As colleges and universities work to strengthen opportunities for dialogue across differences, understanding how students, faculty, and staff perceive these efforts is essential to designing programs that foster meaningful engagement.

A recent report from More in Common, Civil Dialogue in Higher Education: Exploring How Students and Faculty Think, offers important insights into how students and faculty perceive dialogue, what motivates participation, and the barriers that may prevent meaningful engagement. Among its findings, the research reveals a striking tension: while 81% of students report being willing to listen to differing political perspectives, only 6% express a great deal of trust in their institution to facilitate genuinely open, politically impartial dialogue.

Join Campus Compact and More in Common for a conversation exploring these findings and their implications for higher education. We’ll discuss what the research reveals about institutional trust, barriers to participation, and the ways colleges and universities can position and design dialogue initiatives to encourage engagement, strengthen campus dialogue efforts, and connect these experiences to skills students can carry into the workplace and beyond.