Student-led projects tackle campus divisions

Through meals, discussion, and games, four student-led projects will kick off this spring in hopes of convening students from different backgrounds and viewpoints to encourage tough conversations and bridge divides.

The projects are funded by the President’s Building Bridges Fund. The initiative, launched in the fall, sought projects focused on building community across faiths, cultures, and backgrounds. 

“I am inspired by the passion and creativity our students bring to fostering dialogue across difference,” said President Alan M. Garber. “Changing our culture is a bold but achievable goal that will require sustained effort throughout the University. This first round of projects represents an important step toward realizing our ambition to enable each person at Harvard to explore contested terrain as readily as common ground and to create meaningful connections that lead to intellectual, personal, and social growth.”

The four awarded projects are focused on cultivating conditions for difficult conversations. Some projects will bring students together in small groups to discuss issues of policy and religious law, while others are designed to challenge participants’ worldviews. The goal: create space for dialogue on complex issues and topics outside of the classroom.

“We are pleased to have received so many thoughtful proposals from both undergraduate and graduate students across the University,” said Sherri Charleston, chief diversity and inclusion officer. “The projects selected brought the mission and purpose of the President’s Building Bridges Fund to life in ways that we are confident will have a real impact on our campus this spring.”

Summaries of the projects

• Building Understanding Between the Jewish and Muslim Communities at HLS (Harvard Law School)

Laying the foundation for future events and informal opportunities, Jewish and Muslim student leaders at HLS will host a luncheon forum open to all students titled “Linked Traditions: Islamic and Judaic Law.” The event will feature a Jewish and Muslim faculty member (or graduate student) who will engage in a substantive discussion on the two linked legal traditions, as well as explore sources of law, institutional frameworks, and modern issues in each tradition.

• Questions Left Unanswered (Harvard College)

This weekly dinner and small group discussion series will bring together College students from diverse intellectual and cultural backgrounds. Over the course of 10 sessions, students will focus on major modern controversies, bringing together students with opposing views for thoughtful small-group discussions about difficult topics. Each session will feature a leading thinker in the field, who will be invited to guide the discussion. By combining intellectual rigor with community-building, this initiative aims to foster a deeper sense of empathy, understanding, and collaboration among participants.

• Fostering Intergroup Collaboration and Intellectual Vitality Through a Cooperative Online Quiz Game at Harvard (Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences – Psychology)

Through Tango, a cooperative online quiz game grounded in realistic conflict theory and intergroup contact theory, this initiative will offer opportunities to examine the challenges of polarization and tribalism. Designed to foster mutually beneficial cooperation, Tango pairs participants from diverse backgrounds in a collaborative problem-solving environment. The questions asked are designed to challenge participants’ worldviews and create meaningful intergroup discussion, thus reducing outgroup animosity and promoting mutual respect across lines of division.

• Policy Bridges: Fostering Constructive Dialogue Across Ideological Divides (Harvard Griffin GSAS – Biological Sciences in Public Health, HSPH, and Biomedical Informatics, HMS)

This three-panel discussion series will focus on a pressing policy issue for the 21st century (Climate Policy, Technology Policy, and Health Policy). The sessions will include small and large discussion groups where both the audience and the experts jointly discuss and identify the common ground and shared values that inform each perspective represented. The goal of the work is to provide a space to facilitate constructive conversations that help bridge ideological gaps, promote mutual understanding, and identify common ground on pressing policy matters.

The President’s Building Bridges Fund was established as a result of the preliminary recommendations from both the Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias and the Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias, which emphasized the need to provide more opportunities for building community across campus. Grant funds were made available to support projects along one or several of the following lines:

• Building relationships between affinity groups whose interests and views on important issues might diverge
• Investing in intellectual excellence
• Acting against discrimination, bullying, harassment, and hate
• Fostering constructive dialogue on campus about interfaith issues, intercultural issues, or some combination of the two

“Both task forces recognized the importance of providing opportunities for students to build cross-cutting community outside of the classroom and to learn skills around constructive dialogue,” said Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor, and a member of both Presidential Task Forces. “These projects respond to the recommendations of the task forces by providing those opportunities in a variety of different contexts.”