The kinds of questions freshmen have to answer at orientation are typically mundane and uncontroversial: “Where are you from?” or “What do you think you’d like to major in?” or “Have you found the dining hall yet?”
At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a group of first-years went past the small talk and swapped opinions on one of the most pressing topics facing higher education today — free speech.
At an orientation event last week, about 30 students stood in the middle of a room while Jed Atkins, dean of the university’s School of Civic Life and Leadership, read several statements to them. Signs were posted in the room’s corners that said “Agree,” “Disagree,” “Strongly agree,” or “Strongly disagree.” The students then walked to the sign that most closely represented their opinion on the matter at hand. Following a discussion, students could change their minds and move to a different corner.
The statements posed to the students were ones that campus leaders themselves have grappled with as they’ve watched students shout down speakers or hoist signs that other students find offensive:
Some ideas and perspectives are simply too harmful for people to be allowed to express them.
Agreeing with each other is a greater sign of friendship or respect than disagreeing.
Civility is always desirable in democratic life.
In all, 130 students were selected to participate in a pilot orientation exercise hosted by the university’s new, and somewhat controversial, School of Civic Life and Leadership. The hope is to make the exercise a requirement for all first-year students.
“We have an amazing opportunity to be able to take the eagerness that students have to learn and grow in their capacities to have conversations across difference, and to equip them to do so,” Atkins said. “At the end of the day, we’re going to have more citizens that are better able to flourish.”
The program is the most recent addition to a growing array of civil discourse, democracy, and free-speech programs at colleges across the country. Education around these topics comes in many forms, including speaker series, small-group discussions, and facilitated debates.
While the mission isn’t new, campus leaders see the stakes as higher than ever in the wake of last spring’s tumultuous protests over the war in Gaza, and also looking toward a contentious presidential election. In the midst of this, college presidents have had to balance two crucial, sometimes competing, priorities: the right to free speech and the responsibility to maintain a safe, inclusive campus.
To meet that moment, many colleges are adding new courses and events. Others are bulking up the programs they already had.
“The ultimate goal here is to be able to create a suite of offerings and services so that every single student on campus, every single year, both learns and practices these skills,” said Rajiv Vinnakota, president of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, a nonprofit organization that aims to promote debate, civic engagement, and free expression among young people. The hope, he says, is to get to a point where such ideas are “just embedded in the DNA of all of our schools.”
Craving the Opportunity
The need appears to be real. A third of students at four-year colleges say their institution has not helped them understand people with different backgrounds, according to data collected by the National Survey of Student Engagement that will soon be published in a report by the Civic Learning and Democracy Engagement Coalition. When surveyed as seniors, that number decreases only slightly.
“Every institution taking a fresh look at its approach to civic learning and democracy engagement should study its own evidence on these issues and identify places within its degree requirements to address them,” the report states.
College Presidents for Civic Preparedness, a group of 92 college presidents assembled by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars with the goal of advancing critical inquiry, free expression, and civil discourse on campus, recently released a report examining how colleges have worked to foster civil discourse since August of last year.
The report found that the types of programs colleges offer vary. Some are required while others are not. By the end of this academic year, 20 percent of the college presidents in the group say they want every student on campus to engage in civil-discourse training. Some colleges introduce their students to the topic right away at orientation in the hope that students will continue to engage with similar programming later on.
When first-year and transfer students arrive at Denison University, in Ohio, for example, they go through the usual orientation routine: Meeting their academic adviser. Finding their classes. Attending sessions on consent, hazing prevention, and alcohol use.
They also debate each other.
In 2022, Adam Weinberg, the university’s president, incorporated “Braver Angels” debates into the university’s orientation. Braver Angels is a nonprofit organization working to build relationships across partisan lines through a variety of initiatives, including hosting debates on college campuses. Doug Sprei, co-founder and director of the College Debates and Discourse Alliance, who works to bring Braver Angels debates to campus, said that civil-discourse interventions are “surging forward,” creating growing interest in his organization.
“There’s such a natural hunger for it,” Sprei said. “That’s why we can hardly keep up with the demand.”
At Denison, first-year students have debated somewhat milder, less-political topics. For instance, this year students discussed whether selective colleges should require standardized tests.
Kieran Athy, a sophomore studying politics, philosophy, and economics, participated in Denison’s second annual debate when he arrived on campus last year. He said students had mixed reactions. He remembers some were slumped in their chairs, not listening. Others listened but were too shy to speak. And then there were those who couldn’t wait to say their piece.
Athy fell into the listener category, but looking back, he wishes he had taken advantage of the open environment where students could say what they think.
