“I would say it’s been a challenging time to be in higher ed, and it’s also been a challenging time to be a caring human being on this planet, who cares about how others are doing.”
This was Erica Chenoweth’s observation in an HKS PolicyCast podcast episode earlier this year. Chenoweth, the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment and newly appointed academic dean for faculty development, was describing not just the atmosphere on college campuses, but the challenge across the country ahead of another heated political season.
In the fall of 2022, then Dean Doug Elmendorf appointed Chenoweth chair of the Candid and Constructive Conversations (CCC) initiative, a school-wide working group to develop recommendations for creating a shared understanding of constructive discourse at the Kennedy School.
As chair, Chenoweth wanted HKS to take a leading role in creating meaningful engagement. “Our working group concluded that HKS should strengthen core competencies in convening, facilitating, participating in, and recovering from difficult conversations about timely topics, and support a community of learning around this shared vision,” Chenoweth said.
In an email to the HKS community at the start of this semester, Chenoweth outlined five pillars to promote candid and constructive conversations: hosting “signature events” addressing contentious policy issues, providing skill building opportunities outside the classroom, integrating CCC practices into the community culture, supporting innovative projects such as the Harvard Votes Challenge, and enhancing classroom preparation.
New HKS dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy Jeremy Weinstein underscored starting the school year off with a proactive approach. “Because elections, and politics more broadly, can be polarizing, our programming on these topics will be framed as an opportunity to further strengthen our ability to have candid and constructive conversations about divisive topics,” he said in a welcome email to the community.
“The ability to engage across difference is a crucial skill for policymakers and public leaders—and for everyone in this community who cares about having an impact in the world.”
One of the initiative’s new offerings is an online module that HKS community members can take to improve their abilities to have candid and constructive conversations. The CCC module was rolled out to students in August 2024, before the start of the academic year.
In introducing the CCC module at a student orientation, Amy Davies, assistant dean for student services and programs, said 250 students had worked through it already. “I am very happy about that,” she said. “This online module is giving you some basic tools, tips, and vocabulary” around difficult conversations.
Julia Minson, associate professor of public policy, developed the module based on her research on constructive disagreement.
“I’m a social psychologist and a decision scientist by training,” Minson said at the orientation session. “My work over the last 20 years has been devoted to the psychology of disagreement and creating pathways for people to share opinions and viewpoints in a constructive way.”
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How the module works
Working with Heather Sulejman, a mediator and conflict management consultant, Minson turned behavioral science research into educational tools. “I wanted to give students an understanding of how psychologists think about disagreements,” said Minson. Disagreements are not the problem, she said. Conflict is.
The module explores disagreements and the role of conversations, explains the psychology of receptiveness to opposing views, and offers tools on how to develop and signal receptiveness in conversations without sacrificing your core beliefs and values.
“In our research, receptiveness is defined as a person's willingness to be objective and even-handed in terms of what information they seek out, how deeply they consider it, and how critically they evaluate it,” Minson said in a video segment in the module. Sulejman also pointed out that being receptive does not mean changing your mind or compromising. It means listening in a way that’s transparent and recognizable by others.
The module also includes a survey that walks you through a series of self-reflective statements to gauge your attitude toward disagreement. In the end, you receive a score, with 7 being the highest.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the module is an AI chatbot specifically developed for this course called DebateMate. Participants meet DebateMate to discuss a disagreement on a timely policy issue before completing the module. The tool allows them to practice conversational receptiveness on a range of challenging topics and gives feedback and suggestions for improvement.
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Yes, I H.E.A.R. you
At the heart of the CCC module is the H.E.A.R. framework, a fitting acronym that Minson uses to define the key components of conversational receptiveness:
H: hedging your claims, or phrasing facts as you understand them. “We all want to sound confident in our claims,” said Minson. “But by verbally hedging a bit during a discussion—my understanding is that most physicians think the COVID vaccine is safe—you take the wind out of the sails of anyone who wants to find holes in your argument,” she explained.
E: emphasizing agreement means finding some common ground even when you disagree about specific ideas or approaches.
A: acknowledgement, is restating the point you just heard. “Even if you completely disagree,” said Minson, “You can take a few seconds to restate what they said so that they know for a fact you understood them.”
R: reframing to the positive, means replacing negative words like “won’t,” “can’t,” and “don’t” with positive ones without changing the message. Rather than “I can’t support a policy...,” try “I would like to consider a policy...”
“What I like,” said Minson, “Is that the research shows that it really works. In study after study, we see that when people use the H.E.A.R. framework to state their point with greater conversational receptiveness, their counterparts find them to be more reasonable, more trustworthy, and are more willing to talk to them again.”
