Last month, The Chronicle of Higher Education profiled the work of the Constructive Dialogue Institute (CDI), tracing its rapid expansion and highlighting its impact in improving dialogue on campuses across the country.

CDI was co-founded in 2017 by Jonathan Haidt, the New York University social psychologist, and the social entrepreneur Caroline Mehl. Haidt and Mehl created CDI in response to the rising division and distrust threatening to tear America apart.

For the first six years of its organizational history, CDI focused on providing higher education faculty with evidence-based educational programming to embed in their classrooms, equipping students with the skills to engage in dialogue across lines of difference.

In the 2023-2024 academic year, CDI launched an expanded suite of tools to support campuses in driving durable culture change on their campuses by creating environments that support constructive dialogue, open inquiry, and free expression. To achieve this goal, CDI now offers a comprehensive suite of programs–for college presidents to incoming students and everyone in between–to help campus leaders develop a strategic path towards culture change and then equip stakeholders across the institutions with the resources and skills they need to collectively contribute to a culture of open inquiry and dialogue.

Since then, CDI has been growing rapidly. CDI's campus partnerships nearly tripled from 35 to over 100 in a single year. But the real story lies in who's adopting these programs and why.

In the article, The Chronicle highlighted the diverse range of institutions that have looked to CDI to help them improve discourse on their campuses, ranging from the City University of New York, serving 240,000 students across its 26 campuses, to the intimate liberal arts environment at Franklin & Marshall, to public institutions like James Madison University in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

Below are brief descriptions of how these institutions have partnered with CDI and some excerpts from The Chronicle about the impact leaders at these institutions have been seeing:

• The City University of New York: In 2025, CDI announced a deep system-wide partnership with CUNY's 26 campuses to infuse dialogue across the CUNY System. The partnership has included CDI running a two-day leadership summit from leaders across the system, professional development for faculty, staff, and student leaders, and CDI's Perspectives online learning program for students across the system. In reflecting on the partnership, Rachel Stephenson, Chief Transformation Officer at CUNY shared, “CUNY is one of the most diverse institutions of higher education in the country. Members of our community represent all possible perspectives, so many different lived experiences, so many different viewpoints. And this is an initiative that is really helping us to articulate shared goals.” Learn more about CUNY leaders' experience with CDI in this brief video.
• Franklin & Marshall: CDI has partnered with Franklin & Marshall since 2024, rolling out its online learning program Perspectives to all incoming students through orientation, as well as providing it to student leaders, residence advisors, staff, and faculty. Drew Stelljes, Vice President for Student Affairs at Franklin & Marshall shared, “We felt that it worked pretty well in having prevention and education talks around everything from conflict mediation to intercultural conversations, interfaith conversations.” Learn more about Franklin & Marshall's experience with CDI in this brief video.
• James Madison University: Kara Dillard, Executive Director of JMU’s Madison Center for Civic Engagement, explained that JMU was looking for a scalable way to equip students with the skills for engaging in difficult conversations. They decided to embed Perspectives into their freshman orientation program. Dillard explained, “We thought that that was deeply important [t]hat the first touch point that they had with the university is in training in free speech, freedom of expression, and how they can relate to those concepts.” CDI is entering its third year of partnership with JMU, as part of its broader partnership with The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.