Let’s Have More Difficult Discussions

Nowadays, most of our institutions include a course related to diversity in one way or another as a general education requirement. Many of these courses focus on—or at least include—conversations about difference and inequality, power and privilege. Study abroad, international education, and intercultural education are experiential learning avenues offered to students as a rich opportunity to fulfill this requirement while having a life-changing experience—even an experience that will allow them to help change the world, or at least prepare them for such work.

I thought of this recently while reviewing the Association for American Colleges & Universities’ list of high-impact practices, which have been widely shown to be beneficial for college students of all backgrounds. Among these high-impact practices is “Diversity/Global Learning” and the exploration of “difficult differences,” including “socio-economic, racial, ethnic, and gender inequality, or continuing struggles around the globe for human rights, freedom, and power.”

The efficacy of having these difficult discussions has been known for years, and yet, even within the semiprotected sphere of higher education, they are very seldom heard. We seem to be too afraid to acknowledge the elephants in our rooms, pretending as if the beasts are not already fully awake.

To be sure, difficulties surround us, and we hear them resonate in exit polls and political debates, on televisions, and around dinner tables. However, these exchanges seem to come in only two flavors: in hushed tones quickly silenced by the fear of being offensive, or in shouting matches largely fueled by ignorance and fear of