Can College Campuses Help Reduce Polarization?
Allison Briscoe-Smith explains why she's hopeful about bridging differences in
our society—and what role colleges have to play.
By Jeremy Adam Smith
We talked with her about the Learning Fellowship—and why college campuses are so critical for building an alternative to political and social polarization.
Jeremy Adam Smith: What do you mean by bridging differences?
Allison Briscoe-Smith: I mean, very simply, how do we connect across our differences.
JAS: When you think “differences,” what do you think of?
Allison Briscoe-Smith, Ph.D.
ABS: Political affiliation, values, race. The “other” that we can’t stand. How do we connect across differences with people who we don’t like, don’t trust, or who we don’t know?
But as I’ve been spending a lot of time in this kind of bridging space, I’ve been learning that it can also be about connecting with people who like broccoli and don’t like broccoli.
I’m trying to get very small with it. There’s this video of British kids talking about differences, and you come into it and you think it’s going to be this big thing. You see visually different kids, kids in a wheelchair, kid not; kid that has hijab, kid doesn’t, gender and race differences. And they’re like, what do you notice is the thing that’s most different about your friend? And a kid answers, “She likes to sing, and I do not.” There’s something about that that I find really kind of sweet. I think we have this sense about differences as these big giant fault lines, but these kids who ostensibly look and experience things really differently were like, “She likes tomatoes, and I don’t.” The video shows that differences can be OK—and are present in friendships and our connections.
JAS: Are there any differences that you don’t think can be bridged?
ABS: I do think that some bridges cannot be crossed. And I think also there is some conflict that cannot be solved. As a toxically positive pathological optimist, that’s hard for me to say. But I do think there are some divides that are just too big.
JAS: Do you feel able to provide an example?
ABS: I work in the context of trauma, of serving people who’ve experienced trauma. I work with a lot of adults who are survivors of childhood trauma. Many of them have held this incredible capacity for grace and connection and have sought out a relationship with people who have harmed them. And some of them have an incredible capacity for grace and loving and connection, and have decided that that is a divide they’re not going to cross. I don’t hold any judgment about either decision. I hold awe and wonder at folks who discern what bridges they will and won’t cross. I think there are some places that people have made wise and hard decisions to not try to come together.
JAS: Let’s talk about higher education. Why focus on bridging in higher education specifically?
ABS: I think there are a number of different reasons why.
One is because higher ed campuses are a kind of crucible for divides. They’re becoming places where the divides are becoming really large and publicized through the media, and so are pretty consequential. Something like 63% of college students say that they don’t feel like their campuses have a climate where people can speak about what they really believe. There’s a great report out by Constructive Dialogue Institute that breaks down the types of divides that are showing up on campuses. We’re more and more racially divided, we’re more politically divided. We’re divided recreationally, spending our leisure time doing very different things.
So there’s that—campuses are where stuff is going down. I think the second reason is positive, though. It’s that college campuses could be an amazing place to engage in diversity, to engage in different thought, to lean in. I think higher ed could be a place where we actually support people in connecting across differences and being impactful.
JAS: Years ago, I wrote a summary of the available research about political polarization. And one thing that really surprised me is the degree to which it is structural. If you go out of our sphere of psychology, into political science and economics, it’s pretty clear that it was the Civil Rights Acts of 1965 that drove the GOP to start poaching white Democratic voters in the South, which made them much more right-wing and the Democrats much more left. Since then, Congress has become measurably more polarized, with less and less overlap in voting between the parties. At the same time, there are some really big economic forces at work—driving inequality and destroying local newspapers, for example. Given that, why do you think it’s possible to turn the tide at all? What gives you hope?
ABS: Given that we’re in a capitalistic society, somebody is making money from our polarization. Amanda Ripley talks about conflict entrepreneurs, and I really like that language, but there are a lot of people who are making money off of it, like politicians and social media. We have an emerging economy that is capitalizing off of telling parents to be afraid of everything. There’s been recent information and data that shows that new mothers on Instagram are targeted with ads and videos that show bad things happening to infants or kids that encourage the purchasing of items, like the right bassinet or the anti-choking tool. There’s somebody who’s making tons of money from that—which I think means, conversely, that we need to ask ourselves how we can support economies that don’t only capitalize off of our fear. I don’t know that that’s necessarily hopeful, but it might point to a solution.
The organization More in Common has this great data that shows that most folks are in this exhausted majority, who actually agree on, or hold more complex and nuanced ideas about, big issues like gun safety or abortion. But this exhausted majority isn’t driving the political debate.
The same thing is true for parents. We’ve got study after study that shows that the majority of parents don’t want what’s happening in these really politicized debates about education. They want teachers to be able to teach, they want books. We have clear evidence that the majority or many folks have much more nuanced, complicated, less polarized views. However, there are a few very loud voices at the margins that are compelling the debate and demanding policy change. I think being able to shine a light on our complexities and nuances, and that there are many folks who fall in the middle, can certainly help. Equipping folks to actually reach out and talk to those “others” who you THOUGHT were radically different, but actually might not be, is what bridging can do.