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ne who thinks this school is in . or near Seattle clearly hasn’t been paying attention. It seems fitting that an institution named for Washington has played such an important role in presidential elections in recent decades. WashU has hosted a number of nationally televised debates, including the last one you saw in 2024. Hosting a presidential debate is an experience that few schools or students get. But I can’t stand here and tell you it provided a great civics lesson. I wish I could. Instead of focusing on the critical issues facing the country, that debate was more about locker room talk and ‘lock her up.’ Lincoln Douglas, I think it’s fair to say, it was not. And that brings me to the topic du jour. It would be easy to blame the candidates or the moderators for the poor quality of that debate. But the problem runs much deeper. 英語演講稿 2 All across America – at family gatherings, in social settings and workplaces, on college campuses, and certainly on social media, Americans are losing the ability to conduct civil and productive dialogue with those who hold different political views. And that has profound effect…profound implications for our ability to function as a society. After all, when you can’t talk with one another, you can’t understand one another. When we can’t understand one another, we can’t work together. When we can’t work together, we can’t do anything, at least not anything big and important. We face a lot of hard challenges in America today – from climate change to gun violence, to failing schools to the opioid epidemic, and on campuses, from the frightening trend towards racism, sexism, hatred, antiSemitism and intolerance of unpopular views and opinions. To have any hope of overing these challenges, we have to start by reclaiming our civic dialogue from those who are debasing and degrading it – and preventing us from getting things done. All of you can help do that – no matter what your politics are and no matter what line of work you pursue later on. Maybe your passion is science or education, or the arts or education, or medicine or health care, or business. There is not a single issue that isn’t affected by political debates. And there is not a single issue that isn’t threatened by the breakdown in our civic discourse. 英語演講稿 3 So if…even if you hate politics – and there are certainly plenty of good reasons to hate politics these days – you will have to engage in political dialogue