The report examines HKS’s current climate and proposes a multi-year, schoolwide effort to strengthen that climate.
Harvard Kennedy School is committed to strengthening the ability of our students, staff, and faculty to have candid and constructive conversations across difference.
Our goal is to foster an environment of openness, humility, and respect necessary for the robust exchange of ideas. We seek to rigorously engage with competing perspectives, talk with those with whom we disagree, and ensure that all members of our community feel heard and respected. The ability to disagree constructively and across difference is important for learning and working together effectively, and it is a core competency for public leaders and policymakers. Without these skills, public problems become even more difficult to solve.
A team of faculty, staff, and students worked from the fall of 2022 to the spring of 2024 to assess the challenges that HKS faces in fostering candid and constructive conversations and to develop a strategy and recommendations for overcoming those challenges. We are now implementing these recommendations.
Candid & Constructive Conversations Report
Our Fall 2024 Strategy
Worldwide, more voters than ever in history have headed to the polls in 2024, including the United States. Yet elections can be polarizing, and they often amplify the underlying divisions or tensions that make governing—and public service—difficult. As a School, we will rise to this opportunity to learn how to learn, lead, and serve in polarized times. Our strategy involves five key pillars.
To model and provide opportunities for practicing productive disagreement, we will:
- Host a series of signature events, many co-hosted with each of the School’s Centers, about important but contentious policy issues under discussion in the US and around the world. Some of these events will also feature pre-brief and debrief opportunities, with an eye toward skill-building.
- Convene panels of CCC practitioners and professionals working in this and related fields.
- Participate in the ongoing Harvard Dialogues series at the university.
To support constructive disagreement in the classroom, we:
Launched a new online module on Constructive Disagreement, developed by HKS Associate Professor Julia Minson.
Launched DebateMate, a chatbot which helps coach the user in more effective receptive listening, developed by HKS Professors Julia Minson and Sharad Goel.
Offered workshops on productive disagreement during new student orientations.
Provided new resources to faculty on supporting constructive disagreement in the classroom.
Planned faculty workshops to support this work throughout the semester.
To provide more thorough skill-building opportunities, we will:
Launch the CCC Clinic, which will involve pre-scheduled facilitated discussions with diverse audiences over meals, routine office hours, and pop-up sessions depending on demand.
Provide continual curricular and co-curricular opportunities, through events, workshops, courses, and seminars, to practice these skills and provide students the chance to reflect on their progress.
Encourage student organization and caucus initiatives tied to this theme.
To further integrate the norms and practices of CCC into the fabric of the HKS community, we will:
Observe the HKS Non-Attribution Rule as the default norm at all HKS events. This means that unless otherwise explicitly mentioned, we can share what we learned, but not who said what.
Limit the personal use of technology in classrooms, including in some experimental “no phones” classes.
Build CCC into the visual culture of HKS, including distributing free merch!
Maintain our website as a public resource, while also providing further internal and resources and updates at our HKS HUB site.
We will support pilot projects that seek to increase our impact around candid and constructive conversations. Some of these include:
Promoting the Harvard Votes Challenge.
Supporting a “Human Library” initiative.
Maintaining a CCC Research Guide.
Launching the HKS Libraries & Democracy Initiative.
Exploring ways to acknowledge those who develop and demonstrate CCC expertise.
Preparing a cohort of students who can act as peer leaders to support the CCC clinics.
HKS faculty on candid conversations
Professors Erica Chenoweth and Julia Minson talk about the importance of overcoming polarization and the value of—and skills needed for—candid conversations.
Speaking to the moment
It’s not enough to talk about having difficult conversations; scholars and students have to persist when things get uncomfortable. That’s been the guiding principle behind Middle East Dialogues, a series of events organized by HKS Professor Tarek Masoud that focus on the Israel-Hamas war.
- News as the civic infrastructure that can help overcome political divides
- Making policy during a period dominated by anxiety and toxic politics
- How to have constructive conversations with people we strongly disagree with
- Citizens need to step up to protect democracy
- In this era of polarization, even enemies can negotiate
- How to have receptive conversations
- Answering democracy's most pressing research questions
- We’ve lost our way on campus. Here’s how we can find our way back
- Israel and Gaza: How did we get here? Where are we going?
- Utah Governor Spencer Cox and HKS faculty member Julia Minson agree: We have to disagree better
- The psychology of disagreement with Julia Minson
- Saving democracy is too important to leave “to nerds like me”
- For the Sake of Argument
- We’ve lost our way on campus. Here’s how we can find our way back.
- Warning for journalists: You’re more ignorant than you realize
- ‘Harvard Thinking’: Our democracy problem. Three scholars on how a ‘big, heterogeneous, diverse country’ can avoid coming apart
Harvard Resources
- Student handbook
- Harvard Ombuds
- Harvard CAMHS
- Intercollegiate Civil Disagreement Partnership
- Harvard EAP
- Harvard Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging—Community Dialogue Series
- The Design Studio at the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics
- HBS Community Values
Outside Harvard
The HKS community can submit ideas to our team.
Have ideas for fostering dialogue, facilitation skills, or modeling constructive disagreement?
Attend Events
For a listing of upcoming Candid Conversation events view our events calendar.