Dialogues Across Differences

The Dialogues Across Differences (DxD) initiative launched at Dickinson College in 2022, thanks to the generous support of the Arthur Vining Davis (AVD) Foundations. This initiative aims to educate students, faculty, and community members on how to have productive dialogue.

This project is urgent as disrespectful and inflammatory discourse threatens harmony and prevents communities from thriving. In the last several years, we have seen the inability of politicians, pundits, and private citizens in the United States to deal with opposing viewpoints, to embrace nuance, and to differentiate evidence from opinion. On many college campuses, including Dickinson's, students avoid engaging with opposing viewpoints and prefer the safety of their "echo chambers". DxD aims to educate students on how to dwell in discomfort and "call in" others to a conversation rather than "call out". 

Our team acknowledges that dialogue is a fraught concept and it must mean more than just performative politeness – instead, we choose to focus our efforts on educating those who can listen with an empathetic and ethical mindset to perspectives other than their own and then reason with a depth of understanding. 

The approach to this project is mulifaceted: it integrates classroom learning across the disciplines, campus involvement, and community engagement. There have been several faculty workshops that both enable faculty to wokr with colleagues across disciplines on course design and gives them the tools to implement dialogue into their courses. 

The revolutionary founders of Dickinson College sought to provide a "useful education" for the "common good". This project ultimately seeks to educate students about the virtues of taking part in dialogues across differences.