Let’s Talk About It… Learning to Disagree Without Disconnecting

What if the goal of a difficult conversation wasn’t to win?

What if, instead, we entered conversations to listen carefully, ask better questions, understand why someone sees the world differently, and leave with more to think about than when we arrived?

That’s the idea behind Let’s Talk About It…, a new On Discourse conversation series launching in this year.

College is a place where students, faculty, and staff encounter ideas that challenge them. But encountering different perspectives isn’t enough. We also need opportunities to practice the skills that make constructive dialogue across difference possible.

Let’s Talk About It… is designed to cultivate those skills: active listening, clear and respectful expression, curiosity and comfort with difference and disagreement, empathy, and perspective-taking.

Each 60–75 minute conversation will begin with faculty experts providing context around an important, complex issue. Table facilitators are there to support.  Rather than arguing for one answer, participants will see the competing perspectives, values, tensions, and tradeoffs involved on some of today’s most perplexing problems.

Then comes the most important part: students and other attendees talk with one another…listen, ask questions, explore why reasonable people might disagree, articulate their own perspectives, and consider experiences and values different from their own. In this space, they’ll practice staying curious when disagreement arises and engaging respectfully when conversations become challenging.

The goal isn’t consensus or persuasion. Listening is success. Greater understanding is success. Being able to say, “I still disagree, but I understand your perspective better,” is success.

Some conversations may change minds. Others may make an issue feel more complicated. Both can represent meaningful growth.

Dialogue is more than something we study. It is a skill we develop by doing it.

Bring your perspective. Bring your questions. Bring your curiosity.