The Georgetown Dialogues Initiative

One of the learning goals stated for the undergraduate core curriculum is “…as participants in an intellectual community, students learn to … engage in difficult dialogues around challenging ideas.”

Day-to-day that learning goal is achieved by talented faculty teaching alternative perspectives to the content they’re covering, exercising skills of grappling with opposing viewpoints. Increasingly, however, students are entering Georgetown with lower capacities to engage in this kind of dialogue. Given the polarization in today’s world, it is rare for young people to witness respective dialogue among persons holding opposing viewpoints. Lacking that exposure, their capacity for such engagement can be underdeveloped. Further, the social media canceling of those who speak in opposition to any idea generates self-censorship for fear of exclusion.

We have previously announced pedagogical workshops nurturing engagement of all students in classrooms. This is one way to achieve the learning goals. We think we can do more.

Through generous financial support of alumni and parents, we are pleased to announce another way to achieve the learning goal of engaging in difficult dialogues around challenging ideas.

The Georgetown Dialogues Initiative will evolve over time with the aim of giving all Georgetown students exposure to and personal experiences in respectful dialogue between persons with opposing viewpoints.

We see great opportunities of demonstrating to students the techniques of active listening, empathy to the other’s viewpoint, presenting one’s own perspective in the same framework as the other, seeking common ground, agreeing to disagree, and ending the dialogue with appreciation for the exchange. First-year classes may be ripe opportunities for such experiences.

One course design that will be piloted over the coming year is a co-instructor format. Each instructor will take a different position on the content of the course, demonstrating the kind of dialectic across different perspectives that is fought out in annual conferences of the discipline, journals, and books over time. With two instructors in front of the class, the students will see in real time the intellectual challenges that every field experiences. As the class proceeds, the nature of the dialogue can evolve as the literature evolved, illustrating the evolution of the field’s conceptual framework. Every class will be a demonstration of “difficult dialogues around challenging ideas.”

The students will learn from the verbal exchanges how respect is communicated, despite disagreements. They will learn that disagreements do not necessarily end in shouting. Student exercises in the course will give experiential learning opportunities in this capacity.

Other courses might use the two-instructor format for only a subset of class meetings, with explicit commentary by the two instructors about how they navigated the exchange, followed by student questions about the experience.

We will engage with CNDLS and the Red House to develop a set of tools that faculty can use and guidelines that students can employ in their daily life.

Other features of the initiative that we aspire to build are large open convenings with two speakers who do not agree on some content, engaged in respectful dialogue about their differences. This will be another venue where students can be exposed to experts in such dialogic behavior. After their dialogue in front of the audience, we might have them explain their own behavior and comment on how they listen to the other speaker, how they forward their position, and how they handled disagreements.

The confrontation of opposing ideas is the essence of learning. Universities cannot achieve their mission if opposing ideas are not juxtaposed for students to evaluate. Censoring dialogue among differences within the classroom harms learning. To build the leaders of the future world, now so crippled by polarization, Georgetown needs to create an environment helping students build the capacity to be effective in interacting with those who disagree with them. Only through these skills can life-long learning take place.

Stay tuned for more news about the Georgetown Dialogues Initiative.