Campuses feel like political battlegrounds. Can a new initiative change that?

Robin Fretwell Wilson first became familiar to many Utahns during the 2015 state compromise surrounding gay rights and religious freedom. The hope at the time was that this compromise could become a model for other states to follow.

Yet three years later, Wilson lamented the split-screen reality evident across America — with 28 states where “the public square is essentially controlled by or dictated by the interests of people of faith with little thought for the interests of LGBT persons,” while in the remaining states the public square was “dominated by concerns for LGBT persons and religious people can be told effectively to get out.”

Has any of that changed in the past five years? Are there any signs that the “fairness for all approach” is starting to take hold elsewhere? While the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act at a national level reflects the same ethos, there’s been less progress at the state level.

What’s been especially evident since the Utah compromise, Wilson remarked, is that states are “locked into place — you’ve got to pick blue or you’ve got to pick red.” Unfortunately, “as long as roughly half of America is running a blue script, and half a red script, the experiences, rights and needs of some group ends up being disregarded,” Wilson told me.

“Every pull is to fracture,” she added, with people pressed not only to pick one issue or another, but to mobilize to “crush the other in order for one’s own team to be well.”

Needless to say, many in what has been called “the exhausted majority” of America feel perplexed at why it continues to be so difficult to reach for even a modicum of cooperation. “This isn’t hard stuff to put into law,” Wilson remembers thinking to herself on a drive to visit another state house.

Nonetheless, the political reality is clear: This isn’t easy — not when it comes to religious freedom and sexuality, and not in terms of other important socio-political issues either. And this University of Illinois law professor predicts that the status quo will remain unchanged until legislators “think it’s in their political interest to not be locked in place.”

While legislative progress is stalled to some degree on these kinds of questions, what else can be done? Wilson is among those beginning to look beyond legislators alone for solutions, and considering more of how the larger culture itself can be impacted.

One such initiative to promote tolerance and dialogue more broadly will be celebrated at the Utah state Capitol on Oct. 30, bringing together college students, university leadership and local political leaders. The event will be co-moderated by Brigham Young University law professor Elizabeth A. Clark, associate director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, and Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah.

I spoke with Wilson, who is leading the initiative, to learn more. Wilson co-founded this national series of public discussions with Yale professor Bill Eskridge in 2017. Thanks to financial support from the Templeton Religion Trust, students can receive scholarships for winning essays taking up themes of tolerance and dialogue, and the winners will be recognized at the event.

Wilson believes universities provide a unique leverage point to turn our culture in a better direction — especially as they tap into students’ hunger for a better way of engaging across differences. Universities, she argued, can “choose to create the context around these discussions to make all students feel like they can speak publicly.”

Wilson describes these kinds of efforts as wrapping a “cocoon” around students so they can experience conversations about important disagreements without fear.

While the popular attention usually goes to examples of universities caving to activist demands for cancellation, there are many positive examples of campus leadership pushing back on this same kind of pressure — acting as the “adults in the room” and ensuring that unconventional ideas (at least when it comes to academic orthodoxy) still have a place in campus discussions.

Wilson speaks favorably of leadership at both Brigham Young University and the University of Utah, which in her estimation have made important decisions for the atmosphere on both campuses in terms of protecting free expression.

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In anticipation of the Oct. 30 event where Gov. Spencer Cox and Utah state Senate President Stuart Adams will speak, the governor underscored in a statement to the Deseret News that “political polarization is one of the most challenging issues facing our nation today” — which helps explain why the governor recently launched the “Disagree Better” initiative as chair of the National Governors Association.

“We have to be able to disagree without hating each other if we’re actually going to solve problems,” the governor added. “I truly believe the future of our democracy depends on our ability to engage in healthy conflict and it starts with listening, asking questions and attacking ideas, not people.”

Noting that younger generations are often hurt by culture wars the most, Bryce Morris, a BYU student involved in this dialogue effort, spoke of appreciating the nudge toward solving important issues “without framing all conflicts as a zero-sum game,” which sparks unnecessary, chronic conflict.

He said this effort really helps millennials and Gen Z individuals such as himself “develop a mindset of adopting laws aimed at protecting the rights of everyone involved.”

Cicily Bennion was a prior winner of a scholarship from this same dialogue initiative as a BYU graduate student several years ago. She said that the Tolerance Means Dialogues initiative is doing the important work of “asking people who hold difficult, seemingly irreconcilable differences to sit down together and really see, hear, and listen to one another.”

Thomas Berg, a law and public policy professor at St. Thomas University, likewise commented previously about how this approach brings high-level policy debates down to a more personal level.

“Activist groups on both sides … often push uncompromising positions that hamper reaching solutions for living together long-term. Making personal connections is a sort of ‘bottom-up’ way to forge those solutions,” Berg said.

“In some sense, all of us have been hijacked by the culture war,” Wilson continued, suggesting that we all need reminders like this to “take a step back and say, ‘This is not how we should live.’”

The “Tolerance Means Dialogues” event will take place on Monday, Oct. 30, from 5 to 6:15 p.m. at the Utah State Capitol. The public is invited.

Jacob Hess is a contributing writer for the Deseret News and the former editor of Public Square Magazine. He’s the coauthor of “You’re Not as Crazy as I Thought (But You’re Still Wrong)” and “The Power of Stillness: Mindful Living for Latter-day Saints.”