A new lesson in higher education: Being OK with uncomfortable conversations
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Last fall, David Perez found himself tossing a ball with a bunch of people he didn’t know very well. The exercise was part of his orientation at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, where Perez is an international fellow from Bogota, Colombia.
Perez was being encouraged to totally fail — to deliberately not catch the ball at all, which, he said, was “more than uncomfortable. It was confusing.”
But as Perez tossed the ball, things started to click for him. The activity wasn’t meant to be embarrassing. It was a playful way to humanize his fellow students and feel less self-conscious about failure going into the school year.
“You fear to make mistakes,” he said. “This dynamic, this is the opposite way. It was, ‘Your mistake is OK. We are all cheering to you. We are all here to support you, and you are not the only one who [makes] mistake.’”
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The exercise was part of the Constructive Dialogue initiative at the Humphrey School.
The year-round workshops rely on theater improv techniques. They also teach active listening and the art of asking curious questions. And they reinforce the idea that it’s OK to abandon the goal of changing someone’s mind.
Rachel Leatham, the Humphrey School’s director of career & student success, said that since the pandemic, the school has seen more students who are uncomfortable with people and ideas that conflict with their own, a problem noted in many higher education circles. Faculty recognized the need for teaching students to welcome conversations about political differences.
“I was hearing conflicts coming up — personal conflicts between students, conflicts between faculty members and students,” Leatham said.
Leatham said employers want new hires that can handle contentious political conversations. It’s an especially important skill set for people heading into politics or public policy, which are common career tracks for students here.
“I’m being contacted by employers all the time who are asking for students to play a role in nonpartisan agencies,” she said. “And I need to be able to make sure that our students are equipped and able to enter those spaces in a way that allows them to do fact-based analysis, fact-based policy recommendations.”
Higher education used to be a place where young people were exposed to new views. That’s become harder in the current political climate, according to Mylien Duong, vice president of Research at the Constructive Dialogue Institute, which supplies the curriculum to the Humphrey School.
“People just didn’t want to speak up because they didn’t want to be socially punished for it. So it’s a huge problem when you’re trying to learn,” she said.
According to Duong, demand for the Constructive Dialogue Institute’s curriculum has increased since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, which became a flashpoint on university campuses.
“Last year … we had 30 partner campuses all across the country who are using our programs,” Duong said. “This year, we are at 90. And we are not the only ones working in this space.”
Back at the Humphrey School, David Perez said he can see now how these workshops connect to his work in public policy, especially as he starts a spring internship at Hennepin County in a few weeks.
“Designing public policies for people implies that you feel what people feel,” Perez said. “So I do think that it … will help to boost my policy designing.”