Civil Dialogue in Higher Education: Exploring How Students and Faculty Think 

Dialogue across differences and free speech on college campuses have become hot button issues in American public life. More in Common partnered with the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations to understand how students, faculty, and the public actually perceive dialogue and free expression in higher education. 

We surveyed 2,004 undergraduate students and 209 faculty and staff at four-year institutions. The survey included a framing experiment on dialogue, measured motivations and barriers to engaging across difference, tested terms commonly used in campus dialogue programming, and examined how perceptions of dialogue relate to perceptions of free speech. 

We paired the survey with an in-depth social listening effort. Using Brandwatch, we tracked two years of online conversations, from Summer 2024 to Summer 2026, through key terms such as “free speech” and “dialogue,” and by identifying key events, sentiments, and the audiences driving these conversations about U.S. college campuses. 

Here are our key findings.  

Survey Insights

1. Students want crosspartisan dialogue but don’t trust their institutions to deliver it. The problem is not demand but institutional trust.  

Eight in ten students (81%) say they are personally willing to listen to very different political views. Yet more than half (55%) express uncertainty or little trust that a program run by their institution will be genuinely open and not politically motivated, and only 6% trust their institution “a great deal.” This pattern of distrust is similar across liberal, moderate, and conservative students. 

2. Workplace readiness is the most effective framing for dialogue programs. 

We described the same hypothetical campus program—helping students engage constructively across differences—to five randomly assigned groups, changing only the stated purpose of the program. All five framings were well liked, but the version framed as a program to “build skills that employers value” generated the most interest in participating among students (+32% net). 

3. Among six dialogue-specific terms, “civil dialogue” and “constructive dialogue” are perceived most positively. 

All dialogue-specific terms (civil dialogue, constructive dialogue, dialogue, dialogue across differences, dialogue across disagreement) are seen as positive (between +46% to +25% net positivity for students). Compared to just “dialogue” (+40%), “civil dialogue” (+46%) and “constructive dialogue” (+41%) are more positively perceived, and civil dialogue performs especially well with conservative students (+55%). 

4. Students, faculty, and staff see almost all of the terms used to describe dialogue work as left-coded.

Almost every term we tested, including the dialogue-specific terms, was perceived as left-leaning. The same was true of all five program framings. But how a term was politically perceived did not align with how favorably students and faculty/staff rated it. Students and faculty rated these terms favorably regardless of where they placed them politically. For example, conservative students saw “belonging” as left-coded (+19%) and rated it +58% net positive. 

5. The main barriers to dialogue engagement are perceptions of social risk. 

The reasons students don’t engage in dialogue across differences are dominated by social risk. This includes fear of combative or unproductive argument (35%), social judgment (26%), and not feeling safe enough for honest disagreement (25%). For faculty/staff, the same social concerns appear alongside a distinct layer of institutional and professional risk.

6. Free speech and crosspartisan dialogue are both wanted but are seen as in tension. 

A plurality of students (34%) wants both free speech protections and dialogue programs to fight polarization. Yet when asked about the relationship between free speech and dialogue, students are more likely to see the two as often in conflict (36%) than as reinforcing each other (27%).

Social Listening Insights

1. Use of the terms “free speech” and “dialogue” online is event-driven and overwhelmingly negative. 

Discourse spikes around major moments—Riley Gaines’s court win, ICE’s detainment of Mahmoud Khalil, Harvard’s rejection of the Trump administration’s demands, and Charlie Kirk’s death—and even during quiet periods, conversations keep circling back to them.  
 
Sentiment is heavily negative for free speech, and while dialogue reads somewhat less negative, it is used much less frequently online than free speech.

2. The two terms, free speech and dialogue, carry different politics.  

Free speech is the more commonly used and more polarized term, most often tied to Trump, and most often evoked in discussions of rights or grievances. Dialogue is softer in tone, used less frequently, and most associated with Charlie Kirk in online conversation.  

3. The loudest online voices in this discussion are not students. 

Top online posters about free speech and dialogue on college campuses  skew older, tend to be male, and are more likely to be parents or employed adults than current students.

4. Campuses with poor records on free speech drive the online conversation. 

Columbia University generates far more free speech and dialogue discourse online than any other university in our analysis , with Israel/Palestine-related campus conflict featuring prominently.