‘Engage in civil discourse and collaborative process’

Raj Vinnakota, president of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, offers advice on how UW can lead the way in fostering civic dialogue.

Milwaukee native and nationally recognized civic leader Raj Vinnakota returned home to Wisconsin this week for a series of campus conversations as part of the new UW-Madison Wisconsin Exchange initiative.

In his role as president of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, Vinnakota is dedicated to transforming campuses into spaces where young people can develop the civic dialogue skills essential to their - and democracy's - future.

As a part of those efforts, Citizens & Scholars has convened a Civic Preparedness coalition of colleges and universities across the country, including UW-Madison, committed to advancing core civic commitments on their campuses.

During his visit, Vinnakota met with members of BridgeMadison, a student organization that champions viewpoint diversity, responsible discourse and a solution-oriented political culture, as well as other students and student-facing staff. Additionally, he met with the Wisconsin Exchange steering committee, a working group focused on measuring campus culture change, and spoke with campus leaders at an evening Exchange in Action session, part of a series of discussions on the challenges, opportunities and expectations for the Wisconsin Exchange.

In a separate interview during his visit, Vinnakota shared why the Midwest is a unique place, what employers most need that universities can help provide, and where he's finding hope and inspiration.

Growing up in Milwaukee as the child of Indian immigrants, how did your upbringing shape the work you do today?

My parents had a tremendous influence on who I've become. They valued education, so I always understood how education could literally change lives, change trajectories.

I also learned from both my parents, but especially from my mom, the importance of community. When we lived in Milwaukee, my mom helped to develop an Indian community. She was a magnetic force. It's so important to recognize what communities you live in and belong to.

You've said that the Midwest is a unique place when it comes to constructive dialogue. Can you say more about that?

I am constantly reminded that Wisconsinites know how to engage in civil discourse and collaborative process. When I was cheering on the Packers against the Bears at Lambeau this weekend, we made fun of each other's teams, but we never went over the line. We realized this was a game and we shared a common humanity. I'm not entirely sure that that everywhere across this country does that. But here people are genuinely friendly and caring towards each other.

Today people are pretty quick to "cancel" one another for saying the wrong thing. How can we help students practice taking risks in conversation?

We have to take a developmental angle - this is a learned skill. When we practice, we fail often. We've forgotten that notion of failing and getting better.

Social media especially has a tendency to forget the core humanity of individuals. There's a reason you don't usually find people yelling at each other when they're facing each other, right? [With] constructive dialogue work, you don't immediately jump to the issue. You start by getting to know each other so you understand what connects you before you start diving into what may be different.

This is where college campuses can play such an important role, because you're supposed to be learning and engaging here. And yet, by the time students show up, they know that if they say something incorrect, the likelihood that they get canceled is so high that it's not worth it. So, creating physical spaces to be able to practice these things is really, really important.

How does a campus as large as UW-Madison move beyond opt-in participation on civil discourse?

Here's the good news: you're doing a lot of great things already. Your question is right on point - how many of these things can you expand so that students don't have to opt-in to get the experience?

Orientation, residence halls, dining halls, curriculum - there are multiple ways to get a significant portion of campus involved. That's what this partnership is about: figuring out what you're doing well, if those efforts can be expanded, what new approaches should be considered, and how to measure them.

What's exciting is that we have 44 other institutions who are also exploring how to change campus culture around civil discourse and collaborative problem-solving. All of them are trying different things. They all have roughly the same population sizes. But we're also going to learn a lot from what's going on at smaller schools, too.

They can quickly experiment on things, report back, and say, "We just tried this in all of our first-year student classes and it's working really well." Then we might go to a few of the publics or large flagships and test something similar. It's a constant process of saying, "Here's what we're learning, here how it's applicable, here's what seems to be working, here's what's not."

Some critics say initiatives like the Wisconsin Exchange are just about politeness - or about making room for more conservative speakers on campus. How do you respond to that?

I would tell them three things. First, it's not about left ideas or right ideas, but the best ideas. If you look at this from a scientific framework, getting more ideas on the table and wrestling with them usually gets you to a better answer.

Second, I talk to a lot of employers, and what they say is that many of their employees don't have these skills at levels necessary to get the work done. Civil discourse, collaborative problem-solving - you need these skills to get hired, retained, and promoted.

The third is, when we started this work, it was a group of [college and university] presidents who came to us early in 2023 and said, "We need to do a better job of bringing different ideas on campus, creating the space to debate them, and having better methods of problem-solving." It wasn't a response to any external event. It was a recognition by presidents that students needed these skills and colleges and universities needed to spend more time helping to develop them.

What inspires you to keep doing this work?

By far the single most motivating thing is working with students. There are 68 million young people between the ages of 10 and 24 [in the U.S.] In the next decade, they'll be entering the public square. If we help them develop into the citizens that this country needs, we're going to be fine. If we don't, we're going to continue backsliding toward autocracy.

[The Institute for Citizens & Scholars] just released its "Civic Vibe Check " and found that 90% of those young people actually want to engage and help solve problems in their communities. But roughly half didn't know how. So, motivation exists, but what they're looking for is support and help. They need pathways, they need mentorship. And those are things we can provide as a society. That's a huge opportunity.

How do you navigate difficult conversations?

During a Q&A portion of a recent speaking engagement, several people came up to the mic: a student who said they were MAGA, a student who said they were transgender, and then a 71-year-old lesbian woman. All three of them felt uncomfortable. They each had very different positions. They were having trouble affirming each other's views, right? And in some ways, all three felt their right to exist was being questioned.

So how do you navigate a situation like that? You start by affirming the inherent humanity of all of them. You also have to be comfortable with non-closure, because there just aren't answers to some things. And you have to give a tremendous amount of grace and patience. And then, finally, you have to bring humility. You really have to be humble and curious when it comes to all of this.

Faculty, staff and students are invited to participate in an Exchange in Action event and share ideas, questions and hopes for pluralism on campus. Sign up to participate.