The public image of campus life as an angry, intolerant caldron may be starting to shift — not just because of institutional reform or campaigns to regain trust, but also because of students themselves, many of whom are tired of ceaseless partisan hostilities.
Ross Irwin of BridgeUSA, a leading campus peacemaking initiative, described how often students tell him, “I watched politics blow up my family” or “I can’t talk to my uncle anymore because we disagree and I want to be able to fix that” or “I ended up on the wrong side of something in high school and got cast out.”
“People are desperate to find places where they can think freely … and voice their real opinions about the world,” Irwin told the Deseret News.
Student leaders from 23 different campuses across the country gathered this August for the National Student Conference for Peacemaking, hosted by BYU’s student-led “Peacemaker Project.”
The Peacemaker Project
There is a conventional narrative that college students are very divided, and campuses “get a bad rap for being very contentious,” said Alex Keogh, who organized the event with his wife, Mirabella Keogh.
But despite that, “what we saw is there are a lot of super bright, compassionate, innovative leaders on college campuses across the country,” Alex Keogh said. “They are not satisfied with our current political state and are working to change it.”
This student effort began after the “Peacemakers Needed” talk in 2023 by President Russell M. Nelson, former president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “We felt like that was kind of a prophetic call for us to do something about it,” Mirabella Keogh said.
After the conference, Baylor student leader Alexa Moldenhauer told the Deseret News, “I returned from Utah much more hopeful about the future of a country I deeply love, even in the midst of its polarization.”
‘Seeing a person, not just a position’
In addition to organizing this year’s conference, Alex and Mirabella Keogh organized a similar conference last year — traveling to 15 universities in the interim, interviewing peacemaking leaders to find out what was working well.
They learned about Baylor’s “Civil Discourse Week,” which involves around 500 people on campus across 24 different events. Moldenhauer reported that 97% of surveyed participants “left with a better understanding of perspectives different from their own.”
Students are more willing to engage across differences “than we sometimes give them credit for,” Moldenhauer said.
She said her fellow students attending campus dialogue events are “somewhat hesitant,” before they realize “that disagreement does not at all have to threaten a relationship.”
Moldenhauer added, “For me, loving your neighbor is less about agreeing with everyone and more about choosing to see them as a person before seeing them as a position.”
‘Live peaceably with all’
“Peacemaking may sound like this impossible thing because of the division we have in the world, but individuals have a lot of power,” said Robin Young from New York University. “You can decide, ‘I’m going to bring peace in whatever space that I am in.’”
Young, who grew up with parents devoted to Christ, cited New Testament teachings to “pursue peace with all” and “live peaceably with all” as personal motivations. “Jesus himself was the perfect example of a peacemaker. At the same time, it’s not like he was passive and just accepted anything — he sat with sinners, he was kind to people, he loved, and he sacrificed his life.”
Alex Keogh said, “Religion sometimes gets a bad rap in society for being a source of division, but we found that it can actually really be a strong source of motivation for becoming a peacemaker across different religions.”
Talking about the hard stuff
BridgeUSA has engaged 27,000 students in different events that deepen understanding across the political divide on campus. With chapters on 140 campuses, they plan to add 60 more this fall and another 70—80 next spring.
Evaluations at their campus events have found statistically significant shifts in listening, intellectual humility, perceived threats and “affective polarization.”
Mirabella Keogh said some students avoid political discussions for fear of becoming contentious and “losing the Spirit,” especially when they had seen conversations “turn nasty pretty quickly.”
Yet when people skeptically wonder whether students can discuss hard subjects, Irwin said, “If you set up the conversation, give them the right context, and moderate it well, people are really ready. They don’t want to talk about whether tax brackets should be a little higher or lower.
“They want to talk about immigration, abortion, guns, Israel-Palestine … There is a real demand for the intense conversations that people feel like they can’t have anywhere.”
Gradual practice and slower growth
“Conversation across differences is more like a muscle than it is like riding a bike,” Irwin said, emphasizing the practice needed to do this well.
That might be why, compared with the explosive growth of more political- or debate-focused groups on campus, such as TPUSA, these dialogue efforts are growing more slowly.
“You’re getting people one by one,” said Ayaan Karan, a conservative student at UC Berkeley who helps lead his BridgeUSA chapter. “You’re not getting a huge crowd of people to commit to civil dialogue.… While it’s rewarding, it also feels a little hopeless at times.”
Misunderstanding may play a role in this slow growth. “People think that we’re here to kind of have them water down their views, and that is 100% not the case,” Karan said. “That’s not our goal.... You can come out of the conversation more fervent in your views.”
Irwin also described some skepticism from administrators on both sides of the political spectrum: “Are you really trying to create conversations across differences, or are you just a Trojan horse for a set of ideas that I don’t like?”
Another way to shift campus
Interfaith leader Eboo Patel, a Deseret News contributor, described in a 2023 podcast how he was initiated into the “angry activist category” in his early years on campus by “a kind of protest activism ethos.”
But he came to realize that “social change is not about a more ferocious revolution,” he said. “It’s about a more beautiful social order” — suggesting that we “defeat the things you do not love by building the things you do.”
Karan described a similar shift of feeling at UC Berkeley after meeting students engaged in dialogue work. “I went there and these were the nicest people ever,” he said. “It changed my mindset from needing to do conservative activism to rather trying to make the campus amenable to civil dialogue.”
Alex Keogh said “instead of success being domination or persuasion at any cost, success looks like mutual understanding or recognition of the dignity of both sides.” This kind of peaceful conversation is the yardstick, he said, instead of “I have to change your mind” or “I have to prove why you’re wrong.”
Don’t walk away
“Peacemaking is not about eliminating disagreement or asking people to become less convicted about what they believe,” Moldenhauer said. “It is about creating ways for people to hold those convictions while still listening carefully and refusing to give up on one another.”
This is about “helping people stay engaged with each other even when a conflict cannot be neatly resolved,” she said.
None of this requires us to “abandon our convictions or to pretend that our disagreements do not matter,” Moldenhauer said. “I want to be grounded in what I believe while still approaching others with humility, genuine curiosity and compassion.”
“Dialogue across difference attracts some of the best people in the world,” Irwin said. “It selects for people who have intellectual humility, who are curious, kind, smart and amazing to be around.”
“It’s just a joy to be working with people who are into this.”