough toolkit of strategies to peacefully work through differences in opinions, rather than responding with unnecessary anger or violence.

Born in Temple, Texas, Ross, now 71, is an associate professor at Smith College’s Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality. There, she teaches a course on “White Supremacy, Human Rights and Calling in the Calling Out Culture.” Before she was at Smith, she taught at Arizona State University and Hampshire College.

Ross is also an accomplished political activist with five decades of experience under her belt. In 1994, she co-founded the Reproductive Justice theory and in 2004, she co-directed the March for Women’s Lives protest in Washington D.C., the largest protest march in U.S. history at the time. She became a MacArthur Fellow in 2022 for her work in human rights and reproductive justice.

The event began with a land acknowledgment read by Linda Ziegenbein, assistant vice chancellor for Strategic Outreach & Engagement. After the acknowledgment, Penn Pritchard, the senior director for education and development in the Office of Equity and Inclusion led an impromptu non-violent communication workshop. The workshop centered on strategies for peaceful conflict mitigation, supplementing Ross’ “Calling In” methodology.

“I imagine that we probably have a lot of educators in the room, being in the College of Education,” Pritchard said. “One of things that all educators probably know about human brains is that they’re amazing at learning … comparatively, human brains are terrible at unlearning.”

Following Pritchard’s workshop, Ross made her grand entrance to the event. Though roughly half an hour late, her infectious humor and relatability won over the audience from the moment she opened her mouth.

“I always knew that those people who judge the McArthur awards have some really flawed criteria,” Ross joked, laughing with the audience of about 50 people, including Chancellor Javier Reyes. “It was proven by how hard it was to find this hall today. I was in some random elementary school … I’d been in like five different places trying to find this building because neither Waze nor Google Maps could do it for me.”

The talk’s main framework was Ross’s upcoming book, “Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel,” which is set to be released in Feb. 2025. She told the audience that of all her published works, this is the book she is most proud of, despite her never intending to publish a book on the subject.

She came up with the idea for the book after joining Facebook per her grandson’s request. There, she quickly discovered that people are quick to get angry with those they disagree with, publicly attacking others for their online opinions and beliefs. She also realized that the online community hasn’t done much to combat this “Calling Out” culture.

“What I realized in that moment was that we had been teaching young people radical politics without radical love practices,” Ross said. “So they weren’t using this knowledge responsibly. They were weaponizing it against each other in some woke competition. But the reality is that if you think you’re in a woke competition, all you’re proving is that you ain’t as woke as you think you are.”

For Ross, “Calling In” stresses the importance of holding people accountable for their harmful behaviors without creating more harm in the future. “In order to interrupt this ‘call out’ culture, we’ve got to learn the practices of self-correction and self-reflection, because the first person you have to call in is yourself,” Ross said. “So we can’t replicate the very oppressive systems that we call ourselves fighting. That doesn’t make sense.”

Ross then presented her “5 C’s Continuum,” a collection of responses that people can have when they hear someone say something that upsets them. The “C’s” in question are calling someone out, canceling them, calling on them to do better, calling a conversation off, and, of course, calling them in. While all five “C’s” are commonly practiced, Ross believes that publicly calling someone out or canceling them outright could be in violation of the recipient’s human rights.

As a major proponent of the human rights movement, human rights are paramount to Ross’ philosophy of life. She broke down the United Nations eight categories of human rights to the audience, which include civil, political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, developmental and sexual rights. These rights are highly intersectional, with our actions in one category having potential consequences in another.

“And so we see ourselves as part of an interconnected movement,” Ross said. “How we do the work is as important as the topic we focus on. I sincerely believe that calling in will be as important to the Human Rights Movement in the 21st century as non-violence was to the Civil Rights Movement in the 20th.”

As Ross broke down each human rights category, she emphasized how the existing power structures in our everyday lives make receiving each right difficult. “Now I do understand why our colleges don’t want us to teach that education is a human right because then they wouldn’t be able to charge us $60,000 for something that should be free. I get that,” Ross quipped, looking straight at Reyes and sipping her water. “Oops.”

As the event drew to a close, Ross answered a couple questions submitted in advance by the audience. One question asked how educators can implement calling in strategies in the classroom, especially given the upcoming Presidential Election and the war in Gaza. In response, Ross explained how her classrooms have become a designated safe space for discussions of sensitive topics.

“We call it ground rules, but I call it ‘Calling In’ norms,” Ross said. “It’s where people don’t take things personally, people should have the right to say what is true to them and you should not weaponize your knowledge against another person.”

Nathan Legare can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X @Legare_Nathan