New award recognizes efforts to elevate constructive dialogue at Stanford

In his first year at Stanford, YuQing Jiang, ’25, got into a heated political argument with a friend. Their conversation soon escalated into what some would call a “high conflict” situation, ultimately hurting their friendship.

The experience left Jiang disheartened but not discouraged: It inspired him to create a community for students to openly share their political ideas and beliefs with one another.

While his undergraduate courses – particularly in his freshman COLLEGE class, Citizenship in the 21st Century – encouraged rigorous and critical debate, Jiang found few student-organized spaces outside the classroom where people from across the political spectrum could engage in honest, nonpartisan dialogue.

Jiang set out to change that.

Over the past four years, Jiang helped create opportunities for his fellow classmates to hold meaningful conversations with one another on difficult, and sometimes divisive, topics.

Those efforts are now being recognized: Jiang is the inaugural recipient of the ePluribus Stanford Award, a new award bestowed by ePluribus Stanford, a university initiative to elevate constructive dialogue and civic engagement. The award recognizes outstanding contributions made towards that goal.

“YuQing has not only dedicated time and energy to his own growth and skill-building, he has practiced and embodied these skills across a wide range of settings to expand the place of open, intellectually rigorous, empathetic dialogue across difference at Stanford,” said the ePluribus Stanford leadership team, who include Norm Spaulding, Dan Edelstein, and Karina Kloos, upon selecting Jiang as the inaugural recipient of the award.

Advising the selection process were Collin Chen from the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Tom Schnaubelt from The Center for Revitalizing American Institutions, and Alice Siu from the Deliberative Democracy Lab.

The power of dialogue

Jiang, who majored in philosophy and religious studies, was born in China and grew up in a small coastal town in New Zealand, where political debate was rare.

Coming to the United States, Jiang encountered a very different political environment, one in which political beliefs have become intertwined with identity, influencing how people interact with one another. He was also taken aback by the deep partisan animosity toward opposing political parties, a phenomenon known as “affective polarization” in political science.

Jiang soon wondered how to have conversations with people across political differences in meaningful yet productive ways. 

As part of Sophomore College, Jiang took a class with Stanford’s Deliberative Democracy Lab, which explores ways to facilitate moderated, informed discussions among people with differing views.

There, Jiang witnessed how powerful a tool dialogue can be. Under the right conditions, discourse can even depolarize: Through informed and inclusive dialogue, a deeper understanding – empathy, even – can emerge.

“I saw how, through conversations, individuals humanize one another more, in spite of their disagreements,” Jiang said. He then went on to become a research assistant at the lab, and later, he applied the lessons he learned there to an internship with the Muslim Civic Coalition in the run-up to the 2024 U.S. election as a way to recognize pluralism within the community.

Changing student culture

Jiang also contributed to a university-wide study on campus discourse. He was one of two undergraduates involved in the Polarization, Academic Freedom, and Inclusion, Law and Policy Lab Practicum, a study requested by Stanford’s Office of the President to study the issue on campus. The study, led by Spaulding and Paul Brest, former dean and professor emeritus at Stanford Law School, also offered recommendations – including an appeal to students to seek out opportunities to hone the skills crucial to being effective decision-makers and citizens: active listening and deliberation.

Jiang took this call to heart.

He got involved with the Stanford Political Union (SPU), a student organization that had been dormant for decades. Recent efforts to revive the club failed to gain traction.

But over the past two years, Jiang – along with Aden Beyene, ’24, and others – helped transform SPU into a thriving nonpartisan student organization dedicated to fostering constructive dialogue at Stanford. SPU is not a debating society; rather, it is an informal space for students to get to know one another, as they are.

“It is a chill, low-key, accessible space where any student can come and discuss the issues they care about with their peers, over boba,” Jiang described. “No dress code. No debating experience required. No political expertise needed. Come as you are – SPU is a political union with a West Coast, Stanford spirit.”

During the quarter, SPU hosts weekly community discussions that bring 30-40 students together to talk about current events and other hot-button issues, such as free speech, institutional neutrality, DEI, transgender athletes in sports, tariffs, and America’s role in the world, among other relevant topics.

SPU also hosts speaker events. This past year featured Stanford President Jonathan Levin, former Secretary of Defense and Hoover fellow Jim Mattis, former Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Jiang has moderated some of these conversations. It has not always been easy. One of the most difficult discussions he said he led was a dialogue with members from Stanford’s Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian Communities Committee and Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias about findings from their reports.

These experiences have deepened Jiang’s thinking about what it means to create truly inclusive dialogue. He and his peers at SPU have grappled with difficult questions like: What does it mean to be neutral in a conversation? How do personal biases shape conversations? What are the limits, if any, to tolerating differing views to ensure conversations remain productive? Are established discussion norms a form of censorship, or do they facilitate constructive dialogue?

“It’s been interesting to figure out how we can make discussions as inclusive as possible – to welcome everyone in and to enable everyone to articulate their perspectives,” Jiang reflected. “I think inclusiveness has been used to suppress or stifle speech. I’ve also come to see that certain types of speech do have a chilling effect, which makes things less inclusive overall – so a balance has to be struck. This is why it has been interesting figuring out how to make an environment maximally inclusive for speech.”

Jiang sees constructive dialogue as one of several tools for civic expression, alongside protest and activism. The most important lesson he’s learned is to continually challenge his own assumptions. “Always question things,” Jiang said. “My assumptions have changed so many times over the past four years.”

Some of Jiang’s other campus contributions include serving as a student facilitator in the pilot civil discourse summer programming for incoming first-year students. He also co-organized two student conversations, “America’s Role in the World” and “Across the Aisle Student Panel,” for Democracy Day 2024. 

Jiang was also a columnist and editor for The Stanford Daily, where he wrote about political polarization and managed the opinion section.