TORONTO, Ontario, Canada – NMT faculty member Dr. Taylor Dotson was a guest panelist on “The Agenda With Steve Paikin,” a half-hour news program on OntarioTV.

Click here for the full show on YouTube

Dotson (bottom left of image at right) is the author of the 2021 book “The Divide: How Fanatical Certitude is Destroying Democracy.” He was one of four panelists to discuss the topic “Is Post-Truth the New Normal for Democracy?”

The show is an every-two-weeks broadcast that deals with a different political topic in each show. The other panelists (pictured at right) included Matthew D’ancona, British author of “Post-Truth,” and Toronto newspaper writers Robyn Urbach of the Globe and Mail and Navneet Alang of the Toronto Star.

Host Steve Paikin lead the discussion by asking, “How can empirical facts compete with emotional arguments?” The focus of the panel was to address how people of differing political views can find common ground and work toward the advancement of a nation, specifically the United States.

The show’s producers used this quote from Dotson’s book as a discussion prompt:
“Could it be that the ideal of Truth is the problem rather than the fact that people rarely live up to it? Does it ask too much of democracy to expect it not just to settle disputes imperfectly and tentatively but also to validate an objective reality? What happens to democratic politics when Truth becomes gospel, but no one can agree on the catechisms?”

The discussion largely revolved around the role of truth in a democracy. The panelists discussed the tensions between truth and democracy and how differing political viewpoints can accommodate each other by finding common ground.

Dotson joined the NMT faculty in 2015. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s in math from NMT, then earned his doctorate in science and technology studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2014.

-- NMT --