The author explores the ethical and pedagogical dimensions of teaching politically charged subjects or in politically charged contexts. The author notes the ways in which faculty have failed to engage well in difficult dialogues, often attaching attacks on scholarly and teaching competence to what are really accounts of political difference. The author argues for intellectual and pedagogical engagement that acknowledges and accounts for the intellectual challenge of difficult dialogue, the indeterminacy of knowledge within politically contested domains, and the ongoing need of both teachers and students for unconditional commitment to the relational.