As UC Berkeley celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, it is emerging as a national leader in developing science-based practices that nurture constructive dialogue. The goal: Cool tensions, promote understanding and ease polarization.
Even before David Z. arrived at UC Berkeley, he had a strong, uneasy sense that he would not fit in. His family is conservative, and so is he. He’s not doctrinaire: He supports Donald Trump, but he believes in climate change, too. Even so, he suspected that at Berkeley, so famously progressive, he might be an outsider.
In class, or in meeting new people, he understood that one wrong opinion, one wrong observation made among the wrong people, could lead to lasting social penalties.
“The Young Republican club on campus was tabling on Sproul Plaza,” David recalled recently. “Obviously I’m interested, but there were people around. If they saw me going up to the table, what would they think of me? Those things go through your head. So I quickly went to the table and filled out the interest form. I was looking around to see if anyone there would recognize me. And then I quickly walked away.”
This fall, Berkeley marks the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement and the political and social freedoms won by an earlier generation of activists. But a paradox hangs over the celebration: We have almost unlimited freedom to speak, yet many of us are struggling to have even basic conversations about deep disagreements over issues such as racial justice, the Israel-Gaza conflict and the presidential election.
As a result, people are retreating into the safety of their social silos. They’re frustrated and resentful, sometimes even afraid.
But just as Berkeley in the 1960s was at the vanguard in expanding free speech, today the campus community is striving for a new sort of change: to bridge these uneasy divides with programs, fellowships and classes to support healthy disagreement. As a result, the campus is emerging as a national center of innovation in nurturing dialogue to counteract the forces of polarization that are undermining democracy.