Facilitating Intergroup Dialogues: Bridging Differences, Catalyzing Change (review)

As postsecondary campuses become more diverse, institutional leaders endeavor to provide structured opportunities for students to engage with those different from them. Over the past two decades, intergroup dialogues have received considerable attention as one approach for fostering such opportunities. Intergroup dialogues bring together two groups of people with a history of conflict (e.g., White people and people of color / men and women) to explore the sources of conflict, understand the impact of privileged and marginalized social identities, and to discuss action steps to challenge oppression. Researchers have explored the outcomes of these dialogues among participants, most notably through the Multi-University Intergroup Dialogue Research Project (2008). Yet, little research exists on the process and outcomes of these dialogues from the vantage point of facilitators.

Facilitating Intergroup Dialogues: Bridging Differences, Catalyzing Change purports to be the first book focused entirely on the facilitation of intergroup dialogues. The book opens with two introductory chapters to lay the framework undergirding intergroup dialogues. In chapter 1, Nagda and Maxwell discuss the critical-dialogic framework that emphasizes power and privilege and uses personal storytelling to interact across differences. Using findings from her qualitative dissertation, Yeakley, in chapter 2, describes five skills needed by facilitators to engage students in these dialogues. Following the introductory chapters, the book is organized into three sections. Section 1 highlights the training necessary for facilitators of dialogues in classroom settings; section 2 underscores facilitation in nonclassroom spaces; section 3 draws readers' attention to issues with which facilitators struggle in intergroup dialogues.

In chapter 3, the opening chapter in section 1, Maxwell, Fisher, Thompson, and Behling discuss the peer facilitation training model of the Program on Intergroup Relations (IGR) at the University of Michigan, from which the current structure and model of intergroup dialogues largely stem. The authors discuss the unique features of IGR, including using undergraduate students as cofacilitators and the four goals in the training process: understanding social identity; learning about social justice, privilege, and discrimination; developing facilitation skills; and increasing the ability to analyze and understand interpersonal and intergroup relationships. Rodríguez, Rodríguez-Scheel, Lindsey, and Kirkland use Occidental College as a case study in chapter 4. They discuss the content, composition, and structure of Occidental's facilitator training process.

The next chapter by Zúñiga, Kachwaha, DeJong, and Pacheo contains two goals: (a) to discuss the facilitator training process within the Social Justice Education master's program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and (b) to use a case study of two facilitators, DeJong and Pacheo. DeJong and Pacheo used the concept of microteaching to make sense of their cofacilitation process, as they reflected on a critical incident that occurred during their dialogue. In this section's last chapter, Lau, Landrum-Brown, and Walker discuss the complexities of higher education professionals facilitating dialogues. The authors make sense of their authority as facilitators, particularly given age differences between themselves and undergraduate participants.

Section 2 opens with a chapter by Parker, Nemeroff, and Kelleher on the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network (SDCN), a 2-day and student-led initiative with the aim of students working collectively through dialogue to tackle complex societal issues. In chapter 8, Knauer discusses Democracy Lab, an on-line portal for engaging students in dialogues. The authors discuss a benefit of Democracy Lab in that it involves students from multiple disciplines, providing for cross-disciplinary perspectives; yet, two central challenges are that these dialogues are self-facilitated and participants do not know the course involves online dialogue when they enroll.

Fisher and Checkoway, the authors of chapter 9, write about using intergroup dialogues in a community setting with youth. The authors discuss the segregated nature of Metropolitan Detroit, which provides a natural setting to engage young people in dialogues about race and ethnicity. These dialogues are built on a four-stage process that begins with dialogues in students' own identity groups prior to moving into heterogeneous groups in stage two; they...