Dialogue Across Difference: Practice, Theory, and Research on Intergroup Dialogue

Acknowledgments

At its heart, intergroup dialogue is a sustained, intentional effort to bring diverse people together to collectively build something greater than any of us as individuals may accomplish. It requires respect for divergent voices, value for the unique and shared responsibilities individuals bring to the collective good, and a concerted effort to listen and understand multiple experiences and perspectives that derive from people’s different connections to power and privilege. These very characteristics defined the relationships among colleagues that created the Multi-University Intergroup Dialogue Research (MIGR) Project. The project began in a gathering of colleagues from different universities and colleges in the United States who were running intergroup dialogue programs on their campuses. Some colleagues had their intergroup dialogue roots at the University of Michigan and then initiated similar efforts when they took new positions at other institutions of higher education . Others had developed intergroup dialogue courses and programs after consulting with Michigan’s Program on Intergroup Relations. Some of the participating universities were focused primarily on intergroup dialogue practice, while a few were also involved in evaluating their practice. None, however, had conducted experimental studies that would allow effects to be attributed to intergroup dialogue itself, rather than to the kinds of students who select intergroup dialogue courses. None of us had conducted intergroup dialogue research studies beyond our own institutions. It quickly became obvious that we could leverage our different faculty, staff, and student positions and experiences to create a research project that spanned the ten universities that were initially involved (University of Illinois later dropped ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS out), utilized our range of qualitative and quantitative skills, and used an experimental design capable of producing a rigorous test of the possible impact of intergroup dialogue. Such an undertaking would have been impossible without the committed partnership of our campus collaborators: Delia Saenz, Thomas Walker and Kathleen Wong (Lau) from Arizona State University; Jaclyn Rodriguez from Occidental College; Gretchen Lopez from Syracuse University; Gary Anderson from the University of California, San Diego; Joycelyn Landrum-Brown from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Gloria Bouis from the University of Maryland, College Park; Teresa Brett and Margarita M. Arellano from the University of Texas; Martha Stassen and Ximena Zuñiga from the University of Massachusetts Amherst; Patricia Gurin, Kelly Maxwell, Nicholas Sorensen, and Elizabeth Meier from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and, Biren (Ratnesh) Nagda from the University of Washington, Seattle. Walter Stephan and Cookie White Stephan provided invaluable consultation from the very first meeting to the culmination of the project and this volume. Nearly all of these collaborators, and some other colleagues, coauthored different book chapters and are noted as appropriate in footnotes to chapter titles. Other partners who were involved at the local campus level and sometimes at national meetings were: Andrea Rodriguez-Scheel and Kenjus Watson from Occidental College; Judy Hamilton and Sigrid Davison from Syracuse University; Anna Yeakley and Brett Robertson from the University of California, San Diego; Dominic Cobb and Joseph Mienko from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Craig Alimo from the University of Maryland, College Park; Shuli Archer, Stephanie Burrell, Keri DeJong, Larissa Hopkins, Molly Keehn, Romina Pacheco, and Taj Smith from the University of Massachusetts Amherst; Charles Behling, Roger Fisher, Taryn Petryk , Chloé Gurin-Sands, and Monita Thompson from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and, Akua Campanella and Rebecca Hedrix Cate from the University of Washington, Seattle. The entire project team, at times comprising thirty colleagues, met at least twice a year from 2003–2008. We met at each of the participating campuses, and we thank each of the hosting institutions and offices for the hospitality they extended to us. Given the complexity of the project, we had three main working groups and we wish to thank all the members for their hard work. The curriculum team, comprised of Craig Alimo, Gary Anderson, Margarita ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv M. Arellano, Gloria J. Bouis, Teresa Brett, Dominic Cobb, Eva Fatigoni, Patricia Gurin, Joycelyn Landrum-Brown, Gretchen Lopez, Kelly Maxwell, Biren (Ratnesh) A. Nagda, Jaclyn Rodriguez, Thomas Walker, Kathleen Wong (Lau), Anna Yeakley, and Ximena Zúñiga, created the standardized curriculum (readings, assignments, and in-class active learning activities) that was used across all participating institutions. The qualitative research team, comprised of Craig Alimo, Kelly Maxwell, Elizabeth Meier, Jaclyn Rodriguez , Kathleen Wong (Lau), Anna Yeakley, Martha Stassen, and Ximena Zúñiga, with consultation from Mark Chesler, designed the qualitative...