Finally, while many convincing arguments rely on facts, Minson says a personal narrative can also be an effective way to communicate your beliefs. Sharing a relevant story from one’s own experience creates trust, a key component of persuasive dialogue. “It’s awfully hard to persuade someone if they don’t trust you,” said Minson.
“In study after study, we see that when people use the H.E.A.R. framework to state their point with greater conversational receptiveness, their counterparts find them to be more reasonable, more trustworthy, and are more willing to talk to them again.”
Julia Minson
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“Upskilling” the CCC module lessons
Gaining trust, while key in having constructive conversations, is often difficult, especially with people you barely know. Developing that trust is what Armughan Syed MPA 2024, a research assistant with the CCC, wants to bring to the initiative.
Syed joined the CCC team after taking Chenoweth’s course on civil resistance, “one of the most important classes I took at HKS,” he said.
Coming to HKS from his job at Facebook working on disinformation campaigns, Syed understood the wedges that polarized people. He kept asking himself what the best way was to prevent this polarization. “I realized it starts with getting people to actually talk to each other,” he said. “The CCC initiative seemed like a natural fit.”
He joined the team as a research assistant once he graduated, hoping to use his community organizing skills to take the CCC module work for students to the next level. “If we are creating the public service leaders of the future, then they're going to need to be able to walk into these rooms and be able to bring people together,” he said.
His work fits the skill building pillar of the CCC initiative, practicing the lessons of the module in real-life situations. Among other activities, the initiative holds CCC Clinic events for HKS community members to practice active listening, compassionate speaking, asking good questions, and engaging with curiosity. Among the Clinic events are Dialogue Circles—closed-door group discussions of particularly contentious topics—and Agree to Eat events, where participants are paired and given prompts to discuss over meals.
“A community meal—who doesn’t love to eat —was the perfect way to bring students together and upskill their techniques,” he said. Three dinners are planned throughout the fall. “Our goal is to continue all the way to the election, with a wrap-up the week after.”
For Syed, the work is personal. As he said in his 2024 speech at the Harvard Asian Pacific Islander Desi Association Commencement ceremony, he works for the future of his three-year-old daughter. “She is half Jewish and half Muslim,” said Syed who is Pakistani. “I want make sure she has a world that is informed by choices that are wedded to the ethics of bringing people together.”
“If we are creating the public service leaders of the future, then they're going to need to be able to walk into these rooms and be able to bring people together.”
Armughan Syed
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Making space for the “furious, not just the curious”
Another research assistant on the CCC initiative, Pratyush Rawal MPA 2024, also hopes to provide safe spaces for difficult conversations to happen.
Rawal joined the CCC initiative work a difficult conversation of his own after the October 7th Hamas attack. His background is in creating dialogue across differences to counter hate and polarization, and he has developed an organization called Sadbhavna.in to create a “culture of dialogue.”
So, he was surprised at the difficulty he had with his own discussion. Even more surprising were the results of a CCC survey later that fall.
“The CCC survey found that 50% of students who responded said that they do not feel comfortable in sharing their opinion on controversial topics in HKS Classrooms. This percentage rises to ~80% when asked for HKS Seminars or Public Events,” he recalled. “I found that statistic for a public policy school astounding.”
He realized there needed to be opportunities to have conversations. Along with Syed, he co-led the student caucus on engaging across difference. “The conversations needed to happen,” he said.
The two of them held several events and collected quantitative data to show that dialogue circles worked. “Our data showed that when students were asked ‘how heard do you feel at HKS?’ and ‘how heard did you feel at these events?’ there was an average spike in the results of 40%.”
And then right before graduation, he received an email from Chenoweth. “They said elections are coming and it might get polarizing,” he recalled, and Chenoweth asked him to consider the research assistant position.
“People are realizing that this is a skill that is required. I mean, it cannot be a wish. It cannot be a luxury.”
Pratyush Rawal
He is excited about the work of the CCC initiative and how well the module has been received. Like Syed, he hopes CCC becomes a part of the core curriculum of HKS.
Yet he knows there is work to be done to get everyone involved. “I realized that dialogue spaces involve a lot of emotional labor, and you get the curious but not the furious,” he said. “People are realizing that this is a skill that is required. I mean, it cannot be a wish. It cannot be a luxury.”
In particular, he calls out Minson’s receptiveness survey, a key portion of the CCC module.
“To have a score, that adds a lot of strength to the module. My dream is that the receptiveness score becomes something people start talking about at HKS:
‘Hey, what's your receptiveness score?’
‘Mine is 4.5.’
‘Mine is 5.’
‘Oh, I wish I was 5 too.’ ”
“I feel the philosophy of the module makes a lot of sense for me, and it should be for everyone and not just for people who choose to do it.”
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Photo credits: Bethany Versoy and Winston Tang