New Jersey university representatives share ideas during Interfaith America's Bridging the Gap training in Chicago
Last month in Chicago, a group of administrators, faculty, and students from six New Jersey colleges and universities kicked off their participation in Interfaith America’s Bridging the Gap program, which seeks to expand and strengthen the critical bridge-building skills needed to engage campus community members across deep divides. Anticipating that division and protest might resurface once students returned to campus this fall, these leaders sought to grow their expertise in designing and sustaining relationship-building efforts that result in constructive dialogue and learning among students, faculty, and staff.
The Bridging the Gap curriculum, rooted in pluralism, builds respect across differences, ties between diverse groups, and conditions for community members to work together on concrete projects with common aims. A campus that embraces pluralism works to build stronger understanding and cooperation across people’s distinct identities, ideologies, and worldviews. “Bridging the Gap teaches professionals and students the skills to cultivate a different type of culture on campus – a culture rooted in empathy, curiosity and humility, in which individuals can hold true to their own values while being genuinely curious about people with whom they disagree,” according to Rebecca Russo, vice president of higher education strategy at Interfaith America. Research has demonstrated that bridge-building not only works to connect people across deep divides, but also to reduce antisemitism and other types of prejudice.
Speaker addresses program attendees on focused listening skills to help campus community members engage in constructive dialogue across differences.
Professionals and students from Montclair State University, Ramapo College of New Jersey, William Paterson University, and Rutgers University campuses in New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden are taking part in a year-long training program to gain the knowledge, skills, and tools needed to implement effective bridge-building efforts at their institutions. Representatives included leaders in charge of diversity, equity, and inclusion, community engagement, living and learning communities, and interfaith cooperation; a professor of disability studies and special education and Ph.D. student in pluralism and interfaith cooperation; and the director of a center for Holocaust and genocide studies.
Dr. Sudha Wadwhani, staff psychologist and coordinator of Equity, Inclusion, and Community Initiatives for Montclair State University’s counseling center, attended the Chicago training. A longtime bridge-builder across racial, gender, sexuality, and other identity lines, Sudha hoped to further build her cultural competence and facilitation skills to engage students, staff, and faculty, especially across faith traditions. The Interfaith Alliance session, she said, was explicitly not about “creating spaces for people to debate or change each other’s perspective. Instead, it’s a space to share our stories, where we come from, how that impacts what we believe, and who we are. Can we learn from, hear, and understand each other even though we may disagree?” Over time, she hopes faculty advisors to campus faith groups can get trained, for “in that mentorship role, they need to be able to have these conversations with each other in order to expect our students to have these conversations with each other.”
As a next step, members of this New Jersey cohort can apply for mini-grants to integrate the Bridging the Gap approach into curricular or other projects that can help members of their campus communities seek common ground without compromising deeply held values or beliefs.