It was an audacious proposal. In the fall of 2023, sophomore Alex Herz emailed the entire faculty of Stony Brook University. The New York campus was in turmoil. Pro-Palestinian protesters and Jewish students were having angry confrontations. Professors were also fighting among themselves. In response, Mr. Herz recommended instituting a forum for civil discourse.
“Some professors reached out to me on the side and said, ‘I like what you’re trying to do. Let’s talk,’” recalls Mr. Herz, who is Jewish.
The political science major subsequently launched a series of interactive workshops. He recalls the moment when a chaplain of the school’s Islamic Society stood up to denounce tribalism. She shared a parable about how anger distorts perspective. Paraphrasing her story, Mr. Herz says, “I was lost in the fog and I thought I saw a beast. As he got closer, I realized it was a man. And as he came even closer, I realized he was my brother.”
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Everyone has read about the protests and encampments on campuses in response to the war in Gaza. What hasn’t gotten headlines are the more than 100 universities that have launched civility initiatives in their wake.
Since the Israel-Hamas war, relationships between some students have been nowhere near brotherly, let alone collegial. What hasn’t made headline news is the spike in civil discourse initiatives at campuses. Here’s one gauge. At the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, a coalition of College Presidents for Civic Preparedness went from a handful of participants prior to Oct. 7, 2023, to well over 100 afterward. The likes of Harvard, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor have launched civil discourse initiatives since the deadly Hamas attack that sparked the Israeli invasion of Gaza.
“The primary purpose of a college or a university is to provide understanding,” says Jeffrey Buller, co-author of “Free Speech and Campus Civility.” “If we back away from that and see ourselves as basically an institution that is supposed to enforce only a particular set of behavior and cultural norms, we’ve really deviated from a fundamental part of our mission.”
On a deeper level, many institutions see civil discourse as foundational to education. It’s key to an ethos of free speech and open inquiry, rooted in mutual respect, that they seek to instill. Meanwhile, some students just aren’t accustomed to contrary or controversial ideas and believe that even hearing them is harmful. And students may feel daunted that if they disagree with a stance taken by their college, they will feel unwelcome.
These civil discourse projects may seem quaint in the face of police arrests of protesters and congressional hearings about antisemitism on campuses. Many universities have been criticized for inhibiting or curtailing unpopular speech. This is not even taking into account the Trump administration’s arrest and detention of international students for protesting or writing about the war in Gaza. None of it has led to a greater desire for students to speak up about controversial issues.
But “You can’t solve a problem unless you can talk about it,” says Providence College’s Quincy Bevely, quoting former Spelman College President Beverly Daniel Tatum.
At Vanderbilt, teachable moments
At college, students are still finding out who they are, says Mr. Buller. They try on and take off identities all the time. Sometimes, that exploratory process entails saying provocative things. He says that faculty members should treat those situations as teachable moments.
Vanderbilt University is a big believer in that approach. When the war in Gaza erupted, so did pro-Palestinian protests on campus. The following month, a student conservative group invited political commentator Michael Knowles to give a talk, titled “Giving Thanks for Settler Colonialism.” It was a major stress test for the university’s ideals of creating a collegial environment of dialogue and respect.
It wasn’t Chancellor Daniel Diermeier’s first crisis. In December 2020, Vanderbilt’s women’s basketball team elected to protest for racial justice by staying inside the locker room during the national anthem. Some alumni expressed their displeasure with the athletes. For Dr. Diermeier, it was an opportunity to affirm three institutional pillars.
First, the university upheld the students’ right to free speech. Second, it told alumni that its commitment to institutional neutrality included not taking sides on this political issue – or any others. Third, Vanderbilt focused on encouraging civil discourse. To that end, it facilitated structured dialogue between the basketball players and military veterans on the Nashville, Tennessee, campus. The discussion topic: what it means to be a patriot. Some athletes shared experiences of racism and discrimination. Young men and women, some of whom had combat experience, explained why they felt so strongly about serving their country.
“We’re members of one community dedicated to the same purpose, living and learning together,” says Dr. Diermeier in a video call. “We give each other respect, and we never forget that. So we don’t demonize each other. We don’t exclude each other.”
After the controversy over Mr. Knowles’ talk, the chancellor underscored those core principles. In a timely coincidence, the university had launched a new initiative, Dialogue Vanderbilt, months before the Middle East conflagration. It aims to bridge divides through training workshops, forums with renowned public figures, and the research-based Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy. Since the Israel-Hamas war, the unity project invited Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, to speak. An international politics class hosted Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog and former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on successive days.
Dr. Diermeier says a professor observed that we live in an age when there’s a “rush to righteousness” – a tendency toward seeing those on the other side of an issue as immoral. The culture of civil discourse needs to be rooted in a relationship of trust.
“If as a student, I’m challenging something, or I say something controversial, I’m going to have to trust you that you’re not excluding me,” says Dr. Diermeier, of the tendency to ostracize people. “That needs to be practiced.”
“A force in your community”
Civic discourse initiatives aren’t a new phenomenon in higher education. However, they’ve sometimes struggled to endure. The current moment feels different.
One success story is the Dialogue, Inclusion, and Democracy (DID) Lab at Providence College in Rhode Island, run by Dr. Bevely and Professor Nick Longo.
For the most part, the 108-year-old private Catholic university hasn’t been roiled by major conflicts over the Israel-Hamas war. But it has faced other challenges. In 2017, a multicultural student organization set up a display with a pumpkin representing President Donald Trump. A sign invited students to stab the “Trumpkin.” More recently, political tensions surrounding the 2024 presidential election played out on Yik Yak, a social media platform for students.
The DID approach is to create spaces in which people can converse openly about politics and question each other from a standpoint of curiosity and respect. Those “With Mutual Respect” events feature two people on opposing sides of an issue. Panelists don’t so much debate as endeavor to foster mutual understanding. Now in their third year, the events have focused on issues such as abortion, political dysfunction, and, most recently, “Facing Our Demons: Can Democracy Survive Post-election?” Over the past three years, DID has worked with 40 faculty members to help them embed those types of conversations in their courses.
“In order to rectify our wrongs or solve some of the problems or the ills of our nation, you have to be able to be in conversation about it,” says Dr. Bevely, vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the college. “To be able to contribute to the national level, you have to first be able to be a superstar at the local level, be able to really be a force in your community, you know, just take care of your own backyard first.”
A Bridging Divides project requires that students have discussions across differences with someone they know. Senior Johandalys Montas sat down with Amira Tanbakji, one of the few Muslims at the private Catholic university. Ms. Montas had never fully considered how much people size up Ms. Tanbakji based on her hijab. Others fail to see the full person, with a range of interests.
“I really had to sit and reflect on how many times we actually judge other people,” says Ms. Montas, who’s majoring in global studies. “We are not really aware of our own assumptions of others.”
In turn, Ms. Montas shared her experience of being a woman of color on a predominantly white campus. In common, the two students have weathered racist or culturally insensitive conversations on campus and on Yik Yak.
“Even when we have different beliefs on things or different opinions, we see each other’s side, and we understand where the other is coming from,” says Ms. Tanbakji, a health policy and management major.
Reflecting on the impact the DID lab has had on her, Ms. Tanbakji says there’s a value to dialogue that’s sometimes uncomfortable.
“The conversations that we’ve had,” she says, “have always led to a lot more introspection and growth and change.”
