Bridging Differences

SLU Event Encourages Political Dialogue

Dr. Laurie Mulvey, the executive director and co-founder of the World in Conversation Center for Public Diplomacy at Pennsylvania State University, conducted the workshop “How to Talk Across Differences” at Sykes Formal Lounge on Tuesday, October 1. Forty-five students joined this workshop sponsored by SLU’s Fostering Civic Dialogue Across Political Differences program.

Mulvey facilitated a dialogue with the motion “Everyone eligible to vote should be mandated to vote.” The chairs were set to create an inner circle of eight people talking about the motion and a large outer circle for the audience. Throughout the hour-long workshop, students sitting in the inner and outer circles swapped their places four times, allowing around 25 student voices to be heard. Students discussed topics ranging from voting practices in different countries to voter education and accessibility issues.

As a facilitator at the United States’ largest cross-cultural dialogue program with over 3,000 peer-facilitated dialogues per academic year, Mulvey introduced her idea of dialogue with a football analogy. “I would love for you to picture this dialogue as if this was a football game, you didn’t know much about football, and you were watching the playback comments,” she said. “Dialogue is truly dramatic and interesting if you actually know the strategies that are taking place with the facilitator.”

Students from the following two First-Year Program (FYP) classes joined this workshop: “Navigating Conversations about Race” by Dr. Bruce Yang and “Say What? Let’s Talk: Learning to Listen and Speak Across Difference” by Esther Oey and Brenda Papineau. Yang highlighted the event’s importance for “teaching students how to engage in productive dialogue.” For productive dialogues, Papineau encouraged students to get challenged by different opinions. “If you can take something with you today, I think it is seeing dialogue as a way to lean into discomfort instead of running away from it,” Papineau said.

Another participant group was the Civic Dialogue Fellows as part of the Fostering Civic Dialogue Across Political Differences program led by Dr. Mary Jane Smith. “Civic Dialogue Fellows (CDFs) are students from a wide range of backgrounds who participate in a variety of workshops and experiential learning activities designed to enhance their ability to engage in difficult conversations both inside and outside the classroom,” Smith says. Applications for year-long CDF positions are open to everyone at the beginning of every fall semester. Students can contact Dr. Mary Jane Smith for further information.