Looking for Stories That Reach Across the Divide

Over the past two years, Columbia has weathered extraordinary challenges. The University has confronted deep disagreements, painful tensions, and moments when its differences felt sharper than its shared purpose. Professor Peter Coleman has a bright idea for how to navigate these challenges and move forward.

At the urging of Acting President Claire Shipman, Coleman, who directs the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution and is co-executive director of Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity, has been busy this semester talking with students, faculty, staff, and administrators. What he’s learned has given him hope. 

“Amid pressures and fissures something has been happening—often quietly, without recognition—across our campuses,” said Coleman. “People have been engaging in difficult conversations respectfully, offering acts of compassion, creating brave spaces for dialogue, and developing programs and practices that help us move forward together.” 

These moments, according to Coleman, “are what scholars call ‘bright spots,’ or concrete examples of what works even in the hardest times.” 

To take this one step further, Coleman, who is a professor of psychology and education at Teachers College and lecturer at the School of Professional Studies, is working with Columbia leadership to gather stories about transformative conversations; student-led initiatives that bridged divides; a department’s innovative dialogue practices; restorative processes that helped repair harm; or policies that created space for inclusion and accountability. By gathering these stories, he hopes to do more than celebrate isolated successes. 

This request, he said, is merely one small step toward helping us rebuild a more robust climate of trust, respect, and civility at Columbia. Think of it as a form of “asset inventory”—of identifying, recognizing, and learning from effective local efforts to mend divisions and repair tense relations. The stories will be synthesized into collective insights, and themes and takeaways will be shared with the Columbia community.

According to Coleman, this is one component of a larger suite of initiatives that are being taken on by faculty, staff, and students at Columbia to reset the social climate and promote more constructive engagement across differences. 

“These bright spots,” said Coleman, “can form the building blocks of a more resilient Columbia, one capable of holding ‘constructive tension,’ engaging differences with wisdom, and strengthening everyone’s capacity to learn and grow together even when pressures run high.”

To submit your “Bright Spots” story to the collection (anonymously or with attribution), please take this one-question survey.