Background
Vanderbilt’s paramount mission is to provide the conditions for transformative education and pathbreaking research. Maintaining a culture of free expression so that ideas can be shared, tested, and refined is essential to this mission.
The Open Dialogue Visiting Fellows Program, generously supported by the Stanton Foundation, advances this effort by fostering open discussions among experts with contrasting views, bringing them together for engaging, respectful, and evidence-based debate. The program addresses pressing political and social issues of our time from multiple—and sometimes clashing—perspectives, modeling intellectually rigorous, spirited dialogue about matters of public discourse.
As part of the university’s larger Dialogue Vanderbilt initiative, the Visiting Fellows program invites experts—scholars, elected officials, policy makers, activists, artists, public intellectuals, and others—to live and work on campus as they engage in meaningful dialogue with the community at Vanderbilt and beyond. Through public forums, small discussions, debates, workshops, exchanges with faculty and other experts, and guest lectures in classes, the visiting fellows will embed the principles and practice of open dialogue in every corner of the university.
The Open Dialogue Visiting Fellows Program supports Vanderbilt’s commitment to freedom of expression and encourages discourse based in evidence over ideology.
Inaugural Theme: What is College For?
At a time of intense national debate about the worth and meaning of higher education, the Open Dialogue Visiting Fellows program launches with a series of dialogues about college itself. What is college for, and for whom? What political and policy questions face today’s universities and how should they be addressed? How can campuses be proactive rather than reactive in finding solutions to hot-button issues? And what is the value of higher education, both for students and for our larger society?
For much of recent U.S. history, institutions of higher education have operated under the assumption that college imparts skills and accreditation that prepare students to be citizens and thinkers, fosters important social connections, and enhances opportunities for future employment.
Of late, however, seismic social, political, and economic shifts have challenged core tenets of this belief. Tense political debates contest campus speech and college curricula in unprecedented ways, while politicians threaten to upend established accreditation processes. Technologies like ChatGPT portend shifts to white-collar labor markets. Debates meanwhile intensify about the cost and value of residential college education.
These developments undermine the myth of the “ivory tower”: the notion that college campuses are insulated from the tensions and trends in society writ large. And they highlight the critical importance of genuinely open discussion about the value—and values—of higher education, the stakes of campus political speech, and the links between what goes on in classrooms and in the public square.
This two-year interlinked series of public dialogues explores the politics of higher education through cohorts of thought leaders with contrasting views on specific policy issues and social problems. Each semester, the program will explore a hot-button question and series of related themes to encourage vigorous, well-grounded, multi-staged conversations among those with recognizably different stakes and positions in contemporary debates.
Visiting Fellows will deliver public lectures and/or speak on community panels. But this is just a starting point for their participation in campus life. They will also meet with groups of faculty and students, assisted by our Open Dialogue Student Ambassadors; engage in evidence-based presentations, roundtable discussions, and perspective-taking exercises in our residential colleges; and workshop position papers and research proposals alongside students in our classrooms.
Student Engagement
The Open Dialogue Visiting Fellows Program is unique in that it is intensely focused on preparing our students to take up the seemingly lost art of open dialogue at a time when the platforms for public life are swiftly changing. By bringing fellows to campus for extended periods or multiple visits, and by charging them with modeling the thoughtful sharing of their convictions, the program helps students develop new insight into complex issues and gain appreciation for the disagreement, discord, and compromise that are vital parts of civic life in a democracy.
Through an application process, Open Dialogue Student Fellows will be selected to be critical partners in designing programs of interest to their peers and will serve as hosts for the Visiting Fellows and ambassadors for the program.
Contact
Jonathan Metzl
Director, Open Dialogue Visiting Fellows Program
Frederick B. Rentschler II Chair
Professor of Medicine, Health & Society
Professor of Sociology