UCLA Dialogue Across Difference Initiative featured in Constructive Dialogue Institute webinar

In April 2025, BKI deputy director Maia Ferdman appeared as a panelist on the Constructive Dialogue Institute’s educational webinar, Building a Culture of Constructive Dialogue on Campus: Lessons from Leading Institutions. The presentation offered higher education leaders concrete strategies for fostering both free expression and inclusive campus environments. Maia gave a summary of the inception of the Dialogue Across Difference Initiative (DaD) at UCLA, the initiative’s growth in response to campus demand, and how dialogue efforts should not be conceived as a short-term reaction to strife, but rather as a long-term investment to foster a healthy and resilient campus climate. She emphasized that the principles of DaD are not only meant for practitioners of dialogue, but are in fact the core values of what it means to be an institution of higher learning.