Nearly 30 Colleges and Universities Gather at Vanderbilt to Share What's Actually Working in Campus Dialogue

Dialogue Vanderbilt hosted The Dialogue CoLab on May 21–22, 2026, bringing together nearly thirty colleges and universities — ranging from Ivy League institutions to community colleges — for a national working summit focused on practical strategies for advancing campus dialogue, deliberation, and civil discourse. Directed by faculty director Sarah Igo and supported by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the CoLab is structured as a peer learning exchange rather than a traditional conference, enabling institutions with widely different student populations and campus cultures to honestly compare what they are trying, what students are responding to, and where challenges persist. Participating campuses have implemented a range of approaches — from dialogue-integrated student employment programs to faculty fellowships and structured deliberation models — and the summit creates space for those experiments to inform one another across institutional contexts. For NCDD members in higher education, the Dialogue CoLab offers both a model of field-building peer exchange and evidence of the growing momentum behind campus-based dialogue and deliberation work nationwide.

---

---

Dialogue Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt University's campuswide initiative advancing free expression and civil discourse, brought together nearly thirty colleges and universities on May 21–22, 2026, for The Dialogue CoLab — a national working summit focused on practical strategies for helping students navigate disagreement, uncertainty, and politically charged conversations. Supported by a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the CoLab is explicitly a "by campuses, for campuses" effort, designed not as a traditional academic conference but as a structured, ongoing exchange where faculty and staff from diverse institutions compare what they are trying, what is working, and where significant challenges remain. The participating institutions span the full breadth of American higher education — from Yale, Howard, and the University of Pennsylvania to Austin Community College, Fisk University, and Linn-Benton Community College — reflecting a deliberate commitment to learning across very different student populations, campus cultures, and operating realities.

​What distinguishes the Dialogue CoLab from traditional gatherings is its orientation toward implementation rather than theory. Participating campuses have taken notably different approaches to embedding dialogue into institutional life: some have integrated dialogue training into student employment programs, others have developed faculty fellowships or peer-led discussion cohorts, and still others have built structured deliberation models designed to help students engage productively across political, ideological, and personal differences. The summit creates space for those varied experiments to meet one another — to compare implementation challenges, examine impact measurement, and test whether strategies developed at a large research university translate to a community college context, and vice versa. Sarah Igo, faculty director of Dialogue Vanderbilt, and a steering committee of faculty from member campuses direct the CoLab, emphasizing that linking efforts across institutions allows the field to examine not just what works but what does not — an honest and rare commitment in higher education convenings.

For NCDD members working in or alongside higher education, the Dialogue CoLab represents exactly the kind of field-building infrastructure the dialogue and deliberation community needs more of: a peer learning network built around practical implementation, cross-institutional honesty about challenges, and a genuine diversity of institutional contexts. The rapid growth of interest in the CoLab reflects how urgently campuses across the country are searching for tested, actionable approaches to dialogue — and how few spaces exist where they can find them. The NCDD network has long recognized higher education as a critical site for building the next generation of civic practitioners, and the CoLab's model of structured, campus-led exchange is one worth watching and supporting. Members working on campus dialogue initiatives are encouraged to follow Dialogue Vanderbilt's work. Read the full announcement at https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2026/05/20/dialogue-vanderbilt-hosts-national-higher-education-summit-on-campus-dialogue/