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CONTACT: Sharon Jones Schweitzer
Dec. 16, 2005
Ford Foundation Awards Trinity University Grant for Difficult Dialogues Initiative
SAN ANTONIO - Trinity University has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the prestigious Ford Foundation for a project designed to facilitate constructive dialogue about contentious political, religious, racial, and cultural issues. Following a national competition, Trinity and 25 other higher education institutions were selected to receive the grants as part of Ford Foundation’s Difficult Dialogues initiative. The initiative was created in response to reports of growing intolerance and efforts to curb academic freedom at colleges and universities.
Trinity will host four “dialogues” over a two year period beginning in the fall of 2006. The campus programs will promote genuine engagement, mutually respectful listening, and reasoned discussion that examine differences in ethnicity, race, religion, and sexual orientation. “This project is an invitation for the whole Trinity community to commit to discussing what many prefer to ignore and, in the process, show how campuses such as ours can be pluralistic and enriching academic environments,” said Diane Smith, associate vice president for Academic Affairs and project coordinator.
Each Difficult Dialogue program will include keynote speakers or artists and additional events such as relevant films, plays, readings, or exhibits; panels and/or group discussions; and a one credit-hour course available to students. The Trinity programs will be organized around four topics: Culture and Civic Status, Religious Particularism, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Islamophobia.
“South Texas, in general, and San Antonio and Trinity University, in particular, can definitely benefit from such open discussions of key social issues that are being magnified by our growing population and various political and ethnic differences,” said Trinity president John R. Brazil in endorsing the project. All four topics address issues that the Trinity community and those beyond our campus can greatly benefit from knowing more about and exploring for the purposes of future understanding and tolerance.
The University will embark on the project with two basic aims: prepare a core of individual students, faculty, and professional staff who will take on leadership roles in facilitating dialogues; and integrate difficult dialogues into the curriculum in a developmentally appropriate way, supported by co-curricular opportunities.
The Difficult Dialogues project represents a new initiative for Trinity University, but builds on the work accomplished by curricular development implemented by the faculty and programming by students. The Trinity Multicultural Network, a broad affiliation of ethnic and religious student groups, has initiated a number of dialogue-type programs in recent years. The project also builds on Trinity’s well established interdisciplinary major and minor programs, such as African-American Studies, American Intercultural Studies, Latin American and Latino Studies, Middle East Studies, and Women and Gender Studies. It is anticipated that Difficult Dialogues project will also influence the development of Trinity’s new senior capstone experiences and enrichment of the existing First-Year Seminar Program.
Trinity’s Difficult Dialogues project is a collaborative effort led by Dr. Smith with Harry Haines and Rob Huesca from the department of Communication; Alida Metcalf, department of History; Arturo Madrid and Rita Urquijo-Ruiz, Modern Languages and Literatures; Ruqayya Khan, Randall Nadeau, and Sarah Pinnock, department of Religion; Meredith McGuire, department of Sociology and Anthropology; and Stephen Nickle, University Chaplain.
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© 2006 Trinity University