Editor’s note: This essay is part of Deseret Magazine’s January/February double issue addressing political polarization. Democrats and Republicans have long disagreed on policy issues — that’s the normal, useful contestation that drives democracy. When obliterating the other side becomes the ultimate goal, democracies fall apart.
With increasing conflict in America, the nation needs every campus not only to house a center for pluralism but to be a center for pluralism. Read more.
Now more than ever, colleges must help students learn to cooperate across differences, writes Eboo Patel. Now is the time for your college to make pluralism a central principle of campus life. Yes, now, as you watch dueling protests on your quad and realize that diversity, free speech and social justice advocacy are important values for a college to uphold but incomplete without a commitment to cooperation across difference.
America is extremely polarized – and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. So is there value, then, in at least getting people to agree to disagree?