Forum: Challenging Students to Engage Meaningfully Across Ideological Differences

Abstract

As college student educators, we notice a pattern of difficulty in our students’ ability to engage meaningfully across ideological differences. In this work, we posit the social media mindset’s penchant for reductive framing and outgroup shaming as a potential diagnosis of the problem. We explore how these tendencies show up in the classroom; we present alternative frameworks for stimulating better conversations across differences. These frameworks include promoting democratic civility (as opposed to niceness), understanding ourselves as works in progress (as opposed to engaging call-out and cancel culture), and creating the conditions for the call-in (as opposed to “ducking diversity”).