Higher education organizations sponsoring constructive dialogue programs 

In these divisive times in the United States, two of the largest national organizations of colleges and universities continue to sponsor and build programs for campuses to teach constructive dialogue skills through extracurricular activities. 

The Washington, D.C.-based American Association of Colleges & Universities (aacu.org), which has about 1000 members worldwide, is the sponsor of the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education (IDHE), which has been based at Tufts University since 2023. The focus areas of which are Campus Conflict and Conversation; Democracy Re/Designed, educating around elections, the “Politics 365” study of engaged campuses, professors’ resources for talking about politics in the classroom, and academic freedom resources. For example, in 2024, the AAC&U released its 19-page report, “Free Expression and Inclusion: How Do We Create Campus Learning Environments Where Both Ideas and People Thrive”? The AAC&U also has published a Diversity & Democracy: Civic Learning for Shared Futures magazine. 

The IDHE implements its Campus Conflict and Conversation program in part by teaming up with the Sustained Dialogue Institute to offer a free “help desk” (nine scholar-practitioners) for educators and others “facing difficult, confounding, new, frightening, nasty, threatening, and other conflicts and challenging conversations.” Democracy Re/Designed is implemented various ways: via educators and campus leaders using: a 16-page guide, Redesigning Democracy: How Can We Envision a Democracy That Works for Everyone?” in and for campus discussions; a 3-page self-assessment tool; watching a webinar that was recorded in 2024; and eight campuses conducting research with focus groups. An 11-page report completed also in 2024 helpfully is designed to discuss the “rationale, history, and evolution of the [Redesigning Democracy] framework.” Facilitated discussions on college campuses are recommended for 90 minutes each, with small groups of six to 10 participants each. 

The Politics 365 project was started in 2015 using data from the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, and built with additional data from focus groups, interviews, and analysis of websites, news coverage, and other public documents, to discover common characteristics of highly engaged campuses. (They are a “culture of collective caring, education for justice, political discussions everywhere, legacies of engagement, student leadership and political efficacy around public issues and institutional decisions, diversity as a guiding democratic principle, [and] accessible electoral engagement.”) AAC&U’s website provides details about these attributes and many other resources, such as book chapters and journal articles, about engaged campuses. 

In the area of “speech, inclusion, and academic freedom,” the AAC&U website includes not only the “Free Expression and Inclusion” report, but also articles, a report, a podcast, and a book chapter on the topic.  

The Washington, D.C.-based American Association of State Colleges and Universities (aascu.org), working now in conjunction with the Constructive Dialogue Institute (based in New York City), started its American Democracy Project (ADP) in 2003 in conjunction with The New York Times.  The ADP is executed on an ongoing basis through various specific initiatives, such as the Pluralism Cohort. Each year, AASCU works with Interfaith America to select 8-10 institutions that have committed to being exemplar campuses for pluralism in the USA. Each campus receives $25,000 to help it “learn best practices for promoting and deepening campus pluralism,” “identify and address tensions and obstacles in the current higher education climate that impede pluralism,” “begin to develop long-term goals and a strategic plan for advancing pluralism on their campuses” and learn from, and collaborate with, other annual Cohort institutions. The 2025 Cohort is Hunter College, University of Washington Bothell, Kennesaw State University, California State University Long Beach, University of Maryland Baltimore County, James Madison University, Coastal Carolina University, Governors State University, North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, and the State University of New York at Oswego. 

 Last year, for the election year, ADP held a series of virtual workshops that were designed to engage students, faculty, and administrators on AASCU campuses on topics such as voter turnout, voter education, and voter engagement. Democracy-oriented webinars (roughly monthly) are continuing in 2025. For instance, “Democracy Conversations: Advancing Sustainability” will be on April 25. Earlier this year, webinars held were on themes of “Growing Campus Gardens,” “Reflecting on Campus Voter Engagement,” and “Prison Graduation Initiative.”  

ADP also chooses Civic Fellows for one- or two-year terms who will make assessment, research and programmatic efforts to implement and support ADP’s work. For 2023-24, 13 Civic Fellows were chosen, including three communication professors: Byron Craig, Illinois State University; Kara Dillard, James Madison University; and Steve Hunt, Illinois State University. The 10 other Civic Fellows came from a variety of disciplines: educational leadership, political science, psychology, and economics. 

Each year, an ADP Summit conference is held (this year in Indianapolis, July 13-14) for the purposes of discussing “embracing public higher education as a pillar of a thriving democracy, what everyday democracy looks like on campus and in communities, the regional impact of the civic-minded campus, the impact of state legislation and Executive Orders on democracy work on campus, strategies to embed civic engagement in relational and generative ways, [and] the challenges of leading democracy in contentious times.” A number of awards also are presented at the ADP Summit. 

Since 2004, the ADP also has offered its Stewardship of Public Lands (SOPL) program, allowing faculty, staff and administrator participants to visit Glacier National Park (June 23-27 this year) and benefit from interdisciplinary experiential learning and professional development about public lands. 

ADP’s nearly 30-member Steering Committee also includes Dillard, Hunt and several other Civic Fellows, plus a number of mid-level to high-level college administrators. 

Finally, in conjunction with the Lumina Foundation, AASCU’s Leading for Democracy program offers to college campuses materials and support for both curricular and co-curricular experiences oriented toward improving the practice of democracy. 

 In addition to the Constructive Dialogue Institute, the AASCU’s other partners in its various ADP initiatives are: ALL IN College Democracy Challenge; Campus Vote Project; National Issues Forums; National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement; PenAmerica; Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab; and the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition.