Welcome to Heterodox Academy - Heterodox Academy

Why is HxA Necessary?

In order to address society’s most intractable problems, learners must weave together the best ideas from a range of perspectives.

In many fields, scholars’ backgrounds and commitments are insufficiently diverse. As a result, important questions and ideas may go unexplored, key assumptions can go unchallenged, and the natural human tendencies towards motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, and tribalism can go unchecked. This undermines research quality and the impartiality of peer review; it can also corrupt committee decisions about admissions, hiring, promotion, and curriculum design. Simultaneously, institutional policies, procedures and incentive models of colleges and universities are changing. The needs, priorities and expectations among new cohorts of students are evolving — even as the political climate in the United States (and beyond) has grown increasingly polarized and toxic. The result is a highly-combustible campus environment. Professors and students alike describe the toll self-censoring and the ever-present threat of social or bureaucratic censure have taken on learning, discovery, and growth.

These problems have not gone unnoticed by lawmakers, the media, or the general public. Many fields and institutions where these trends are most pronounced have faced declining enrollments and budget cuts. Meanwhile, trust in universities, expertise, and scientific research has eroded — reducing the impact and continued viability of many lines of inquiry.

What Does HxA Do?

As a collaborative of academic insiders, we are deeply committed to the continued flourishing of colleges and universities — and deeply concerned about the current state of affairs, which is not sustainable. We aspire to help chart a different path forward by:

Increasing public awareness of these issues, to spur action among faculty, staff, students, alumni and donors;
Conducting, disseminating and facilitating research to better understand the nature of the challenges facing institutions of higher learning — and how they can be effectively addressed;
Developing tools and resources that professors, administrators, and others can deploy to assess and then improve their own pedagogical, disciplinary and broader campus cultures;
Cultivating communities of practice among teachers, researchers, and administrators to help accelerate the process of reform; and
Identifying and celebrating institutions that make progress on these matters.

Key Tools & Resources:

A self-report tool you can use to assess which students are feeling intimidated to speak up about which topics and why.

An interactive, psychology-based platform designed to depolarize campuses and foster mutual understanding across differences.

LATEST BLOG POSTS

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- Episode 69: Sheila Heen, Difficult Conversations for Faculty and Students — Part 1
  Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS Sheila Heen is my guest today. She’s the coauthor of Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (1999), a New York Times Business Bestseller that has continuously been in print. An updated 10th anniversary edition was published in 2010. She’s also the coauthor of Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Even When It’s Off-Base, Unfair, Poorly Delivered and Frankly, You’re Not in the Mood), a New York Times bestseller. She is a lecturer at Harvard Law School and a founder of Triad Consulting Group. We discuss difficult conversations between faculty and students in this episode, the first of two episodes with Sheila Heen. Part II is available here. We recorded this using Skype because of technical problems with the application that we normally use. You may notice lower audio quality. Here is a transcript of this episode. Rating the Show If you enjoyed this show, please rate it on iTunes: Go to the show’s iTunes page and click “View in iTunes”Click “Ratings and Reviews” which is to the right of “Details”Next to “Click to Rate” select the stars. See the full list of episodes of Half Hour of Heterodoxy >>... Read more...
- Want Free Speech and Meaningful Classes on Campus? Encourage Listening.
  Well-publicized incidents of speakers being disinvited or shouted down on college campuses, “watch lists” that single out professors at ideological variance from the lists’ creators, and general education classes that many students cannot imagine have real world utility are among the many things that have led some to declare a “crisis” in higher education. The root causes of the problems are difficult to diagnose, though it seems clear that increasing political polarization, students raised in environments awash in social media, increased attention to security and safety in the wake of 9-11 and school shootings, and an emerging view of education as a consumer good shape the social realities on campuses today. While most colleges and universities are not disinviting speakers and most students are not videotaping their professors or their peers to shame them on social media, the anxiety produced by such possibilities does affect daily life and intellectual possibilities on college campuses. Students and faculty are afraid to broach controversial issues for fear that something will blow up in their classrooms. One effective response to this reality isn’t just teaching students to speak better but also teaching students to listen better: with purpose, curiosity, and resilience rooted in a sense of community. That listening is a key component of effective learning and civic engagement seems obvious. We can’t understand someone or their ideas if we haven’t heard them first. But we regularly overlook listening as a skill to be taught and cultivated. In twenty years of college teaching, I have worked diligently to help students improve their abilities in writing, speaking, and presentation, often supported by institutional structures such as writing labs, programs sponsored by centers for teaching excellence, and student learning outcomes such as oral communication and writing “tags” enshrined in various parts of the campus curriculum. Recently, however, as part of a research project focused on dialogue in college classrooms, I have come to understand that emphasizing listening positively impacts everything from students’ willingness to speak to their grasp of course content to their ability to understand why that course content may matter for them and their community. The form of dialogue my colleagues and I have been piloting in college classrooms across the country is anchored by core principles developed by a Cambridge, MA non-profit, Essential Partners. Founded in 1989, Essential Partners has developed an adaptable dialogue approach that fosters trust, understanding, and connection across differences of values, beliefs, and identities. Their model draws upon elements of family therapy, conflict resolution, mediation, appreciative inquiry, organizational theory, neuroscience, and intercultural development. The Essential Partners approach asks people to tell a story about a life experience that will help others understand why they hold a belief, connect that position to deeply held values, and then speak about where they feel pulled or conflicted. It uses timed periods for speaking and listening and periods of reflection to ensure that people can both speak and listen deeply. In classrooms, this means creating a set of communication agreements with students that they consent to follow, often things like not interrupting and listening with courage to opinions that differ from their own. We often develop those agreements by asking students what conditions would have to be in place for them to dissent from a prevalent viewpoint, or by asking them how they know they are really being listened to. The result of crafting dialogic classrooms where listening is valued and taught as a skill has been the creation of campus spaces where students are more willing to speak, even about things they know will run counter to majority campus cultures; greater engagement with course lectures, readings, and fields of knowledge; and an ability to articulate listening as a valuable personal and civic skill. Indeed, survey data of students involved in dialogic classrooms where faculty were trained in Essential Partners’ approach and then did a minimum of three dialogic exercises over the course of a semester shows that more than 50 percent of students reported an improved or greatly improved willingness to speak. 74 percent reported better comprehension of course material. Written responses show that students feel they can use these skills outside of the classroom, and faculty report using dialogic approaches to address difficult topics such as the synagogue shooting in Philadelphia. Students also report a greater resiliency and comfort with listening to viewpoints that differ from their own, something I have witnessed first-hand as my students have talked together about guns in American society, the death penalty, homosexuality in religious contexts, and government roles in human reproduction. They certainly don’t agree about these things, but given the right structure, they can speak, and listen, about them. Nothing blows up. Valuing listening and teaching students how to do it better will not solve every ill of the modern university, or the society whose troubles the university reflects. However, it is a meaningful, low cost, and efficient way to mitigate many of the issues colleges and universities face. One student, asked to reflect on being in a dialogic classroom, put it succinctly: “I have not become an eager political reformist that goes out to peddle their beliefs on the street corner, but this class did teach me that dialogue between people that don’t agree is possible. It can be civil, understanding, AND productive! This class changed the way I see people to some degree. I used to joke that I was a passive anarchist waiting for civilization to crumble under the weight of Twitter and its Friends. However, our dialogues and the outlook of the class give me hope for the world to come where I can listen and be heard by people that don’t have the same political beliefs as me. After all, we can’t get anything done if we’re not listening to each other. I didn’t come into this class expecting anything, but I will walk out of it expecting a great deal.” It is on that expectation and the work of its fulfilment that I hang my hopes for the future of higher education and the greater society of which it is a vital part. Jill DeTemple is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University and a Faculty Associate at Essential Partners, Inc As an organization that prizes pluralism and disagreement — with more than 3,000 members holding diverse views on most issues — Heterodox Academy almost never takes positions as an organization on current events and controversies. Opinions expressed here are those of the author(s). Publication does not imply endorsement by Heterodox Academy or any of its members. We encourage readers to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — and to join in the conversation on those forums — to weigh in on this or other posts.... Read more...

Heterodox Academy

Why is HxA Necessary?

What Does HxA Do?

Key Tools & Resources:

LATEST BLOG POSTS

The Value of Heterodoxy in the Academy

“The whole educational process will be enriched and enlivened by a multiplicity of voices and perspectives.“
–Nadine Strossen

We welcome applications from academics, graduate students, and others.

Heterodox Academy

Why is HxA Necessary?

What Does HxA Do?

Key Tools & Resources:

LATEST BLOG POSTS

The Value of Heterodoxy in the Academy

“The whole educational process will be enriched and enlivened by a multiplicity of voices and perspectives.“ –Nadine Strossen

We welcome applications from academics, graduate students, and others.

“The whole educational process will be enriched and enlivened by a multiplicity of voices and perspectives.“
–Nadine Strossen