The MIT Center for Constructive Communication (CCC) is leading an ambitious, campus-wide effort that combines the ancient wisdoms of human conversation with emerging digital technologies to transform MIT into a “listening campus”– a campus that promotes a culture of respectful dialogue where students, staff, faculty, and Institute leadership can share their personal experiences across boundaries. RealTalk@MIT promotes a strong commitment to limiting inflammatory speech and ensuring that no one set of voices is raised over another.

Highly participatory in nature, RealTalk@MIT involves community members in numerous ways: through participation in small-group facilitated conversations – initially focused on students – that help to provide a supportive, trustworthy, and often relaxed environment for sharing our personal stories and experiences rather than opinions. Other important ways for community members to participate will involve working with CCC on organizing and facilitating conversations, designing conversation guides, and engaging in post-conversation sensemaking. The hope is that these activities will help to build a culture of listening and dialogue that 1) promotes a sense of shared understanding, empathy, and trust; and 2) brings us together rather than reinforces the “side-taking” and binary thinking that too often divide us.