Letter from the Faculty Director

A few months ago, Dean Watkins-Hayes reached out to me and the Leadership Initiative’s Managing Director Jennifer Niggemeier. Our charge? To help strengthen our collective ability to have “conversations across differences.” Specifically, Jennifer and I were to work on increasing Fordies’ willingness and capacity to have disagreements in respectful, productive ways. What we have since discovered is that we are part of a sea change in education. From secondary to higher education, students are being exposed to new frameworks of engagement that emphasize facilitation skills, constructive dialogue, and civility.

As educators, the motivation for our renewed focus on conversations across differences, in part, has come from the prevalent and yet, seemingly intractable identity-related intergroup conflicts we are experiencing in our everyday lives. Guns, abortion, climate change, and religion are just a few of the issues across the political spectrum that have become triggers for offensive, outrageous, combative, even violent behavior. Indeed, as I explain in a recent article on polarization that’s featured in this newsletter, political discussions have become polarizing because they involve the moralization of issues, which become self-defining. Our identities have not only become intertwined with our policy positions but also, reinforced by our differences. Simply stated, “part of how I define ‘who I am’ is by ‘not being you,’” my co-author Professor Michael Pratt and I write in the MIT Sloan Management Review article How to Deal with Political Polarization in the Workplace.

At the Ford School, the ability for our students, faculty, and staff to have conversations across differences is a necessary condition to achieving our mission of contributing positively to the public good. Not one faction of the public and their interests, but rather, the public writ large without forgetting the most vulnerable amongst us. This mission is why, at the Leadership Initiative, we enter this academic year redoubling our efforts to help support each and every Fordie develop into inspirational, effective, ethical leaders, who can bring people together to generate solutions that maximize for our society’s long-term wellbeing.

To that end, many of you have already experienced some of the new curricular programs the Leadership Initiative, in collaboration with many other faculty and staff, have set in motion this year. From MPP orientation to programming in BA core courses.

Next, MPP’s, be on the lookout for new electives this year.

• Fall Semester (Second Half): PP 750.019. Soojin Kwon will teach graduate students verbal communication skills in “The Art of Influence: Mastering Verbal Communications for Policy Professionals.” This course is featured in the coach spotlight below.

• Winter Semester (First Half): PP 750.009. I will be teaching a new course titled “Using Narrative and Real-World Problems for Public Policy Learning.”

• Winter Semester (First Half): PP 750.TBD. Adam Schmidt, MPP ‘11 and one of our leadership coaches, will be teaching a new course titled “Leadership through Facilitation: Guiding Collaborative Policy Discussions.”

For BAs, Dr. Cat Summers will teach many of these skills in her elective course PP 475 “Introduction to Leadership.” Through reflection, study, and practice—including new and exciting opportunities for development like participation in Sanger's Leadership Crisis Challenge—students will learn to navigate complex situations and affect positive change.

As we continue our work on conversations across differences, along with a committee of thoughtful staff and faculty partners, we will keep you posted on other new courses, programming, opportunities, and events.

Until then, please always feel free to reach out to us. We are here to support your leadership development and success.

Warmly,

Morela Hernandez, Faculty Director
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy