Inclusive Community Conversations is a series in collaboration with Belk Library for faculty and staff to engage in conversations about current issues.
Members of the Elon University community are invited to participate in Inclusive Community Conversations, a dialogue series focused on issues related to identity, implicit bias, and more to generate personal and collective reflection and engagement. Participants are asked to engage with a prompt as a collective starting point to engage in meaningful dialogue.
Harold Saunders, board chair and founder of the Sustained Dialogue Institute, defines dialogue as “a process of genuine interaction through which human beings listen to each other deeply enough to be changed by what they learn. Each makes a serious effort to take other’s concerns into their own picture, even when disagreement persists. No participant gives up their identity, but each recognizes enough of the other’s valid human claims so that they will act differently toward the other.” According to Kathryn Sorrell’s Intercultural Praxis model, dialogue is an entry point that helps to understand and address the intersection of cultural differences.
For Inclusive Community Conversations, participants are asked to engage with a short reading, video or other piece of content as a prompt to begin the dialogue. During the dialogue, participants will engage in a World Cafe-style dialogue about the topic. After the event, in collaboration with Belk Library, participants will be introduced to additional resources to further their reflection and understanding about the topic.
Dialogue initiatives are learning opportunities that engage faculty and staff in advancing their intercultural learning and competencies which aligns with one of the objectives of the Thrive themeThrive | Boldly Elon | Elon University
in the Boldly Elon strategic plan.
Engaging in dialogue encourages self-reflection, promotes empathy and perspective-taking, raises awareness of contemporary social issues and creates space for marginalized and alternative narratives to be heard.
The next Inclusive Community Conversations will be Wednesday, Nov. 8, from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. in Lakeside Room 212. The topic will be, “I Never Thought of It That Way: Curious conversations across political difference,” with the Ted Talk “How Curiosity Will Save Us” by Monica Guzman, this year’s Common Reading author at Elon, serving as the prompt.
Registration is required.