College is a place to be curious and explore new perspectives. But engaging with ideas and beliefs radically different from one’s own isn’t always easy, especially when the stakes are high or the issues polarizing.
At the inaugural Stanford Builders Forum, a new quarterly event series organized by ePluribus Stanford, speakers addressed this challenge head-on.
In a panel discussion titled “Curiosity, Courage, and College,” Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez, social entrepreneur and Stanford alum Daniel Lubetzky, JD ’93, and psychologist Jamil Zaki discussed what it takes to have productive, even transformative, conversations across differences, drawing on their own lived experiences to illustrate what this looks like in practice.
Moderated by Debra Satz, the Vernon R. and Lysbeth Warren Anderson Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S), the conversation centered on how openness, self-awareness, and empathy can help turn disagreement into discovery.
“No single person has all the answers or perspectives to our most important problems. Even highly trained researchers are prone to cognitive biases,” Satz said in her opening remarks at the Oct. 8 event. “We can’t correct these biases by ourselves, but together in conversation with others, by being challenged, by stretching our imaginations, we can actually learn collectively and do much better, and beyond the university, our democracy itself depends on our ability to work and live productively.”
Having self-awareness and curiosity
For Lubetzky, the work of bridge-building is deeply personal. The son of a Holocaust survivor, he came to Stanford Law School with strong views about conflict in the Middle East and quickly found himself clashing with peers.
“I came wearing an advocate’s identity,” Lubetzky recalled. “Speaking past each other was not going to solve issues, so I started forming alliances with people [who] were very different from me and trying to find ways to work together.”
That, he said, “impacted how I saw the world.”
Shifting into a mindset that was curious and open-minded was life-changing. It led him to create Peace Works, a food company that brings people across political divides together. He started with Israelis and Palestinians and then engaged people in countries throughout the Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey. His foray into the food industry then inspired him to found KIND Snacks, which he grew into a multibillion-dollar brand.
Exchanging ideas in the open
Martinez emphasized the importance of free speech, a perspective shaped by her own personal experience: When she was in high school, she protested an attempt to censor her high school yearbook, and in college, she was a student journalist. Throughout her academic and professional career as a lawyer, she researched freedom of expression in constitutional and international law.
Martinez said that while protecting freedom of speech is important, it is not always easy.
Following a disruption of a talk by Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan at Stanford Law School in 2023, Martinez drafted a legal memo that became widely recognized for its strong defense of free speech and academic freedom.
“One of the things that I like to say is that everyone is for freedom of speech until it comes to the speech that they don’t like,” Martinez said, noting that restrictions are often abused, driving ideas underground instead of defeating them in open debate.
Instead, universities should teach students to respond to ideas they disagree with by explaining why those ideas are problematic, rather than attempting to silence them.
“Especially in a university, I think that’s the way we have to approach problems if we’re going to carry out our mission of education and research. And I think it’s important in a democracy,” Martinez said.
Compassion and empathy
Zaki, a psychology professor who studies empathy, shared that his early life – growing up with parents from Pakistan and Peru who divorced when he was six – taught him to navigate personal and cultural differences. Finding points of agreement between his parents became “a survival skill,” Zaki said.
When he began studying psychology in college, he became fascinated by the vital role empathy can play in successfully negotiating conflict and how it fosters stronger and more meaningful relationships. Through empathy, common ground can be found and growth and opportunities are made possible.
Empathy is also something that is misunderstood, Zaki said. Empathizing does not mean agreeing with the other person, nor does it mean adopting an opponent’s position. Rather, it is an ability to show curiosity and a willingness to understand their point of view. In fact, when a person empathizes, they often become a more compelling advocate for their own position.
“If you want somebody else to listen to you, one of the best things that you can do is to listen to them first and to show that you’re doing so,” Zaki said.
Still, empathy can be hard in moments of conflict. When threatened, people tend to “constrict psychologically,” becoming less able to consider others’ perspectives.
Zaki’s lab views empathy as a skill that people can develop and improve over time. Zaki also includes compassion – a desire to improve the well-being of others – in his definition of empathy.
If you want somebody else to listen to you, one of the best things that you can do is to listen to them first and to show that you’re doing so.Jamil Zaki
Curiosity and compassion are two of Lubetzky’s “4Cs” of the Builders Mindset, a framework he developed to bridge differences. The other “C’s” are courage, which involves taking the brave step to cross lines of difference, and creativity, which requires thinking outside the box.
Different types of expression in a democracy
The panel also discussed protest as a form of expression, with a discussion on how different moments call for different tools, particularly in terms of the outcomes each can deliver. “One of the things I often wonder sometimes when I see protest movements is what is the goal or strategy behind it,” Martinez said.
Zaki added that people have concerns about voicing dissent, but his research shows that people want more dialogue, not less.
“We’re scared that if we open up, if we show curiosity and compassion to people on the other side, that they will censure us, or that they’ll ostracize us,” Zaki said. “I think one way to puncture that and to open the door for more of the type of conversations I think we’re all advocating for is to first establish that those conversations are what the vast majority of us want more of. And once we have that, then maybe we can leave more space to actually engage in these conversations.”
During the Q&A session, a student asked how to define hate speech.
Martinez explained that in the U.S., most speech labeled as hate speech elsewhere – particularly in European countries – is protected under the First Amendment, and the bar for restricted speech is intentionally high. She emphasized that while some speech may be offensive, protecting the broadest possible range of expression is essential to maintaining an open and democratic society.
“If you think the government should be able to suppress bad speech, you need to be pretty darn sure that youre going to always agree with what the government thinks is bad speech, and that once you give them that power, they’re not going to come after your speech tomorrow,” Martinez said. “That’s why I think the U.S. approach is correct.”
For more information
Martinez launched ePluribus Stanford in 2024 as a university-wide initiative to revive Stanford’s core mission to prepare students for a meaningful, engaged civic life, starting with their experience on campus. One of the initiative’s goals is to empower students to engage across differences and negotiate disagreement, skills that are as essential in learning as they are in being informed citizens engaged in a pluralistic society.
Writer
Melissa De Witte
