 Inviting Dialogue
While considering current and challenging issues through our symposia events and seminars, the practice of dialogue itself is at the heart of the Difficult Dialogues initiative at Clark. In the nature of a good question, dialogue loosens assumptions, reveals tacit constructs and invites exploration and new possibilities. Premised on attentive listening, presence, willingness to respect difference and release judgments, and transparency around issues of power, it fosters critical thinking, community, meaningful civic engagement, collaboration and creativity. Its practice takes many forms, with mindfulness common to them all.
Understanding our own campus as a microcosm of the culture, the DD initiative began by engaging the silences and avoidance often prevalent in our culture over the last decade. A central responsibility of higher education is the preparation of young people to assume their roles as citizens of a democracy; another is to encourage ownership of their own learning. Dialogic practices within a campus community develop the attitudes and skills required for a participatory democracy to thrive, and for students to lay claim to a meaningful education of their own.
DD Initiative since 2005
We are one of twenty-seven independent programs nationwide, selected from over 700 colleges and universities by the Ford Foundation, for their original Difficult Dialogues initiative, launched in 2005.
In late October and early November of 2006, we held two weeks of launch events to introduce our program to the Clark community: during the Day of Listening, the entire campus had the opportunity to learn skills of respectful listening, hearing and being heard, in small informal workshops held all over campus; a workshop on the Way of Council launched our culture of dialogue series; a keynote talk by Diana Chapman Walsh, President of Wellesley College, helped us set our sights for the years ahead; and a public forum, in partnership with the Public Conversations Project, allowed us to experience the powerful space of dialogue around the difficult issue of abortion in Bridging the Abortion Divide: The Boston Story.
Also that Fall, a group of 20 faculty participated in a full semester of faculty development, led by outstanding practitioners in the field. Many of the faculty who participated in this process went on to teach dialogue-affiliated courses, and continue to participate in ongoing conversations on the relationship between dialogue and pedagogy. An additional 60 staff participated in two one-day workshops to build their own awareness of dialogue.
During the 2007 calendar year, we explored the process of working with difficult concerns through dialogue with a series of four Difficult Dialogues symposia – The State of our Democracy, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Tolerance, and Power. In that year, we also held our first semester of DD-affiliated courses – twelve in all – that ran concurrent with the symposia, drawing from its content and focused on developing and deepening skills of dialogue in the classroom.
Since then, we have held three additional public symposium series – Climate Change, Reclaiming the common wealth, and Where Do We Go from Here: Race in the Era of Obama, and we continue to offer an average of fifteen DD-affiliated courses each semester, including The Dialogue Seminar – a weekly seminar in which Clark students engage with the current symposium topic through focused dialogic practice.
By exploring the practice of dialogue throughout campus – both inside and outside the classroom – and through various cross-campus/community partnerships, the power of dialogue as a process continues to unfold, leading us into new context and opportunities. As we make the transition from the initial Ford Foundation grant to becoming a sustained presence at Clark, we continue to build towards our ultimate goal – to create a culture of dialogue on campus.
In fall 2009, a two-volume report and resource guide – outlining the intentions and praxis of our initiative, and sharing our stories, experiences and reflections – will be available. If you would like to be notified once the report becomes available, please email jandroski@clarku.edu
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The Difficult Dialogues Initiative
Nationwide, there are 43 colleges and universities involved in the Difficult Dialogues program.
National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation
NCDD's mission is to bring together and support people, organizations, and resources in ways that expand the power of discussion to benefit society. We believe that elevating the quality of thinking and communication in organizations and among citizens is key to solving humanity's most pressing problems.
The Dialogue Process
 The Ashland Institute
The Ashland Institute teaches the personal and collective capabilities needed to fulfill the promise of collaboration and creative community. Their offerings focus on skilled Dialogue and individual anchoring in Essential Self—both necessary to thrive in the intensities of our time.
Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society is a non-profit organization which works to integrate contemplative awareness and contemporary life, to help create a more just, compassionate, and reflective society.
