STUDENT AFFAIRS

Taking Enlightened Disagreement into the Real World

Changing minds is hard. So is explaining how minds change. Fortunately, science journalist David McRaney helped participants in the Litowitz Center’s residential certificate program better understand the connections between brain science and persuasive dialogue. During a 10-day residency at Northwestern, McRaney joined the Litowitz Center’s faculty co-directors, Prof. Nour Kteily and Prof. Eli Finkel, in facilitating sessions for the final modules of the year-long program.

• Undergraduate students: Apply for the 2026-2027 cohort of the Litowitz Center Residential Certificate Program by May 26

On Sunday, April 19, McRaney gave keynote remarks about his book, How Minds Change, in McCormick Auditorium at Norris University Center. He deftly summarized breakthroughs in psychology and neuroscience that reveal how brains manage unexpected stimuli and how, in turn, humans process them visually and socially. When McRaney recounted the 2015 viral moment known simply as “The Dress,” students were transfixed. His explanation was figuratively and literally illuminating as he showed the effect of different lighting on our perception of the dress’s colors.

Students then moved to the Louis Room for dinner and an activity. This was the first time all four cohorts in the Center’s program came together for a joint session. The special evening introduced students to telescoping, a conversational technique that begins with asking someone to take a stance before following up with questions to explore the attitudes or beliefs behind the initial answer. When explaining the technique, McRaney stressed that each subsequent question must relate directly to something in the previous answer. Doing so requires attentive listening and increases the likelihood of reaching a moment in which both participants better understand the motivating factors behind answers to questions ranging from movie preferences to policy choices. As McRaney put it, telescoping turns conversations into a collaborative, curiosity-fueled project to identify core values and root causes.

Between modules, students completed the program’s capstone experience of applying enlightened disagreement outside the friendly confines of a program session. Students had at least one telescoping conversation “in the wild” around a potentially polarizing issue. At the final cohort sessions, McRaney led structured processing activities, and students reported an array of experiences. Some shared how they made deeper connections with acquaintances or loved ones, while others described lessons learned from conversations that went a bit sideways. To encourage ongoing practice, McRaney called up student volunteers to demonstrate how telescoping is foundational to persuasive conversational methods that are valuable in nearly all scenarios.

These final sessions included space for reflections on the year-long program. Kteily and Finkel facilitated robust discussions about students’ takeaways. Many identified specific areas of growth, such as active listening and intellectual humility. An encouraging thread of comments was that expecting perfect outcomes is unrealistic. Members of the program’s inaugural cohort are poised to engage others, confident that their real-world disagreements will be more enlightened thanks to their training this year.