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Dialogue Across Differences

This program aims to promote and model AU’s key values of respectful inquiry, critical thinking, active listening, and principled changemaking through a series of campus events, programs, and learning opportunities. The goal is to create and elevate a framework that engages the full AU community in intentional work to build the skills necessary to realize our vision of creating an inclusive AU community where ideas are exchanged freely and respectfully. By leveraging campus expertise and existing resources, this program has three core pillars:  

  1. Building the Foundation through relationship-building

  2. Building our Voices by enhancing our dialogue skills and

  3. Building our community, by modeling dialogue across difference. 

Event Calendar

Dialogue Across Differences Events

— , 2024

Civic Dialogue Faculty Fellows

— , 2024

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Meet and Eat

Visions of Change

Co-creating Community Through Dialogue

The Office of Inclusive Excellence convened faculty, staff, and university leadership on October 22 to kick off Dialogue Across Differences, an ongoing series about how to build a more inclusive AU. In small groups facilitated by the President’s Council on Diversity and Inclusion, participants representing areas across campus discussed building the skills and relationships necessary to set the foundation for how to engage in productive dialogue across campus.

The conversation was framed by a by OIE Project Assistant Giovana Roskosz Reis, SOC/MA ’25, who interviewed students about the current campus climate and how to talk to each other about difficult events, including the Israel-Hamas War. 

Objective

  1. Students will understand free expression and its relationship to justice, higher education, and their empowerment, responsibilities, and goals; 

  2. The AU community will have a greater sense of our shared purpose and community values; 

  3. Students will be able to engage with each other more effectively and generously; 

  4. Potential applicants will be aware of AU’s expectations and values of respectfulness, expressive freedom, and robust and truthful inquiry; 

  5. Students will arrive at AU more prepared for life in a diverse and inclusive community, including dialogue across difference.Â