Other People’s Stories Part II: Lessons from Heterodox Academy Conference

Photo: L+D sweatshirt worn by Autumn Graves, Head of School at St. Anne's-Belfield, L+D Board Member, and international runway sensation. Sweatshirt designed by Aubree Holliman of Ah-Ha Creative.

A few weeks ago I wrote a newsletter piece called “Other People’s Stories” about the power of listening closely to the stories we may not want to hear. Since writing that article, two things have happened that have me revisiting this topic. 1) We’ve launched our Design for Election Season Materials (DFES) which are designed to help schools prepare for the upcoming election and to build capacity for civil discourse and critical thinking in their students. 2) I attended the Heterodox Academy(HXA) conference in Chicago with 400 educators and non-profit leaders committed to pluralism, free speech, open inquiry and viewpoint diversity. Both the conference and the creation of the DFES materials have left me with a sense of optimism and hope that the world will be less polarized in the future than it is today. I am more convinced than ever that empathy, the capacity to listen to understand, the ability to hold conflicting and sometimes paradoxical ideas, the ability to manage nuance and discomfort, and to be more curious than certain are all skills that we can and should teach in our schools. So here is a rather long recap of the conference.

For context, HXA is primarily focused on higher education and presenters were from colleges and universities, but the topics presented and the challenges of the past few years mirrored the experience of k-12 schools. And the solutions and resources that were being offered were rich and plentiful and worth sharing here. HXA was founded by Jonathan Haight who wrote the book The Coddling of the American Mind and his recent book is entitled the Anxious Generation.

One primary theme of the conference was how to support open inquiry on college campuses. Research points to the fact that a large percentage of college students don’t feel comfortable sharing their perspectives and views on controversial topics in the classroom and admit to self-censorship. But not all colleges and universities are created equal and your high school students might want to know if a college they are considering promotes or obstructs free speech. If you want to dig deeply into this research, check out FIRE (The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression). They partner with College Pulse, a survey and analytics company, to survey 55,000 college students at over 1500 colleges and universities in all 50 states. With this data they have created the College Free Speech Rankings that help identify those colleges that promote and protect free speech. In 2024 Michigan Technological University, Auburn University, and University of New Hampshire were the top three promoters of free speech and Harvard University and University of Pennsylvania were identified as the worst offenders. FIRE has a library of resources about the first amendment and free speech. 

I attended a session with The Mill Institute, a nonprofit housed at the brand new University of Austin, in Austin TX. Their motto “Less certain. More curious.” had a familiar ring to it. The Mill Institute offers free resources for educators about promoting open inquiry and diverse viewpoints. They also have a teaching fellowship for high school teachers who are passionate about this topic (applications are open until June 15). I attended a session with their directors Elisheva Avishai and Ilana Redstone on how to ensure your school and classroom is an idea lab and not an echo chamber. Well-meaning teachers can sometimes perpetuate echo chambers and single viewpoint conversations unintentionally. We discussed why echo chambers exist and why they feel so good - at first - and why they can be incredibly dangerous, especially in classrooms.

Another session, by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, introduced me to new protocols for exploring polarizing topics with groups who have diverse viewpoints. Once again, there are many resources available on their website, but The Pluralist Lab might be of particular interest to those schools that are looking for specific tools for teaching about constructive dialogue. A lot of the protocols they shared are grounded in listening deeply to other viewpoints, lived experiences and personal stories. We practiced these protocols on topics as benign as cats vs. dogs and more controversial topics like crime reduction. These protocols would be appropriate for learners of any age.

My favorite session included a presentation by Simon Cullen, professor of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University. Cullen teaches a Dangerous Ideas in Science and Society course at CMU. Good luck getting into this class, which has a waiting list of over 200 students - all wanting to talk about the most polarizing issues of the day - abortion, gun control, transracialism, immigration. His goal is to get students to think critically and better understand what they actually believe about these issues and to build arguments that are more complex and go deeper than they might imagine. He has created a free software called Philmaps that helps students visualize their arguments. It is a bit like a sophisticated “Five Whys” process. Not only is this an amazing tool for exploring complex issues, but students who use this score dramatically higher on the LSAT verbal reasoning section. What was most exciting about this presentation was the passion that students have to engage in these conversations - when they are scaffolded. It’s not that students want to self-censor, it’s just that they don’t have the tools to really know what they think or the protocols to have effective conversations. This is something we can fix in our schools.

Another focus of the conference was the tension between academic freedom and free speech -  fundamental principles of higher education -  and institutional neutrality. As many k-12 school leaders have found themselves in a quagmire over the conflict between Israel and Hamas and as we all get ready for another contentious election season, we are all trying to decide what and how to communicate our plans and intentions to families and to get out of the endless cycle of writing letters every time there is a national or international event of significance.  These are hard decisions for k-12 school leaders because we care about our families that are most impacted by these events.  And we have passionate teachers who sometimes struggle to remain neutral and nonpartisan for all sorts of reasons. We heard a panel of the Presidents of the University of Chicago, Claremont McKenna College,  the University of Wyoming and Vanderbilt University about their experiences with campus protests and institutional neutrality this year. What did we learn? It's complicated. There is no easy fix. Have the conversation with your leadership teams and your board.

Lastly, here is one more resource. Once you start down a rabbit hole, you find a whole rabbit warren, and I am in deep! While not connected to the HXA conference, this is definitely worth adding to your toolkit. This week I listened to one of my favorite podcasts, Inner Cosmos with Neuroscientist David Eagleman. His episode 60 is entitled Can we think better by wresting with conflicting ideas? The answer is, spoiler alert, yes. His guest is Issac Saul who writes a blog called Tangle. Every day on Tangle, Saul “tackles one big debate in American politics, then summarizes the best arguments we can find from the right, left, and center on that debate.” This was nothing short of inspirational. Here is a person who has a set of values and beliefs and still finds it worthwhile to understand all sides of an argument. While he might not change his mind about something, the value of being curious - more curious than certain - makes him a better thinker and a better human. At the end of the day, isn’t that what we all want for our students and ourselves?