The Dialogue CoLab
The Dialogue CoLab seeks to rebuild public faith in higher education’s ability to cultivate civil discourse, both on our campuses and beyond. Generously funded by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the CoLab is a partnership of twelve institutions that have developed leading initiatives around dialogue, debate, and democracy. We believe that colleges and universities themselves must drive the effort to nurture better conversations on our campuses—and that we should do this from the ground up, by drawing on the collective wisdom and experience of those who have created exemplary programs.
The CoLab is a place to illuminate common challenges, learn from one another’s frameworks, test new interventions, and develop strategies that can work in varied institutional contexts—and then share that expertise as widely as possible. We are a diverse, cross-sector coalition of institutions that are developing promising models for fostering open inquiry, vigorous-but-respectful discussion of divisive topics, and other essential democratic habits. Ultimately, we seek to amplify, accelerate, and disseminate a body of knowledge that will strengthen campus resilience and civic capacity, nationwide.
