CENTER AIMS TO FIND PATH TO CIVILITY
UCSD, nonprofit seek end to culture of hate, intolerance
“The breakdown of civil discourse has exacerbated our country’s deep political polarization.” Steven Dinkin • president of the National Conflict Resolution Center
UC San Diego and the National Conflict Resolution Center have launched a new research program aimed at evaluating and building civility in American life.
The Applied Research Center for Civility, based at the university, will study the dynamics behind hate, intolerance, racial injustice and other social ills, then identify and assess ways to curb them, and share the findings in reports and conferences.
“Civility in our public life as we know it is on life support,” said Steven Dinkin, president of the San Diegobased Conflict Resolution Center and co-chair of the new civility center. “The breakdown of civil discourse has exacerbated our country’s deep political polarization. This has led to increased violence and decreased consideration for our neighbors throughout the pandemic, literally costing people their lives.”
He said the civility center “will look at best practices for navigating entrenched divides, and synthesize those into unified, comprehensive models for national distribution and discussion.”
Public polling shows Americans are concerned about the decline in civility, and although they often disagree along partisan lines about what is responsible for the problem, they share a desire to fix it.
In his inauguration speech in January, President Joe Biden echoed those hopes. “We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal,” he said. “We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.”
The new research center here aims to move beyond aspiration with data collection and analysis, helping to create what UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla called “a more just, humane future for America.”
The first project, funded with a $400,000 grant by the Conrad Prebys Foundation, will look at juvenile justice reform in hopes of disrupting the “school to prison pipeline,” punitive policies on campuses that push students — disproportionately those of color — into the criminal justice system.
Other areas of initial concentration will include workplace culture and microaggression identification; conflicts and communication around gender and sexuality; restorative justice; cyberbullying intervention; religion/sectarian tensions and racial violence; and effective communications and mediation strategies.
of those are areas in which the Conflict Resolution Center already works. Founded in 1983, it provides training and other resources to help people, organizations and communities in the public and private sectors navigate their differences. By its count, it has managed more than 20,000
cases.
The center and UC San Diego have collaborated on other projects. In 2014, they launched the Galinson/ Glickman Campus Civility Initiative, also known as Tritons Together, which has trained nearly 10,000 student club leaders in inclusive communications and conflict resolution.
Their new civility partnership, formally launched Saturday during the ConMany flict Resolution Center’s annual Peacemaker Awards, will be funded through a mix of research grants, donations and contributions to a permanent endowment, organizers said.
It joins similar initiatives at other colleges around the country, including the Institute for Civil Civic Engagement at the University of San Diego.