Are Universities Missing Opportunities to Heal Division?

“When you come together with people who have different ideas, one idea and another idea should not equal two ideas, they should equal better ideas. And the keystone for developing civil discourse is intellectual humility. That’s the starting point.”
    — Pano Kanelos, from the 12 Geniuses podcast

In the latest episode of “Debate Without Hate: Elections 2024,” Pano Kanelos, president of the University of Austin, discusses education and polarization. Are there strategies to encourage open dialogue on college campuses? What role can students, professors, and administrators play in reducing political toxicity, contempt, and extremism?

Pano discusses the left-leaning “monoculture” found on many college campuses and why this can be a source of division and dysfunction. A monolithic alignment of culture results in less room for different ideas that deserve attention and respect. There’s pressure for everyone to agree on issues instead of thinking rigorously about those issues:

If students disagree with the reigning orthodoxy, they are “at best left out of the conversation” or, at worst, “punished” or otherwise put at risk.

These dynamics and pressures work against independent thinking, and Pano and others created the University of Austin to combat those dynamics on college campuses: 

One of the things we’re trying to do is just go back and say, what if you think of a university as a place that’s meant to foster builders and creators and innovators and, also, engender a sense of civic responsibility and, you know, communal connectedness.

Watch this 12 Geniuses episode now. 

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