Better Discourse: Resources for Addressing Current Issues

As you reflect on implementing better discourse on your campus, you might be looking to create spaces for conversations about some of the most contentious issues of our current moment, Below, find some places to start when initiating discourse on these specific topics.

Israel and Palestine

• Guide to Dialogue About Israel-Palestine from Essential Partners and Interfaith America
  This guide provides a framework for small group discussions about Israel and Palestine, with information on creating spaces for dialogue, structures for reflective listening, sample dialogue agendas, and prompts.

• Multivocal Education on Israel and Palestine from Resetting the Table
  Resetting the Table offers a “non-prescriptive educational setting” framework that demonstrates a variety of viewpoints on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This program requires working closely with Resetting the Table to adapt it to institutional contexts.

  The 2024 election

• Resisting Polarization in an Election Season from Essential Partners
  This framework offers a self-guided training for creating better discourse around elections, with 4 modules that could be incorporated into personal or campus training.

• Everyone’s IN: How Should We Encourage and Safeguard Voting? from National Issues Forum Institute This free deliberative discussion guide, newly revised and launched in July 2024, offers online and in-person forums to discuss security concerns for the upcoming elections. It then proposes three approaches to addressing these concerns.

• Additional 2024 Election Year Resources from NIFI

• 2024 Election Guidebook from Constructive Dialogue Institute
  Based on research conducted with 21 institutional stakeholders, this guidebook offers principles to prepare for the upcoming 2024 election, as well as strategies for leaders, faculty, staff, and civic engagement and DEI centers.

• Voter Education and Engagement from American Association of State Colleges and Universities
  This website contains several resources related to the American Democracy Project’s voter projects and activities, including voter registration information and a YouTube playlist with videos on information literacy during elections, polarization, and developing campus-community ties for this election season.

• Trust in Elections Initiative from Living Room Conversations
  LRC has developed a conversation guide to support building public trust in our elections at the local, state, and national levels. They have received funding to incentivize those who participate in this initiative as a way to further support fostering conversations on this important topic.

• Talking About Politics resources from Living Room Conversations
   

Race, diversity, ethnicity & belonging

• Essential Partners has several resources that can support your institution’s conversations on race, ethnicity, diversity, and belonging. Below are a few available

  • Race in America

  • Stereotyping Exercise

  • White Ally Dialogue Script

  • Fostering Dialogue Across Divides

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Resource Guide from Heterodox Academy

• American Neighbor from Interfaith America
  This documentary film series by the Nantucket Project and available from Interfaith America explores race in America immediately following the murder of George Floyd through conversations in towns along the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans. Join the journey by watching the five American Neighbor documentary films.

• Talking About Race resources from Living Room Conversations
  A collection of conversation tools and resources from Living Room Conversations focused on racial equity.

• Anti-Racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices book and free digital companion from Campus Compact
  This book, published by Campus Compact, and its free digital companion were released in 2023. They are organized around a set of principles and practices developed by the editors as part of their shared work and dialogue with colleagues regionally and across the country.
   

Campus discourse and conflict resources

• Transforming Conflict on Campus from the Aspen Institute’s Citizenship and American Identity Program and Constructive Dialogue Institute.
  This resource identifies contributors to campus conflict, principles for transforming campus conflict, strategies that work, and a discussion guide for use in institutions of higher education.