New initiative to nurture ‘the skills and habits of dialogue across difference’

From residence hall programming to new grants for faculty, Johns Hopkins University will expand on its history of reaching across divides with new dialogue endeavor

Johns Hopkins University plans a new suite of initiatives to build the capacity of the Hopkins community for dialogue and discourse, President Ron Daniels and Provost Ray Jayawardhana announced in a message to the university community today.

The initiatives include a debate series at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C., and at the Homewood campus, grants for faculty to enhance coursework or campus life, conversations led by the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, and new programming for residence halls. The aspiration is to foster openness to difference and intellectual exploration—both of which are fundamental to the mission of the university, Daniels and Jayawardhana wrote.

“At their heart, universities are seedbeds of pluralism,” they wrote. “Our mission is rooted in openness to difference and intellectual exploration, and these values are etched into our norms of academic freedom and tenure. We bring people into contact with others from a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives—in the case of students, often for the first time in their lives. We are relied upon to nurture in our community the skills and habits of dialogue across difference.”

In their message, Daniels and Jayawardhana outlined the new dialogue initiatives, with more programming to be unveiled throughout the course of the academic year:

• Open to Debate. Open to Debate, formerly known as Intelligence Squared, is the nation’s only nonpartisan, debate-driven media organization dedicated to bringing multiple viewpoints together for a constructive exchange of ideas. Open to Debate and Johns Hopkins are partnering to bring their marquis debates to the Hopkins Bloomberg Center and the Homewood campus, offering a platform for substantive exchange on contested issues.
• Dialogue Innovation Grants. Through this new grant program, faculty will be able to apply for support to develop new methods of incorporating dialogue into the classroom or campus life, such as co-teaching of courses with those of different perspectives, or initiating programs to bring people together across racial, ethnic, religious, or ideological lines in conversation about their lives, perspectives, and experiences.
• Alexander Grass Humanities Institute. Building on its work during the past year to offer courses and host conversations around the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, the institute has developed a pan-university series that taps expertise from across the university to create a learning platform for ongoing conversations representing a broad range of views about the political, historical, and cultural contexts of the conflicts. The series, which launched earlier this week, will offer an opportunity for individuals of all viewpoints, opinions, and beliefs to hear from a variety of experts, express their own views, listen to others’ views, and ask questions.
• Residential programming. Student Affairs, in cooperation with the SNF Agora Institute, will be incorporating programming in residence halls this spring on topics such as misinformation and disinformation, dialogue skills, and social media literacy, building on topics introduced at Democracy Day and a student-organization leadership conference this year.

As part of the dialogue initiative, the university is also launching expression.jhu.edu, a new website featuring resources about how expression and dialogue are related to JHU’s mission and community, as well as affiliates’ rights and responsibilities on campus and opportunities for individuals to develop their capacity for dialogue.

“Our ability to open ourselves to the ideas and perspectives of others illuminates—and brings humanity and meaning to—the education and research that are at the core of our mission,” Daniels and Jayawardhana wrote. “However, that ability cannot be assumed. Rather, it is a capacity that must be developed, in our academic community and the broader society. Through these programs and others, our institution—all of us—can lead the way.”