Higher Education
Strengthening Pluralism Through Academic Life: A Faculty Guide
This resource offers practical and proactive recommendations and examples for faculty to bring pluralism to life as they shape the academic life of their campus.
Faculty Guide
As our society grapples with what it means to live in a diverse democracy, colleges and universities play a critical role. Few other institutions bring together people with such a wide range of identities, beliefs, and worldviews in sustained, everyday interaction. Within academic life—especially in the classroom, but also across departments, programs, and campus spaces shaped by faculty—there is a unique opportunity to influence how people connect and cooperate across difference.
At the core, the vision for this work is pluralism: people engaging differences in ways that build respect, form meaningful relationships, and cooperate on issues that matter. This resource offers practical and proactive recommendations and examples for faculty to bring pluralism to life as they shape the academic life of their campus.
Core Four Recommendations
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Clarify an Ethic of Pluralism
Articulate the values and convictions from religious, non-religious, or ethical traditions that inspire and inform how different people engage difference.
Engage the Intellectual Tradition of Pluralism
Build familiarity and wrestle with the rich and varied perspectives of past and current leaders who explore how diverse groups live and work together.
Create Conditions for Positive Connection
Proactively and intentionally provide lower-stakes opportunities where people can regularly learn about one another’s worldviews in accurate, affirming, and humanizing ways.
Surface Shared Values and Areas of Concern
Help people recognize how different convictions can underlie cooperation and relationships.
Faculty can embed these recommendations into academic life through different spheres:
Taken together, these recommendations highlight how pluralism is built through a set of actions across the academic life of the university. By taking concrete, intentional steps in each or any of these areas, faculty can help build campuses where everyone is a contributor towards the common good.
In Personal Practice
In Personal Practice: How faculty connect to their own values and commitments in order to engage in and model a culture of cooperation across difference.
In The Classroom
In The Classroom: The ways faculty design a course, consider content, and generally invite and equip learners to engage, connect, and learn alongside one another.
Beyond The Classroom
Beyond The Classroom: Shaping departments, contributing to larger curricula, and helping create campus environments where engagement across difference is expected and supported.
Clarify an Ethic of Pluralism
Examples In Personal Practice
- Identify and articulate your ethic of pluralism, grounded in deeply held convictions.
Examples In The Classroom
- Share stories that reveal a commitment to respect, relationships, and cooperation across difference (from a diversity of worldviews).
- Early in an experience, ask students to reflect on and articulate what from their own religious, non-religious, or ethical worldview or traditions inspires them to build respect, relationships, and/or cooperation across differences. Revisit these discussions throughout your time together.
Examples Beyond the Classroom
- Offer workshops, resources, or dedicated time during recurring meetings for faculty to reflect upon and share how their own religious, secular, or ethical worldview connect to the work they do on campus.
- Incorporate time to identify and discuss personal ethics of pluralism into faculty orientation or training, making clear the link between pluralism and department or institutional priorities.
- Identify other faculty and staff currently doing work on campus to bring people together across differences. Discuss the nature of their work, what motivates them, and lessons learned.
- Elevate personal stories of why and how your colleagues or other leaders cooperate across difference. This might be through quick vignettes to start your recurrent meeting, sending email bulletins, or hosting speakers on campus.
Engage the Intellectual Tradition of Pluralism
Examples In Personal Practice
- Develop your own bibliography of texts, audio, videos, or other sources that reflect a variety of perspectives on foundational theory and practice of pluralism.
- Ask others what they recommend you explore and share your own recommendations.
- Invite others in your personal or professional life to explore and discuss sources together.
Examples In The Classroom
- Design syllabi that include sources on the foundational theory, knowledge, and practical wisdom of pluralism.
- Establish learning goals or forms of assessment that ask students to demonstrate their understanding and evaluation of past and current pluralism theories and practices.
- Create assignments or activities that require students to discuss core sources with their peers, identifying areas of consensus as well as where their views diverge. Emphasize the existence of differing views as healthy and a core component of pluralism.
Examples Beyond the Classroom
- Create a cross-list of courses which engage pluralism in theory or practice.
- Institute a general education or first year requirement to take coursework that explores the tradition of pluralism.
- Create and share with faculty a repository of pluralism related learning objectives and syllabi. Invite faculty to regularly share about how they are incorporating these ideas into their work.
- Establish a certificate or minor in pluralism or civic leadership.
- Offer opportunities (retreats, lunch and learns, book clubs, working groups, etc.) for faculty, staff, and other roles across campus to intermix, explore a pluralism source together, and discuss their own learnings and questions.
Create Conditions for Positive Connection
Examples In Personal Practice
- Reflect on which colleagues you work most closely with and actively look for ways to collaborate with staff or faculty outside of your department.
- Explore the science and art of listening and conversation.
- Understand the value of appreciative knowledge and where it’s shown up in your life.
Examples In The Classroom
- Establish communication norms, agreements, or guidelines that promote respectful behaviors and engaging with curiosity.
- Create lower-stakes and recurrent opportunities, beginning at the start of the course, for learners to gain and share appreciative knowledge.
Examples Beyond the Classroom
- Establish communication norms, agreements, or guidelines that apply to work between colleagues. Consider if any of these should be consistently adopted in classrooms within or across departments.
- Provide regular opportunities for faculty and staff to connect in lower-stakes ways that invite everyone to contribute
(potlucks, service projects, etc.) - Partner with student affairs professionals or other staff to identify popular, recurrent, or required co-curricular activities. Integrate small, lower-stakes opportunities for participants to connect and learn about one another’s values and traditions.
- Connect faculty with resources or training to integrate more practices that inspire connection across differences into their work with students.
Surface Shared Values and Areas of Concern
Examples In Personal Practice
- Reflect on issues impacting your campus or communities that you are inspired to address. Connect with others to discuss what issues matter to them and identify any areas of shared concern.
Examples In The Classroom
- Incorporate service learning opportunities into your course. Make intentional time before and after a project to facilitate conversations that reveal shared, underlying values.
- Use case studies and scenarios that reveal complexity and require wrestling with multiple worldviews or perspectives. Facilitate conversations about what made for the common and good and what allowed for cooperation across difference.
Examples Beyond the Classroom
- Organize opportunities for faculty and staff to collaborate on projects beyond their own departments or offices. Begin any work together by asking people to share about what from their values or traditions guides them in these efforts.
- Create and support cross-disciplinary co-teaching opportunities that model differing perspectives or backgrounds engaging in the same, shared topic or challenge.
