Earlier this month, in a story about the spread of civil dialogue programs, The Chronicle of Higher Education highlighted our expanding footprint in higher education and our growing impact on campuses across the country.

The article spotlighted CDI’s recent Leadership Institute, which convened presidents and senior leaders from Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, MIT, NYU, Tufts, Vanderbilt, and Yale to launch a shared effort to develop innovative models that advance cultures of dialogue and inquiry on their campuses.

As Caroline Mehl, co-founder and executive director of CDI, told The Chronicle: “The idea was really to bring together teams of leaders from institutions who are deeply committed to advancing constructive dialogue, open inquiry, and free expression on their campuses.”

In 2026, CDI will expand this work by convening a parallel cohort of leading public flagship universities, further growing this network of institutions committed to strengthening higher education’s civic mission.

Read more about CDI’s Leadership Institute in the Deseret News.

Growing, Evidence-Based Impact

With demand for campus-wide solutions on the rise, CDI has significantly expanded its work. In 2023–2024, we rolled out a comprehensive suite of programs designed to help colleges and universities pursue durable culture change. Now, CDI partners with leaders across the institution—including students, faculty, and administrators—to guide campuses toward a stronger culture of dialogue, open inquiry, and free expression.

Our Perspectives program, also highlighted in The Chronicle, is an evidence-based blended learning program that equips students with practical skills to engage in dialogue across lines of difference. To date, the program has impacted more than 190,000 learners.

Research from more than 150,000 learners and three randomized controlled trials — the gold standard in research – has demonstrated the effectiveness of Perspectives (see the peer-reviewed publication here). Perspectives was also named a winner in the Stanford Democracy Challenge for reducing polarization (with the research published in Science).

“[Perspectives],” notes Penny Pritzker, Senior Fellow at the Harvard Corporation, “is a powerful tool that has already had an impact on our incoming students. It challenges us to approach dialogue with empathy and understanding.”

Wide Ranging Partnerships

CDI is proud to lead a growing dialogue movement across the full spectrum of higher education. Our work spans large public systems, small residential liberal arts colleges, highly selective private colleges, and regional public universities.

In 2025, we launched a multi-year, system-wide partnership across CUNY’s 26 campuses, serving more than 240,000 students. The initiative encompassed a two-day leadership summit; professional development for faculty, staff, and student leaders; and the delivery of Perspectives to students throughout the system.

At Franklin & Marshall, for example, we’ve partnered to integrate Perspectives into its intimate liberal arts environment for all incoming students as well as into training for student leaders, residence advisors, staff, and faculty. At James Madison University, a public institution in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, we’ve incorporated Perspectives into its first-year orientation to provide every incoming student with a strong grounding in dialogue, open inquiry, and civic engagement.

CDI has partnered with more than 150 campuses across the United States. Check out these case studies to further explore our work.