"I've been doing this work for a long time, and what I'm worried about is the backdrop of fear and self-censorship on campuses," said Thomas, whose institute is part of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. "[Faculty and staff members] are afraid of retaliation, of getting hammered by their students, of being videotaped and then the tapes go viral."
It was time to respond-and AAC&U did. This week the association, in conjunction with the Sustained Dialogue Institute (SDI), launched the Campus Conflict and Conversation Help Desk, a virtual resource designed to provide free, timely advice to any campus instructor or administrator facing difficult dialogues, whether in class, meetings with colleagues, co-curricular activities or off-campus events.
Similar efforts have popped up elsewhere, both at the institutional level and in the form of one-on-one advising. To take one example, Shira Hoffer, a senior at Harvard University, recently launched a nonprofit consulting group, known as the Institute for Multipartisan Education, which advises K-12 and postsecondary educators on how to improve the quality of discourse over polarizing topics.
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