Faculty Partner Spotlight: Dr. David Wright

Since 2018, the CD&D Alliance has collaborated with hundreds of brilliant higher education faculty who care deeply about their students and their development into critical thinkers, compassionate professionals, and active citizens. For our inaugural newsletter, we will highlight one educator in North Carolina who has integrated our debates into his curriculum in a remarkable way. Dr. David Wright is a Senior Research Scholar in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University (NCSU).

Dr. Wright has demonstrated that all disciplines, not only liberal arts programs, can benefit greatly from practicing civil discourse. For years, he has taught a course called “Ethics in Computing,” which explores ethical theories and practices for computing professionals. In 2023, he learned about the CD&D Alliance’s Curricular Toolkit and felt that it could be a powerful tool to engage his students in conversation on the challenges and controversies surrounding technology and society today. In Fall 2023, Dr. Wright conducted not one, but 18 Braver Angels-style debates across his two large sections of Ethics in Computing. He has continued to hold debates in three subsequent semesters (including Spring 2025), scheduling at least seven debates in each course section he teaches. To date, he has held 78 classroom debates—with 12 more pending this semester—involving approximately 670 students over nearly two academic years. 

What inspired this massive—and innovative—endeavor? CD&D Alliance Curricular Fellow Dr. Bryan Paul sat down with Dr. Wright to discuss his experience. (Note: this interview transcript has been edited for clarity.)    

What got you into teaching?

I worked professionally for 20 years before returning to NC State to complete my undergraduate degree, which then evolved into a master’s and Ph.D. in computer science. After I completed my doctoral degree, the head of the Department of Computer Science suggested that I get involved in the Ethics in Computing course, which I first taught as a teaching assistant (TA) with my doctoral adviser. Coming out of the business sector, I had a sense of customer service and business ethics that the department head must have thought would be an asset to the course. I fell into it and have been involved in it ever since. 

Why did you integrate CD&D Alliance programming into your Ethics in Computing course? 

I was looking for a way to get students more engaged in the classroom discussions. The course goes over a range of ethical issues with the potential for many nuances and applications for individuals, society, and humanity. I wanted to help my students engage and dig deeper into the issues, rather than stand up in front of the class and lecture the whole time. I had read about a Braver Angels debate that took place at NCSU. The style and structure of it fascinated me. I eventually found the CD&D Curricular Toolkit and got in touch with Doug Sprei and others over the summer to learn more. I did the first cut of it in Fall 2023. I basically used the rubric from the toolkit and have adapted it over time. The big thing for me was getting students involved in talking about the issues they are going to experience as they graduate from college and enter professional practice. 

How have you made the Curricular Toolkit your own? 

The way we run Braver Angels debates in the classroom engages students every step of the way. Two weeks before their scheduled debate, the students get their debate resolution and write briefs using a template from the toolkit. They have a week to put their briefs together, after which they assess each other’s work under a double-blind peer review process for three days. I also do an assessment of their work, which yields more rigorous feedback. After students complete and return feedback to each other, they have two days to use that feedback to help in crafting their speech. I encourage them not to read their speeches verbatim, but rather to emphasize one or two main points that they feel most strongly about and connect their peers to that. I even share resources on effective communication with them (e.g., elevator pitches), ensuring that they deliver the best speeches possible. 

I do peer assessments of the speeches, too, on Qualtrics. I opt to stay in the debate chair role; make sure the format and protocol are followed; and I step in and help with questions as needed. 

What is your teaching philosophy?

I try to keep my political beliefs out of the job and out of the classroom. I’m not there to tell my students what the right thing to do is. It’s one thing to teach the right way to write a certain type of code under a certain set of circumstances, but that’s within a formal, closed system. Dealing and communicating with people requires a different approach. My goal as a teacher is to help students think more broadly, challenge their own beliefs, and be able to defend what they believe in in a way that they can find common ground with other people. If you’re just stating your opinion and expecting people to be either with you or against you, it’s very hard to find common ground and start a conversation. But if you can share what you believe and offer clear reasons as to why, then you can focus on building common ground and learning from each other.

I want each student to formulate a good argument for a position that they are taking on their own, and do so in an open and logical way that can be a foundation for discussion rather than a screaming match. That’s one thing that I think has been missing in higher education even when I was an undergraduate at the turn of the century. I didn’t feel like there was an opportunity to have open conversations about important issues. The things that we talk about in my Ethics in Computing course aren’t as controversial as abortion or the death penalty, but they are issues that the next generation of computing professionals are going to have some control of, such as who owns healthcare and social media data, the ethical responsibilities that come along with that, and the role of the computing professional in that ecosystem. 

Describe a transformative or positive experience your students have had with our programming. 

I have witnessed many of those. I do so many Braver Angels debates that they tend to overlap in my mind. In a recent debate, one student argued that since a healthcare provider is the one producing work based on someone’s health information, that provider is creating documentation, and they should have copyright protection. A fellow student asked a question: “Well, if somebody is writing a story about me, do I have any right to have input in how my person is being used in that story?” The first student arguing for copyright protection replied but hesitated doing so. I think that this student hadn’t thought about the issue that way before, and the question gave them a moment to pause and possibly rethink their position. That’s something that happens quite frequently, to be honest. I credit that to the students who ask good and pointed questions, not trying to be confrontational, but trying to get clarity on the issue. In quite a few cases, students ask questions to get each other to think about the issue in a different way because they think about it in a different way. 

 What are the benefits of this type of programming for computer science students?

It gets students talking. It gets them thinking about important issues. When you look at data collected by the software industry, computer science professionals spend only 10–15% of their time writing code. The rest of their time is spent working with people to negotiate the conflicts and the paradoxes in the requirements they are given as well as reviewing each other’s code. The weekly standup meetings that development teams run force team members to defend their codes to each other and receive feedback. The industry professionals I have spoken with over 15 years are looking for computer science graduates that have these soft skills: the ability to talk with others to find common ground and negotiate what’s going to be the best thing for a certain project in a certain situation. This is not an algorithmic process; it’s a human process. 

What are your pro tips to faculty that are interested in running Braver Angels debates in the classroom? 

The overarching thing is to really work hard on debate resolution development. It is challenging. The biggest challenge is coming up with resolutions. Some of that is practice; some of that is stubbornness. And just because you think a resolution will give you a good split between students, don’t be disappointed when it doesn’t. I’ve generated a lot of resolutions, some that I thought were really good and would generate broad discussion, and I’ve been wrong, and I’ve learned to take that as it goes. Even if on paper students may take the same affirmative or negative position, they will take it in different ways. Their arguments are not monolithic. They come at it from different directions. When I see that and give feedback, I will note the different perspectives and encourage each student to focus on the position or point that is most important to them and how will they influence other students to better understand the “why” of their stance. This approach gives students a starting point to dig into the issue and make up their own minds. 

Interested in bringing better debates and dialogue into your classroom? Download our Curricular Toolkit here, and contact Bryan Paul at wbpaul@GoACTA.org.