This essay is my first systematic published articulation of my theory of Sacrificial Listening. Many thanks to Mike Berhow and Greg Peterson of South Dakota State University for giving me a chance to sketch out some of my ideas there during a rich conversation in 2016, and for subsequently welcoming this more developed essay into their volume on the importance of intellectual virtues in a polarized society:

“An Epistemology for Listening Across Religious, Cultural, and Political Divides.” In Engaging Populism: Democracy and the Intellectual Virtues, ed. Gregory R. Peterson, Michael C. Berhow, and George Tsakiridis, 185–214. [London]: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

This essay stems from two decades of reflection on my scholarship and teaching in the field of Islamic studies. That thinking was first articulated somewhat autobiographically, with a focus on pedagogy, in a paper called “Sacrificial Listening: Christians, Muslims, and the Secular University.” It was fleshed out more systematically in a talk at the University of Oklahoma, “Sacrificial Listening: An Epistemology and Pedagogy for Intellectual Humility in the Humanities.” In this published chapter I attempt to sharpen its philosophical grounding, frame it in terms of intellectual virtues, and broaden its application to include the understanding of Others across political lines.

The published essay and the entire volume are available from Palgrave Macmillan at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05785-4. Here I am only able to post my Author’s Original preprint manuscript as a pdf file.