The Co-Intelligence Institute
This ability to wisely organize our lives together—all of us being wiser together than any of us could be alone—we call co-intelligence. This site includes hundreds of articles and references describing proven methods, innovative models, practical visions and the theoretical frameworks that weave them all together. It has rightly been called a treasure-trove. Welcome to its resources.
Dialogos
Dialogos is a world leader and pioneer in the theory and practice of dialogue, organizational learning and collective leadership.
Public Conversations Project
The Public Conversations Project (PCP) helps people with fundamental disagreements over divisive issues develop the mutual understanding and trust essential for strong communities and positive action.
The World Cafe
This website contains a wealth of information and resources you can use to host your own World Café dialogues. We hope you'll be moved to engage in “conversations that matter” with your family and friends, as well as within your organizations and communities
Wosk Centre for Dialogue
The Wosk Centre is an intellectual home and an advocate for dialogue. At the Centre practitioners, researchers and students of dialogue probe the nature of dialogue—that process of interaction whereby open-minded discussion leads to mutual understanding and positive action—and they nurture it in practice.
consultant to Clark University 's Difficult Dialogues program
Dialogue and Democracy
Animating Democracy
Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts Institute for Community Development and the Arts, fosters arts and cultural activity that encourages and enhances civic engagement and dialogue.
BeyondPartisan.org
Beyond Partisan believes that responsible government rests on reasoned debate. It is born of the sentiment that the push of two parties separates us as individuals and weakens our common political conversation. However, accessible and balanced debate provides America with the opportunity and strength to rise above that which divides her.
By the People
By the People provides many opportunities for local public television stations, community organizations and community colleges to creatively engage the public in meaningful and informed dialogue about the pressing issues of the day.
City-Wide Dialogue
Dozens of local organizations and hundreds of volunteers and residents are collaborating in a proactive program of candid, respectful, multi-session neighborhood-based dialogues leading to increased understanding and new trust and relationships. Over 600 people have already participated in dialogues all over Boston !
Democracy Campaign
To engage large numbers of Americans in the process of authentic, healthy dialogue across differences.
Democratic Dialogue Network
Observing the dynamism inherent to human processes, we contribute to the discovering and strengthening of communication and interchange spaces that allow energies, wills and knowledge to flow in order to foster a joint building of a peaceful coexistence.
Let's Talk America
Let's Talk America is a nationwide movement that will bring Americans from all points on the political spectrum together in cafes, bookstores, churches and living rooms for lively, open-hearted dialogue to consider questions essential to the future of our democracy.
The World Cafe
This website contains a wealth of information and resources you can use to host your own World Café dialogues. We hope you'll be moved to engage in “conversations that matter” with your family and friends, as well as within your organizations and communities.
Dialogue and Pedagogy
Diversity Web
The most comprehensive compendium of campus practices and resources about diversity in higher education that you can find anywhere. This site is designed to serve campus practitioners seeking to place diversity at the center of the academy's educational and societal mission.
Dialogue in the Arts
Animating Democracy
Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts Institute for Community Development and the Arts, fosters arts and cultural activity that encourages and enhances civic engagement and dialogue.
Dialogue and Culture
http://www.droppingknowledge.org
Dropping Knowledge's mission is to provide a globally accessible educational source and online network of knowledge, opinions and ideas, in order to enable people to gather, take-up and reflect on multiple viewpoints of important global values and issues of our time. The aim is to transfer the knowledge into society, to stimulate critical thought, to generate wisdom and simultaneously create a dialogue between people and their communities.
http://www.globalagoras.org/
The Institute for 21st Century Agoras is a volunteer-driven organization dedicated to vigorous democracy on the model of that practiced in the agoras of ancient Greece. It employs Co-Laboratories of Democracy that enable civil dialogue in complex situations.
http://www.splcenter.org/
The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded in 1971 as a small civil rights law firm. Today, the Center is internationally known for its tolerance education programs, its legal victories against white supremacists and its tracking of hate groups.
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