You don’t have to spend much time on MSNBC or Fox—or even the congressional deliberations on C-SPAN, for that matter—to see that Americans’ collective ability to engage in civil discourse is in doubt. Colleges are not immune, as evidenced by speaker shutdowns and students’ own doubts about whether they can speak freely on campus.
It was with those concerns in mind that Ryan Kennedy, an associate professor of political science at the University of Houston, sought and received an institutional grant to create a co-curricular program with small group discussions, moderated by well-trained peers, about some of the most contentious issues facing society today.
