In Fall 2022, at ACTA’s ATHENA Roundtable in Washington DC, a remarkable morning panel was hosted by Doug Sprei, Higher Ed Now producer and ACTA’s Vice President of Campus Partnerships and Multimedia. The session, titled “How Civil Discourse Can Change Campus Culture,“ was graced by a cohort of panelists who are truly leading lights in the national movement to bring respectful discourse to college campuses and classrooms. All are cherished colleagues and allies of ACTA, and they included April Lawson, Managing Director of Debates and Public Discourse at Braver Angels, who co-founded and co-directs the national College Debates and Discourse Program; Manu Meel, CEO of BridgeUSA; as well as Deondra Rose, the Kevin D. Gorter Associate Professor of Public Policy, at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy; and Karrin Taylor Robson, who served on the Arizona Board of Regents from 2017–2021, and who also founded the Regents’ Cup, a remarkable student debate competition in her home state. The session was designed to take on some of the format and tone of an actual Braver Angels debate, and invited lively audience participation.
Download a transcript of the podcast HERE.
Note: Please check any quotations against the audio recording.
Since 2018, Braver Angels has teamed with ACTA to launch civil debates and workshops for students across the nation. College leaders applaud the program’s transformative, depolarizing influence on students as they learn to engage respectfully around highly charged social and political issues.
Karrin Taylor Robson is a respected and long-time Arizona business leader and land-use expert.
Shortly before they teamed up to to launch a Braver Angels student debate on the campus of Duke University, ACTA’s Doug Sprei interviewed Deondra Rose, Duke’s Associate Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and History.
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