This new guide, developed this summer by a team of bridge-building and civil discourse experts, offers resources and guidance for campus needs for better discourse as we enter the 2024–2025 academic year.
As you reflect on implementing better discourse on your campus, you might be looking to create spaces for conversations about some of the most contentious issues we expect to arise during the 2024-2025 academic year, Below, find some places to start when initiating discourse on these specific topics.
This back-to-campus starter kit explores how campuses can engage in inclusive, constructive dialogue—better discourse—ahead of what many expect to be an uncertain and potentially tumultuous 2024–2025 academic year. This guide includes invitations for self-reflection (with a corresponding guide for mapping your campus) and directs you to tools, policies, and evidence-based practices for better discourse.
Want to bring in external help with your bridge-building and civil discourse work on campus? This listing, produced as part of Better Discourse: A Guide for Bridging Campus Divides in Challenging Times, offers information about a variety of service providers to help you discern which organizations or models might work best for your campus.
To begin work that responds to crises, we must first understand where we are beginning, what resources we have at our disposal, and what we hope to achieve. These guiding questions offer an inquiry-based approach to help us examine ourselves and our contexts, discern paths, and find allies to advance better discourse on campus and in society.
Learn more about how community colleges are currently advancing civic engagement and how we can collaboratively advance their perspectives through virtual deliberative spaces.
We invite you to a 2-hour discussion that seeks to provide an overview of the different states’ contexts and provide space for us to begin to strategize about how to support each other across state lines and prepare for the upcoming political agendas that are sure to impact us all.
This professional development experience will be open to all community college presidents and association leaders. Each presentation will be followed by breakout sessions.
-Presentation on the Current Legislation Across the County and Likely National Approaches in the Next 5 Years
-History of the Intersections of Politics and Higher Education as they Pertain to DEI
-Current Legislation’s Common Language and What it Means
-Coalition Building and Next Steps
-Wrap-up
An introduction to the themes in Nicholas Longo’s Practicing Democracy: A Toolkit for Educating Civic Professionals, and practical advice on using the civic prompts or conversation starters for deliberative dialogues and critical reflection on college campuses.