The Student Movement Addressing Campus Polarization Head On

J ust weeks after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a college last September, students gathered in a University of Michigan classroom to discuss freedom of speech. Sitting in a semicircle, they were listening to one another share their views when one of the attendees pulled a red MAGA hat from his bag and asked if it would be okay to wear it. The gesture could have turned into a confrontation. The discussion’s moderator, however, said he was free to put it on. “We were all just like, ‘Okay, that’s your belief [and] that’s totally fine,’” recalls Sarah-Catherine Jackson, the president of BridgeUSA at UMich, the organization hosting the meeting.  Students participate in a workshop at the BridgeUSA annual summit. Courtesy of BridgeUSA BridgeUSA at UMich is the University of Michigan’s chapter of BridgeUSA, a student movement built around structured political dialogue, welcoming different views as long as they are expressed with basic respect. Instead of debating for a quick win, students explain their beliefs, listen to others and stay in the room without needing to reach agreement. The need for such spaces is clear, says BridgeUSA. A 2024 Knight Foundation-Ipsos study of more than 1,500 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 found that two in three said they self-censored on topics such as gender, religion, race and LGBTQ+ issues during classroom discussions. A similar proportion reported that they believed such self-censorship limited educationally valuable conversations on campus. With another tense election pulling the country in opposite directions, BridgeUSA is betting that depolarization starts with something simple: getting supposed rivals to sit down and actually hear each other out. BridgeUSA — which was founded in 2017 at UC Berkeley after protests over a conservative speaker turned violent — works to facilitate those conversations. The organization has grown rapidly, from that first chapter in 2017, to 24 by 2020 , to 146 today. At its national summit in Philadelphia this August, 250 students gathered for leadership and moderation training, and to connect with peers from different regions and political perspectives.   In spring 2024, pro-Palestine protests erupted at Columbia University in New York, leading to intensified disputes over campus speech, safety and protest, and prompting some to ask whether students with opposing views should engage with one another at all. BridgeUSA CEO Manu Meel says that when the protests began, BridgeUSA only had a small presence at the university and no trained student leaders able to convene a dialogue. But a group of students believed that kind of conversation was sorely needed, so they established a BridgeUSA chapter and organized a discussion about Israel and Palestine, an event Meel says university administrators declined to support because they feared negative publicity. The students proceeded anyway, and within a year Bridge Columbia convened a gathering of at least 200 students.  While considered successful, this experience highlighted BridgeUSA’s dependence on local leadership. BridgeUSA now emphasizes trying to support rapid-response dialogue immediately after campus violence, protests and other flashpoints where possible. Listening to political opponents takes courage on campuses where students feel pressure to demonstrate ideological loyalty, says Meel, adding: “I don’t think protest is any more courageous because everybody protests today.” Instead, he describes structured dialogue as “the new campus counterculture.” Weighed down by negative news? Enter your email below to receive our smart, uplifting newsletters. Or click here to choose exactly which ones you want [contact-form-7] While dialogue performs a distinct democratic function, says University of Virginia professor Rachel Wahl, who studies political dialogue, she is wary of setting conversation and protest against each other and asserts that public demonstration remains vital: “People who want to be in dialogue should consider protest an important form of political communication.” BridgeUSA plans to grow to 800 chapters (roughly a quarter of U.S. colleges) — a reach Meel says could help make dialogue a campus norm and give quieter students “social permission” to participate. To truly make an impact, Nicholas V. Longo, director of the Rutgers Democracy Lab, asserts that dialogue must also extend into the places and spaces where students already spend time. “Campuses need to not only engage students who are ready, but also students who might avoid these kinds of opportunities. We sometimes say we want to try to make engagement in dialogue unavoidable. To do this, we need to go to where students are at — in student centers, res life and first year experiences; but then also it’s essential to build these opportunities into the curriculum.” BridgeUSA CEO Manu Meel describes structured dialogue as the new campus counterculture. Courtesy of BridgeUSA Back at the University of Michigan, where chapter meetings typically draw 10 to 15 students, keeping conversations balanced takes deliberate effort. Jackson, a self-described fairly conservative student on a predominantly liberal campus, says executive board members with different political views review presentations and social posts for partisan framing, and flag language that appears to lean left or right. The midterms bring national stakes to Ann Arbor, the home of the university, where student turnout could help shape the outcome of the state’s competitive Senate race — and, with it, which party controls the chamber.  But the measure of BridgeUSA’s success extends beyond election day, says Longo, who states that dialogue can build civic knowledge and lead to informed action. After the votes are counted, it can also help students “repair and rebuild” their communities, and work together, regardless of who wins. The post The Student Movement Addressing Campus Polarization Head On appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful .