 Did you know that 64% of students say they don’t have the opportunity to have face-to-face conversations with people who hold different perspectives?(1) Project Pericles’ deliberative dialogue resources and Unify America’s digital platform are working to change that. On Friday, March 14, Project Pericles hosted a webinar, Technology Empowered Dialogue: Within and Beyond the Classroom, in collaboration with Unify America to explore how faculty can engage in meaningful dialogue across political divides. Dr. Emily Stacey, a Periclean Civic Engagement Fellow and Political Science professor at Rose State College, shared how she integrates Unify America’s tools to complement Project Pericles’ deliberative dialogue modules into her courses: Intro to Mass Media and American Federal Government. She facilitated dialogues around hyperpartisanship and mass incarceration and also explained how her tactics for implementing dialogues both in asynchronous platforms, like using online discussion forums and real-time dialogues, can be incorporated across disciplines beyond political science. The Project Pericles deliberative dialogue modules, for example, have several discussion topics and resources across courses in business, the humanities, STEM, and social sciences. In addition to in-class deliberative dialogues, Dr. Stacey requires her students to participate in Unify America’s College Bowl program (described more below.) One of her students, Dalton Waddel, joined the webinar to reflect on his experience in this conversation. He shared: “I found that it was very reassuring to me that you can have political conversations and have disagreements and still be like, okay, you have that opinion, and I have this opinion, and there's nothing wrong with your opinion, and there's nothing wrong with my opinion. We're totally from two different backgrounds. And that's okay.” Arielle Mizrahi and Matt Pollard, Partnership Managers from Unify America, offered insights into Unify America’s College Bowl and Deep Dive programs, which foster constructive discussions on pressing social issues:
Beyond student testimonies, Unify America’s programs are making a tangible difference, after the fall 2024 College Bowl:
The ability to collaborate and compromise across differences is essential for democracy. As Dr. Stacey shared, “If we can't converse with one another, if we cannot have those hard conversations without canceling each other–or worse, then we cease to be a democracy. And tools like Project Pericles’ deliberative dialogue modules and Unify America are really bringing this into focus for students who are living in this media environment, where all they know is the extremes.” Through these initiatives, students don’t just talk about civic engagement - they practice it, gaining skills needed to foster a stronger, more connected democracy. Missed the webinar? You can view the recording here and webinar slides. Key Webinar Resources:
1. Preliminary student data from the Spring 2025 Unify Challenge College Bowl, n = 3,161  Comments are closed.
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Project Pericles
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