Immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, a group of 10 Yale students from a variety of backgrounds convened on campus to discuss the unthinkable.
Brought together by the university’s Civic Thought Initiative (CTI), which encourages open dialogue on difficult issues in small, seminar-style settings, the group included Jewish students with diverging views on Israel, students who were active advocates for Palestinians in Gaza, and a former childhood war refugee.
“Understandably, it was an emotionally charged and difficult conversation,” recalled Enza Jonas-Giugni, a recent Yale College graduate who at the time was a student fellow with the program. “And yet, instead of talking past one another, remaining entrenched in previously formed views about the conflict, or descending into hostility, we grieved, asked questions about parts of the conflict’s history that we remained ignorant of or uncertain about, and confronted the tough questions head on.”
In 2019, Yale political scientist Bryan Garsten created CTI in response to what he saw as a hunger among students to engage in intellectual discussions on important issues, but in an environment that encouraged them to try out ideas and hear from people with a range of political and philosophical perspectives. Now, six years later, Yale is building on that small initiative with the launch of a new nonpartisan Center for Civic Thought.
The mission of the center is “to encourage a thoughtful public discourse and a civically responsible intellectual life,” said Garsten, a professor of political science and humanities in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and the center’s director.