Difficult Dialogues Initiative

Projects / University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC

Institutionalizing Difficult Dialogues: Freedom of Conscience in the Public University
PIs: William L. Andrews, Senior Associate Dean, Humanities and Fine Arts, College of Arts and Sciences and E. Maynard Adams Professor of English; Judith Welch Wegner, Professor of Law and Chair of the Faculty.
Location: College of Arts and Sciences.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of 27 institutions of higher education implementing large scale projects as part of the Difficult Dialogues Initiative, a grant program of the Ford Foundation in partnership with the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. 

About the Difficult Dialogues Initiative at UNC-Chapel Hill
UNC-Chapel Hill is a highly selective public university with a blend of intellectual achievement and spiritual commitment among many of its students, making Carolina an ideal “laboratory” to investigate the sources and symptoms of what many think are inevitable conflicts between religious faith and free inquiry. In the summer of 2002, a national controversy erupted over the university’s decision to assign Approaching the Qur’an to its incoming first-year class as part of a required summer reading program. A valuable exchange ensued, but it did not lead to a sustained dialogue that focused on the relationship between academic freedom and religious conviction. UNC-Chapel Hill’s proposal will move from authorizing the principle of diversity to the more difficult task of institutionalizing the practice of dialogue on the campus. For additional details on the project background, please read A View from Chapel Hill.

In the project’s first year, the highly-regarded National Issues Forum Network has partnered with UNC-CH to conduct focus groups and gather baseline data on campus and in the larger community; frame the campus’s key issues; coordinate identification of options for interventions; conduct workshops and other hands-on opportunities for faculty and students to refine their skills in leading difficult dialogues; develop moderator and discussion guides, facilitation techniques, and other materials; and test and refine activities and materials as needed to meet program objectives. More>

April 2007 Project Update

February 2007 Project Update.

Application for Support on Campus Dialogue.

The Guru Nanak Interfaith Award:  The Guru Nanak Interfaith Prize in the amount of $50,000 will be awarded by Hofstra University in collaboration with the Sardarni Kuljit Kuar Bindra Charitable Foundation biannually beginning in 2008 to an individual or organization chosen by a distinguished panel of judges.  The goal of this award is to enhance awareness of the critical role of religious dialogue in the pursuit of peace as well as to provide direct support for the furtherance of such activities. Nominations are due by July 1, 2007.


Links to UNC-Chapel Hill's Difficult Dialogues Program