“It establishes that this is a community,” Athy said. “These aren’t just people you pass by every day. These are people you can have conversations with and you can disagree with.”
Adam Davis, a professor of history and the former director of Denison’s Lisska Center for Intellectual Engagement, said that incorporating civil discourse into orientation makes a strong statement that the university values free inquiry. He’s found that students often respond more positively to actually participating rather than merely hearing someone say that they should.
“I sense that a majority of students crave the opportunity to engage in dialogue across differences in a civil way,” Davis said. “But they don’t always have the tools or the experience of doing this previously.”
Like Denison, Vanderbilt University also took up the topic of free expression in its orientation this year. The university’s chancellor hosted a Q&A with the student newspaper’s editor in chief on open forums, institutional neutrality, and civil discourse. The first-year students asked the chancellor questions about divesting from Israel and the boundary between hate speech and free speech.
And at James Madison University, freshmen participate in Better Conversations Together, an orientation program that includes completing an online module before arriving on campus and having small-group discussions about issues like free speech and elections.
James Madison measures the outcomes of its Better Conversations program. When the university assessed participants last year, more than 95 percent of students said they felt heard in their small groups. Conservative students, who often hold minority views on college campuses, reported the same rate.
We haven’t been intentional about helping students learn how to engage constructively across differences.
Other colleges offer small-group discussions throughout the year. At the University of Chicago’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, students can apply to participate in “lunch conversations” where they can discuss contentious issues like abortion or affirmative action. Carnegie Mellon University started its Deeper Conversations program this past spring in response to concerns about increases in antisemitism and Islamophobia. Students will discuss the war in Gaza as well as the presidential election this semester.
Bennington College, in Vermont, is experimenting with a new course this semester called “Saving Democracy Together” that will be open to students as well as alumni and the general public. While the normal class size at the small liberal-arts college is about 12 students, this course is expected to enroll more than 180 online and about 60 Bennington students in person.
Susan Sgorbati, one of the instructors, said the course was created to explore Gen Z’s role in politics at a time when “democracy is threatened.” The instructors also hope to teach students how to dialogue respectfully about the war in Gaza.
“Everyone has seen the very charged conversations on college campuses around what’s happening in the Middle East, how you express it, and how you express dissent,” said Maurice Hall, the college’s provost and also an instructor. “I think this [class] is meant to get ahead of that and to set some frameworks for how we do that on the campus.”
American University’s Project on Civic Dialogue began offering faculty fellowships this year to support the School of Public Affairs in incorporating civic dialogue into its curriculum. The school is also developing a certificate in civic dialogue that students can pursue as part of their studies.
“Dialogue is a skill, a competency, and it’s something that we can teach, that we can learn, that we can practice,” said Lara Schwartz, the project’s director.
Some colleges make civil-discourse training a required part of their curriculum. This semester, Arizona State University’s new general-studies curriculum includes a “Governance and Civic Engagement” category. Courses that satisfy the requirement include “Communication, Conflict, and Negotiation,” “Public Speaking,” and “Persuasive Writing on Public Issues.”
“The very foundation of general studies is to offer students an opportunity to step outside of their own discipline and understand what it is to solve problems from the contexts of different perspectives,” said Anne Jones, vice provost for undergraduate education at Arizona State. “Part of being effective in those contexts is being able to imagine the perspective of others.”
Disruptive protests and the harassment of guest speakers often place campuses under scrutiny. Schwartz likes to point out that college campuses are among the only spaces left in American society that are well-positioned to practice civic dialogue.
“The spaces for people to come together and engage across disagreement get narrower and narrower, and the spaces where they can seek reinforcement in bubbles or anger at disliked anonymous opponents online only grow,” she said. “On campus, we actually bring people together.”
The Fall Scramble
Carol Schneider refers to higher education’s recent emphasis on free speech and civil discourse as “the fall scramble.” Schneider is a former president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities and served as an adviser on the Civic Learning and Democracy Engagement Coalition report. The report’s findings suggest that colleges have failed to treat civil discourse like other disciplines they want students to master.
“What that tells us is that we haven’t been intentional about helping students learn how to engage constructively across differences, whether those differences are racial or ethnic or political,” Schneider said.
Schneider believes higher education is at a tipping point. “We can move beyond short-term efforts, like fall programming, to longer-term investments in the faculty practice and training to help students work on these issues as part of the courses they’re taking to earn their degrees,” she said.
The report suggests that civil-discourse training must be embedded into the curriculum because one-off programs and optional sessions can fail to reach all students. “The argument we are making is that once is not enough,” Schneider said. “We should think about this in the way we think about math and writing. If you want students to gain those skills, you practice them across the curriculum.”
