By Sara Wink

Higher education provides students with a unique opportunity to explore perspectives beyond the students’ situated knowledge. Educators across multiple fields can create those opportunities through critical reading and writing activities in the classroom.

In Wisconsin, one may find the roots of one of the most prestigious college presses to ever be founded: The Onion. In 2015, staff at The Onion saw the need to highlight how wonderful it is for colleges to encourage the exchange of “idea.” Yes, singular.

“‘[We] want to create an atmosphere where both students and faculty feel comfortable voicing single homogeneous opinion,’ said Abrams, adding that ‘no matter the subject, anyone on campus is always welcome to add their support to the accepted consensus’”(as cited in Sykes, 2016, p. 153).

Now, for the record, The Onion has been known as a jokester parody of a newspaper since the 1970s. However, certain stories carry barbs of truth, and the paper’s article “College Encourages Lively Exchange of Idea” is one such barb. Mona Welssmark, founder and former director of the Program Initiative for Global Mental Health Studies at Northwestern University, wrote about this very problem from her own experience with research projects involving panel discussions between descendants of those targeted in the Holocaust and descendants of Nazis, and between descendants of slaves and descendants of slaveholders (2025). What she saw as a project to study the psychological impact of such injustices was seen by others as too controversial to study, and therefore shouldn’t be studied at all. And she wasn’t the only one: she shared a student study revealing that two out of three students fear sharing their opinions, and many Harvard faculty will avoid broaching controversial topics. This is self-censorship in action, and the results are not pretty. Welssmark explains further:

“This climate of self-censorship in classrooms on college campuses stifles the very purpose of higher education: the exploration of knowledge and the development of critical thinking. This increasing reluctance to express opinions on controversial topics is what social scientists refer to as ‘affective polarization.’ It occurs when individuals’ emotional identities become deeply entwined with social issues, making rational discourse nearly impossible” (2025, para. 13).

For years, educators have debated who is responsible for teaching critical thinking in the first place. Should it only be taught as needed by specific disciplines? Or, should students just be expected to know how by now (Aston, 2023)? As Carbajo (2025) asks of his own field, “Can there be true diversity in STEM without acknowledging the deep diversity of knowing?” (p. 72).

Fortunately, writing and research provide wonderful opportunities for students to build bridges of understanding between perspectives—that is, with the guidance of today’s educators.

And guidance is the name of the game here, for it is all too easy for students to stick with sources and perspectives they’re comfortable with. Gunn et al. advises against this, as such “comfort research” can easily lead to an “entrenchment of perspectives” (2022, p. 187).

My research writing course focuses on proposing positive change that can be implemented at the local level. In order to make such a proposal a reality, students have to work on their “community literacy;” that is, listening to multiple perspectives, from the dominant to the marginalized, in order to fully understand what different groups may think about the problem the proposed solution wishes to solve (Flower, 2008). If one only listens to those with the same perspective, one will miss out on important insights and evidence that could make a powerful impact where they are.

This correlates with a discussion held during The Chronicle Festivalheld in September 2025. Harvard Psychology Professor Steven Plinker and Dartmouth President Sian Beilock discussed the need for viewpoint diversity, and argued that without it, we may miss our own biases that could hinder important progress. Plinker highlighted a recent student poll at Harvard that revealed nearly a third of students approve violenceagainst a speaker they disagree with, and Beilock shared a powerful point: If we want free expression, then you’re not allowed to rob another of theirs (Gutkin et al., 2025). In the editorial “Centering Professional Relationships and Protecting Diversity of Thought in Academic Publishing,” de Saxe Zerden et al. emphasize that free speech is not just about sharing one’s views, but also listening to the views of others, including those with whom one disagrees (2024).

Active dialogue, with the help of reading and writing exercises, allows students to explore unfamiliar perspectives and discover points of common ground. The National Council of Teachers of English recently published Dynamic Activities for First-Year Composition, a collection of writing exercises that include some great challenges to help students do just that (Reznizki & Coad, 2023). One exercise calls on students to work as groups to argue against each other’s viewpoints and even develop a rebuttal to their own arguments. Another exercise encourages educators to select argumentative essays for students to study so they can see what a refutation may look like and what makes it (in)effective. Even team debates encourage students to jump into a perspective they may not initially understand, but some active dialogue with classmates and research on the subject can help build bridges of understanding that the students may not have otherwise experienced (Reznizki & Coad, 2023). Plus, creating such hypothetical situations and involving all students to switch up perspectives allows students to feel safe and comfortable in expression. Everyone is sharing perspectives they may not agree with. Everyone is listening. Everyone is questioning. Everyone is working together to connect.

These are the bridges of understanding, and such bridges, once built, need not burn down.When educators encourage this lively exchange of ideaswith a plural “s,” they inspire their students to do the same.

No joke.

References

Aston, K. J. (2023). ‘Why is this hard, to have critical thinking?’ Exploring the factors affecting critical thinking with international higher education students. Active Learning in Higher Education, 25(3), 537-550. https://doi.org/10.1177/14697874231168341 

Carbajo, S. (2025). Nurturing deeper ways of knowing in science: Efforts to diversify representation in science and engineering require initiatives that increase diversity of thought as well. Issues in Science & Technology, 41(2), 71–74. https://doi.org/10.58875/jkrw4525

de Saxe Zerden, L., Herrenkhol, T., & McBeath, B. (2024). Centering professional relationships and protecting diversity of thought in academic publishing [Guest editorial]. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research 15(3). https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/732283

Flower, L. (2008). Community literacy and the rhetoric of public engagement. Southern Illinois University Press.

Gunn, L. H., Ghosh, S., ter Horst, E., Markossian, T. W., & Molina, G. (2022). Respecting opposing viewpoints through debate and discussion of controversial public health issues: A double-blinded active learning design. College Teaching, 70(2), 186–195. https://doi.org/10.1080/87567555.2021.1910477

Gutkin, L., Beilock, S., & Plinker, S. (2025, Sept. 16). Roundtable: The Value of Viewpoint Diversity [Conference presentation]. Chronicle Festival: Innovation Amid Uncertainty. https://connect.chronicle.com/chronfest25-agenda.html

Reznizki, M., & Coad, D. (2023). Dynamic activities for first-year composition. National Council of Teachers of English [NCTE].

Sykes, C. (2016). Fail U.: The false promise of higher education. St. Martin’s Press.

Welssmark, M. (2025, July 4). Diversity of thought in polarized times. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/justice-matters/202410/diversity-of-thought-in-polarized-times