Here’s the Question of the Day: If students distrust campus dialogue initiatives run by their institutions, how can we effectively scale bridgebuilding efforts?

The Answer: Bring it into the classroom.

The Challenge: Students want engagement across differences but generally don’t trust institutionally sponsored initiatives.

The Big Picture: If we want to build a durable ecosystem of engaging across deep difference on campus, we should start with faculty and classrooms. Why?

• Broad reach: Every student, every professor, every classroom.
• More credibility: Well-designed classroom experiences allow credibility to be earned locally rather than asking students to trust the university in advance.
• Rinse and repeat: Because a durable culture of pluralism can’t be built on opt-in programs alone.

By The Numbers

• According to More in Common’s recent report on “Civil Dialogue in Higher Education,” only 10 percent of students see institutional dialogue programs as meaningful and genuine. Ouch.
• More than half (55%) express uncertainty or little trust that a program run by their institution will be genuinely open and not politically motivated.
• The good news: 81 percent of students say they are personally willing to listen to very different political views.
• The takeaway: The problem is not demand, but institutional trust.

The Way Forward

• Make it a part of academic life: Embedding substantive engagement across deep (political, social, religious, cultural, racial, etc.) difference in the curriculum will reach beyond the (small) self-selected population that trusts their institution.
• Make it organic: Reality check: Students are generally less willing to trust (and opt into) institutional programs. By making it a natural part of the undergraduate curriculum, students will absorb the principles and experiences of pluralism they say they want.

What it Looks Like

• Every student in the University Honors Program at Colorado State University takes a seminar of their choosing, all of which are built around constructive engagement across difference.
• Southern Methodist University added two courses to their Gen Ed curriculum that teach students the soft skills of active listening, story sharing, and conflict resolution — preparing them to be productive citizens in a diverse democracy.
• Every faculty member at Goucher College receives training in creating classroom cultures of connection and cooperation across difference during their annual faculty development days and New Faculty Institute.

The Fine Print

• Required classroom engagement can deepen distrust if it feels ideologically directed, coercive, or unsafe. Regardless of their own views, faculty need to take great care in how this work is perceived.
• Faculty shouldn’t assume that engagement across difference begins with structured dialogue about polarizing controversies. Students can practice respecting genuine difference, encountering one another through shared human experiences, and cooperating toward common purposes without getting entangled in culture wars. The result? These relationships can create the trust necessary for more structured dialogue when the context and learning outcomes support them.
• Faculty can cultivate trust within their classrooms, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into institutional trust. That’s where administrators come in: institutions need to develop and maintain consistent policies, protections, and visible support when principled engagement becomes controversial on campus.