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Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

Dialogue Across Difference

Dialogue Across
Difference

The Dialogue across Difference (DaD) Initiative aims to model and promote the values of intellectual engagement, curiosity, empathy, active listening and critical thinking through a series of campus events, classes, informal learning opportunities and social programming. Through its four prongs of campus collaboration, student leadership, teaching programs, and training and workshops, DaD maximizes campus resources and expertise to help build these critical skills in our community.

Dialogue Across Difference Initiative Website

Campus Collaboration

UCLA has a vast resource of leaders, experts and scholars who embody the DaD values of intellectual engagement, curiosity, empathy, active listening and critical thinking. The initiative brings these groups together to share best practices and make these valuable opportunities for learning and connection more accessible to our community.

DaD-recommended and affiliated events can be viewed in the Dialogue across Difference section of the UCLA Community Calendar.

Campus partners and DaD affiliates:

Student Internship and Ambassadorship

Student interns are an integral part of the DaD team. The initiative offers an annual opportunity for students with a deep commitment to advancing dialogue on campus to join this team and contribute to our mission. Internship applications open once per year. DaD student ambassadors share about dialogue opportunities and programs with their peers and advance dialogue in their respective activities on campus.

To apply:

Please submit your cover letter and resume via this form.

Feel free to send any questions to Maia Ferdman at mferdman@college.ucla.edu.

Teaching Programs

Dialogue across Difference (DaD) Faculty Fellows Program

In an increasingly diverse and polarized world, engaging others with whom we disagree or who have differing perspectives can be challenging. Instructors play a critical role in establishing an inclusive learning environment and, importantly, equipping students with the tools to engage in complex conversations across differences in lived experience, cultural background and perspective. Indeed, many of our classrooms are sites for such conversations.

Dialogue across Difference (DaD) is collaborating with the UCLA Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) to expand our work in the realm of classroom instruction. The new Fellows program, which the TLC will administer, supports UCLA instructors of record who are incorporating DaD values of intellectual engagement, curiosity, empathy, active listening, and critical thinking into their course materials and teaching practices. The program launched in May with an information session that invited applications. Of the 28 applicants, 16 were invited to join the initial 2024-25 cohort, their proposed offerings represent an impressive diversity of topics across both undergraduate and graduate courses, as well as thoughtful engagement with DaD values.

The inaugural DaD Faculty Fellows Program officially kicks off with a workshop in September.  There will be recurring community of practice meetings during the academic year and a culminating event in June 2025 to showcase the instructional innovations of the faculty cohort, which includes the following members:

Funding for these faculty fellowships is provided by the UCLA Teaching and Learning Center, the Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Foundation, and the office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost.

Fiat Lux Offerings

In an increasingly diverse and complex world, the ability to engage in meaningful dialogue across differences is an essential skill. To facilitate a UCLA community equipped to engage in meaningful conversations, DaD has partnered with the Fiat Lux program to offer classes that facilitate the exploration, connection and understanding of differences.

The classes are focused on the following goals:

The inaugural Dialogue across Difference Fiat Lux classes scheduled for spring 2024:

Training and Workshops

DaD has partnered with the nationally acclaimed nonprofit Resetting the Table to bring its field-tested methodology for engaging across charged differences to campus. UCLA sent a delegation of eight administrators to its inaugural “Train the Trainer for Higher Education Administrators,” which launched in August 2024. They will learn RTT’s intensive methodology for communicating across charged political differences, and in turn run their signature “Speaking Across Conflict” workshop for different UCLA audiences. The cohort includes:

  1. Linda Clowers, Director, Research & Bruin Engagement Office (Office of Equity Diversity and Inclusion)
  2. Felicia Graham, Dialogue Across Difference Staff; Graduate Student in School of Education
  3. Derisa Grant, Director for Educational Development Programs (Teaching and Learning Center)
  4. JC Jimenez, Special Assistant for Faculty JEDI, Clinical Professor of Surgery (David Geffen School of Medicine)
  5. Kris Kaupalolo, Associate Director, SOLE (Student Organizations, Leadership & Engagement, Student Affairs)
  6. David Myers, Dialogue Across Difference Chair; Distinguished Professor of History
  7. Amrit Nagra, Director of Clinical Operations, Arthur Ashe Wellness Center
  8. Cory Rosas, Director, Diversity Programs and Initiatives (Alumni Affairs)

DaD is conducting its training efforts on three levels:

Engage

DaD seeks to build the campus’s capacity to have constructive conversations across lines of difference

Facilitate

DaD seeks to train campus leaders to effectively manage conversations in the classroom, workplace, and other spaces where difference is present

Convene

DaD seeks to support campus conveners to develop programs, conversations, and events that advance the goals of dialogue across difference

Keywords: Terms of Contention in Public Debate

This event series was launched to highlight words that are particularly divisive and hold varied meanings for different communities.

The first Keywords event featured a dialogue between Palestinian American legal scholar Prof. Omar Dajani and Jewish-Canadian scholar Prof. Mira Sucharov about the word “Zionism.”

Upcoming Keywords events will be posted on the Dialogue across Difference page of the UCLA Community Calendar.

Activities

Resources

  • High Conflict by Amanda Ripley
  • Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein
  • Righteous Minds: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
  • Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen