Can Universities Teach Us to Talk Again?

In an era when many Americans believe the country is too divided to come back together, Tufts University political scientist Eitan Hersh believes higher education has a crucial role to play in bridging divides and he’s putting that belief into practice through a new university center devoted to viewpoint diversity.

“What do we want from students when they graduate high school or college,” Hersh says. “We want them to be able to engage with lots of different kinds of people in the workforce or in civic spaces, and know how to handle disagreement, and know how to fight for the things that they care about and know how to listen and learn and develop new ideas.”

Too often, he says, universities and social networks confine people to intellectual bubbles. However, when students understand how others’ beliefs shape their views, they learn to think critically, listen better, and handle disagreement with more nuance. That philosophy drives the creation of Tufts’ new Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education, which Hersh leads. The center will host reading groups, workshops, and in-person discussions that encourage open, offline dialogue across disciplines and ideologies. The center’s mission extends beyond events. In fact, Hersh wants to rethink curriculum and teaching practices to ensure dissenting voices and unfamiliar perspectives are part of students’ education.

“It doesn't mean that you, as a student change your mind on every issue. But you just realize that these issues are complicated for a reason, which is that there is a lot of gray area,” he says. “And to me, that is quite depolarizing. Because all of a sudden, it takes something that looked like an us versus them story into a story of people with different values and senses of the world reach reasonable, different conclusions.”

While “viewpoint diversity” has become a politically loaded term, Hersh sees it as central to higher education’s purpose, not a partisan issue. In this episode, Hersh discusses his hope to rekindle a university culture defined by curiosity, conversation, and understanding.