Over the past year, Widener University has avoided controversies over speech or activism: It hasn’t played host to a major student protest or to a speaker who’s been shouted down. Julie E. Wollman, the university’s president, doesn’t believe colleges are suppressing free speech, as some Trump-administration officials and others do.
But Ms. Wollman says she has observed how discourse has broken down on other campuses — and has seen an opportunity for her institution, which has campuses in Pennsylvania and Delaware, to show how to do it better. Last fall Widener kicked off a new “common ground” initiative, in which students and faculty members work to create spaces for people of opposing viewpoints to have productive conversations, both inside and outside the classroom. Ms. Wollman discussed that effort with The Chronicle.
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