Upcoming Events: The Commons in Conversation
On Wednesday, December 18, at 12:30 p.m. ET, we’ll explore how you can navigate political division at work and during holiday family gatherings. Journalist and nonprofit leader Mónica Guzmán joins Chronicle Editor-in-Chief Andrew Simon for the discussion. Guzmán, the founder and CEO of Reclaim Curiosity, is the author of I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. She is also a senior fellow for public practice at Braver Angels, a nonprofit working to depolarize America, and host of A Braver Way, a podcast to help people bridge political divides in their everyday lives.
Join the conversation! The event is free on LinkedIn. Registration is required.
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News and other noteworthy items:
- Researchers Stephen Hawkins and Daniel Yudkin of More in Common write in the Atlantic about their new study, which shows Americans think Democrats hold more progressive views than they really do. “By far the most notable way that Democrats are misperceived relates to what our survey referred to as “LGBT/transgender policy,” they say. “Although this was not a major priority for Democratic voters in reality — it ranked 14th — our survey respondents listed it as Democrats’ second-highest priority.”
- The Edge, a Chronicle of Higher Education newsletter (registration required), explores how colleges and universities contribute to the fracturing of communities. “Colleges used to be local or regional, subregional, taking students from those areas,” says Seth Kaplan, author of Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society One Zip Code at a Time. “The national competition around prestige means that more colleges are not taking people locally, and graduates are not staying locally, not working to be a part of the local community.”
- The first installment of a Stanford Social Innovation Review series on foundation communication argues that grant makers must do more to cultivate trust as misinformation spreads. “Foundations and nonprofits need to focus on community building rather than just pushing messages to an audience,” write Sean Gibbons and Tristan Mohabir of the Communications Network.
- Lauren Gallup of Northwest Public Broadcasting reports on a homegrown group of Democrats, Republicans, and independents in Port Angeles, Wash., who’ve been coming together since the 1990s to talk about their differences. “I am a conservative Republican,” one tells Gallup. “And these are my friends, these Democrats on the other side of the table.”
