2025 Faculty Summer Seminars: Teaching Civil Discourse in a Polarized Time
Instructors: John Rose (UNC-Chapel Hill), Abdullah Antepli (Duke), and Simon Greer (Bridging the Gap)
Dates: July 15th-16th and August 5th-6th
The Civil Discourse Project, in partnership with UNC’s Program for Public Discourse, hosted the fourth annual faculty summer seminar, “Teaching Civil Discourse in the Classroom,” made possible by a generous grant from The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. The seminars were led by Prof. John Rose (UNC-Chapel Hill), Abdullah Antepli (Duke), and Simon Greer (Bridging the Gap).
Each seminar brought together a group of 20 faculty members from a variety of schools and backgrounds for an intensive exploration of effective pedagogy around civil discourse. The sessions covered potential course content and best practices for promoting civil discussion over sensitive topics in the classroom, helping prepare professors to teach courses based on Dr. Rose’s popular class at Duke/UNC, “How to Think in an Age of Political Polarization” (HTAPP). Special attention was paid to the case study of facilitating civil discourse on the subject of the Israel-Palestine conflict, a topic on which the facilitators had extensive experience.