How Yale’s Center for Civic Thought Is Teaching Students to Listen, Question, and Think Together

Rick Harrison
Bryan Garsten and Chris Christie sit in chairs in a library

Bryan Garsten, left, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie discuss the fracture of the news media at a Yale Center for Civic Thought event in the ISPS library.

The Yale Center for Civic Thought does not host debates. It doesn’t ask speakers to deliver lectures and leave. And it doesn’t expect participants to arrive with fully formed positions.

Instead, in its first year as a formal center, it has built a culture of small conversations designed to help students practice disagreement, curiosity, and thinking without the pressure to perform.

“Our center draws together people with different forms of specialized expertise to think about difficult questions that have no clear answers but that we can’t avoid,” said Bryan Garsten, the center’s faculty director and a professor of political science and humanities. “The goal is not a safe place for any one party, but an engaging conversation in which conservatives, liberals, postliberals,  and — importantly — people who don’t feel well-described by any label, all feel they have a voice and a stake in reflecting deeply on where we are and what we can do together.”

The center, housed within Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies, hosted more than 85 events over the school year, including guest seminars and dinner forums, weekly coffeehouses, retreats for student fellows, collaborations with the residential colleges, a research roundtable, community conversations with New Haveners, and the Citizens Thinkers Writers program for New Haven high school students, now in its 10th year.

In addition, the center supported 18 reading-and-discussion groups, designed and led by students, faculty, and administrators. This year’s events focused on three themes: constitutional democracy in America on the country’s 250th anniversary, the role of universities in civic life, and humanity in the age of artificial intelligence.

“The center is not so much a place as it is a community,” said Stephanie Almeida Nevin, executive director of the center and a lecturer in political science. “Held together not by a particular topic, party, discipline, or a point of view, but by a commitment to being curious about each other and about the big political, moral, and human questions of the day.”

Last month, the center celebrated its inaugural year with an event in which Yale President Maurie McInnis praised the center for asking questions with an open mind.

“Having the courage to admit uncertainty — to risk not knowing — is the gateway to a more enduring kind of certainty, and a deeper kind of knowing,” McInnis said. “Because it’s a knowing that’s open to not knowing. Openness, to me, is the quality that defines the Center for Civic Thought. It is also what defines the liberal arts, it is what defines Yale, and it is what defines the university as an ideal.”

Maurie McInnis speaks at a lectern in the President's House as guests listen

President Maurie McInnis celebrates the first year of the Center for Civic Thought. Photo by Allie Barton

Are “We the People” still capable of constitutional reform? Has college become too individualistic? Can love survive in the age of artificial intelligence? What’s a belief you hold that most people would disagree with? Students, faculty, and guests engaged with these and dozens of other questions across campus and the community.

Nico Sahi, a student at Yale School of Management earning his M.B.A. this spring, participated in multiple events at the center because he wanted to join an intellectual community where he could parse what was happening in the country and move past easy narratives.

“The Center for Civic Thought felt nonpartisan in a way that created more room for disagreement,” Sahi said, noting that many topics explored questions beyond rapid news cycles and internet takes. “The tenor of the conversations was different — there was more space because the questions hadn’t been solidified yet.”

Sahi appreciated how the center asked the guest seminar speakers to listen to the reactions from the small room of attendees without speaking for part of the seminar. He said the approach has helped him when speaking with people who hold different opinions.

“I’m engaging with conversations much more intentionally now — listening before trying to convince someone else,” he said. “It’s harder work, and it’s not always gratifying. But it’s something not enough people are doing.”

Jad Abumrad and Stephanie Almeida Nevin speak in chairs in a library

Stephanie Almeida Nevin, right, hosts a conversation with Radiolab creator Jad Abumrad about how to have beter conversations.

Daniel Schillinger, a lecturer in political science and a senior fellow of the Center for Civic Thought, led a reading group on a Platonic dialogue. He enforced one rule: no preparation.

“The students love reading fundamental texts, asking fundamental questions, and doing it spontaneously on their own terms for the love of their own education,” Schillinger said. “Something happens — there’s a switch that’s flipped — when they gather at night over snacks, no end time in sight, to just talk about a text that they’ve chosen for themselves.”

Importantly, Schillinger said, the students do not try to impress a professor or their classmates.

“No one’s trying to perform, no one’s trying to be clever,” he said. “They’re just talking to one another.”

Gregory Huber, acting director of ISPS and Forst Family Professor of Political Science, expressed his appreciation for the center’s accomplishments over the year.

“We were so pleased to welcome this amazing center into our community,” Huber said. “ISPS has always pursued answers to the important questions of our time through scholarship, collaboration, and discussion. The Yale Center for Civic Thought adds another layer to this endeavor, helping us to expand our influence through thoughtful conversation.”

Garsten anticipates another busy year of conversations ahead, sensing a pivotal moment in history for the country, for the role of universities in civic life, and for humanity and its relationship with technology.

“These moments can be frightening, with lots of uncertainty and risks,” Garsten said. “But history shows that these are also moments of intense creativity — when new visions for the future are imagined and worked out.”