Civil Discourse

Encouraging open and constructive dialogue on campus is a key priority of the FAS and the University. The Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue Working Group’s Report (2024) urges instructors to “cultivate habits of mind, social norms, and pedagogical practices that promote reasoned disagreement, engage a spectrum of ideas, and facilitate robust intellectual exchanges.” The FAS’ Civil Discourse Initiative seeks to equip “the FAS community with skills to engage productively across differences while fostering a campus culture where diverse perspectives are valued.”

Constructive Dialogue in the Classroom

The classroom is ideally a space:

grounded in a foundation of trust and community that creates resiliency and reduces student inhibition.
that is rooted in rigorous engagement with logical argument and evidence, and where debate takes place within course, disciplinary and academic norms.
where everyone, students and instructors alike, is productively challenged by perspectives different from their own, including viewpoints or content that they might find distasteful or offensive.
in which participants explore complexity and nuance, thereby avoiding premature consensus.

Challenges to Creating an Open Classroom Environment

According to surveys undertaken by the University’s Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue Working Group in 2024, a full 45% of students “reported that they are reluctant to share their views about charged topics in class.” The FAS’ Classroom Social Compact Committee details many ways that students are afraid of expressing viewpoints that they think will be out of line with those of their peers or that might otherwise risk social censure. At the same time, they don’t necessarily know what their peers actually think. As a result, classroom conversations often converge quickly on a consensus that further undermines students’ ability to engage a wide range of perspectives.

As such, the work of civil discourse not only entails managing challenging conversations; it also requires us to shape the conditions in which students can understand how knowledge is formed and how to explore challenging ideas in the first place.

Getting Started

Challenging conversations are more likely to be productive and to serve course goals with advance planning.

The first step for fostering open dialogue is to build a foundation of trust and community in your classroom. This will help students learn from one another in deeper ways and will make them more resilient when disagreement arises. You can build on this foundation of trust to lay the groundwork for productive disagreement and start fostering challenging conversations.
Explore our suggested syllabus language for courses that include controversial topics.
Establish classroom norms that clarify what to expect and what is expected during class discussions.

Next Steps

As you prepare to navigate challenging conversations, it’s helpful to identify tools and teaching methods that will enable your students to engage with difficult topics in a spirit of openness, collaboration, and respect. These include:

Planning ahead and scaffolding material to begin with lower-stakes topics. This offers students the opportunity to practice and develop the skills of constructive dialogue.
Determining how you will engage a wide range of viewpoints in the classroom.
Preparing how you might adjust the (metaphorical) classroom temperature if things get heated - or, alternatively, if your classroom remains cold, with limited student engagement.

How the Bok Center Can Help

The Bok Center team is available to help you foster and manage challenging conversations in line with your course goals.

We deliver custom workshops for groups of faculty and graduate students, whether as part of a departmental course (e.g. pedagogy seminar) or during a teaching team meeting.
We consult individually with FAS faculty and TFs. To schedule a meeting, email bokcenter@fas.harvard.edu.
We also offer weekly Drop-In Office Hours, to troubleshoot any questions or classroom concerns as they arise.