Navigating the Clash of Conflicting College Protest Narratives

No matter your views on the Middle East conflict, you may have found the recent events on college campuses — and people’s reactions to them — confusing, overwhelming, or angering… or maybe all of those things. There are so many news stories, pundit takes, and everyday citizen observations, and many of these narratives conflict with each other. 

As is often the case for contentious issues, many seem to be in separate realities — seeing events and behaviors through massively different lenses and filters. In short, it can be hard to tell what exactly is happening and what it means. 

Even for those of us with firm stances on such matters, we may wonder how to behave and engage with others. How do we ensure that we’re not acting in ways that fail to recognize the humanity and rationality of others? How do we ensure we’re not unintentionally behaving in ways that amplify destructive conflict? 

We think of the question posed in The Anatomy of Peace: “Even if you are convinced you have been right in the positions you’ve taken, can you say with confidence that you have also been right in your way of being toward [others]?” That can be a tough question to answer when one’s emotions are involved. 

We at Starts With Us struggle with these questions, like everyone. Like many organizations, Starts With Us includes people with different views on all kinds of issues and events. We wanted to share how our core values help us navigate these often scary, angering, and overwhelming times. 

What values help us focus on problem-solving and avoid amplifying conflict? 

At Starts With Us, our core values are Curiosity, Compassion, and Courage (which we refer to as the 3Cs). We’ve invested in these values because they lead to connection, overcoming differences, constructive conflict, and a focus on solutions. 

Curiosity… even when we believe “they’re wrong”

The world is a complex place, and each of us knows only pieces of the world around us. This is still true even when we’re confident our views are highly accurate (or at least more accurate than our adversaries’ views). As humans, we’ll often get things wrong — whether about facts and events or about the people around us. 

Most of us have a fundamental curiosity about others and about the world. We know that interacting with other people and other ideas is how we learn about the world and how we grow as people. Curiosity is the radar we use to navigate this chaotic world — how we make sense of it. The opposite of being curious is being closed off; being narcissistic; being cloistered in our own world. To quote Monica Guzman, “If you can’t be curious across divides in a polarized world, you can’t see the world at all.”

Curiosity doesn’t require you to change your beliefs. Curiosity can lead you to understand others better and help you find common ground. Often the process will show you that you’re mistaken about what “they” really believe. It can lead you to a deeper understanding of others’ experiences, choices, and decisions. It may even shift your views in unexpected ways, making your stances more strong and reasoned and persuasive.

Compassion… even when it’s hard

Even as we greatly disagree with each other, even when we see others as ignorant and harmful, it’s possible to see the reasons why rational and compassionate people can arrive at very different views. 

To name just one factor: Our modern media environment puts so many different takes and narratives at our fingertips; it’s easier than ever for us to build different stories about the world around us. 

Embracing compassion and empathy helps us navigate the treacherous shores of our divides. This doesn’t require deep emotional connection with others; it can be a largely intellectual process of perspective-taking and working through the elements that make up people’s beliefs. Above all, we can try to understand others’ fears and anxieties; often, those fears and anxieties are quite different from ours and are at the heart of our divergent views. 

It’s easy for us to have compassion for people who are like us: the people we see as our allies. But true compassion asks much more of us. It asks us to ignore our perceptions of “who’s with us” and “who’s against us” and instead focus on the humanity of those before us, whoever they are. True compassion is not easy; it requires strength and courage.

We’ll still continue to think some people are wrong, or misguided, or even malicious, but striving to see others’ humanity, and seeing how they are like us — and how we are like them — acts as an antidote to destructive conflict-amplifying behaviors.

Courage… despite external and internal pressures 

We face both internal and external pressures to “go with the flow” of polarized, us-versus-them thinking. People we see as on “our side” may use aggressive, polarizing language and we may feel pressure to avoid criticizing them. We may not want to risk alienating our allies and social groups. We may fear that striving for less polarizing, more humane ways of engaging “helps the bad guys.” 

We may have internal fears of what it would mean to be curious about and compassionate to people we see as very wrong. Being compassionate and curious makes one vulnerable, and no one wants to be vulnerable these days; there is too much on the line. 

Anger can simplify and clarify; it can give us a sense of control in uncertain, stressful times. There’s a reason it can be so tempting and why it is often the path of least resistance. But anger, clearly, also has many downsides. Anger begets more anger — and anger leads to less nuanced and more extreme thinking. In a very real sense, our animosity helps provoke in others the very things that upset us.  

Creating a brighter, less toxic, less divided future requires more of us to be brave. It will require more of us to embrace compassion and curiosity: things that can seem soft and “kumbaya” but that actually require tremendous strength and fortitude. It will require more of us to escape our tendency to want to be safe and to avoid things that disturb us and challenge us (this doesn’t mean putting ourselves in harm’s way; it means sitting with ideas and beliefs that form the roots of our polarization).

Being brave in these ways is difficult — but it is what we must ask of ourselves if we want to be a part of changing things for the better and arriving at workable compromises and solutions.  

Putting these values into practice as Builders

For the new Builders initiative, we define a “Builder” as “a flexible thinker and constructive problem solver who recognizes the dignity of all people.” To build a less toxic and more healthy culture, we can use the 3Cs as a framework to build a pathway to connection, understanding, and problem-solving. 

One thing you can do immediately on this front is to ensure you read a wide variety of perspectives (we recommend Tangle News, which compiles a range of views from across the political spectrum; here’s a recent post of theirs on campus protests). Often there’s a focus on reading widely as a way to determine the truth. But the other reason to read widely is to understand others’ perspectives; to see the building blocks that make up people’s worldviews — whether it’s the Middle East conflict and related protests, or on any other issue. In these polarized times when it’s difficult to get people to agree on what the truth is, understanding views is more important than ever. 

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