Reposted from the College of Humanities.
Think of the last time someone openly disagreed with you online. Where did you instantly go with it-anger, confusion or an opening toward some new understanding?
"There's surely more space for compromise and mutually acceptable agreement than we're currently finding," says Michael Middleton, a professor of communication who directs the University of Utah's new Center for Civic Discourse and Debate (CCDD) in the College of Humanities. He's referring, of course, to today's public discourse in a nation that can seem hopelessly divided. "So let's develop the tools to do that. And where we can't, let's develop tools to help us understand each other so that we can live in common, even if we're continuing to live in disagreement about some things."
It's a deceptively simple idea. And in 2026, it feels like a complicated one.
We are more connected than ever, more talked at, more algorithmically fed, more passively absorbing strangers' opinions than any generation in history. But somewhere in that noise, something essential got lost. We've grown afraid of discomfort, allergic to being wrong and increasingly convinced that the person on the other side of a disagreement is simply not worth engaging.
"We have forgotten the importance of disagreement," says Duncan Stewart, director of the John R. Park Debate Society and communication professor. "We have forgotten the value in discomfort interpersonally and culturally. And we have begun to fear being wrong."
This is the problem the CCDD was created to address. It starts with a belief that might sound obvious but turns out to be surprisingly radical: the skills required for productive civic participation can be taught.
What civic education actually means
When most people hear the phrase "civic education," they think of high school history class-the three branches of government, the Bill of Rights, how a bill becomes a law. That kind of civic education matters, but it addresses only a portion of the problem. Knowing the structure of democratic institutions doesn't tell you how to function inside them: how to make an argument, listen to someone you disagree with or find common ground with someone whose starting assumptions are entirely different from yours.
"Civic education can be about the processes of civic participation, not just particular types of content," says Middleton, who serves as senior associate dean for the Colleges of Liberal Arts & Sciences. "How do we cultivate the practices? How do we build the tools that allow us to have durable, welcoming communities that we are able to exist in?"
Stewart adds that disagreement isn't exclusively about conflict. "Part of disagreement is also being able to identify not only how we are mutually affected by a given issue, but demonstrating that 'I understand how you are affected in ways that I am not, and here's what I might do about that.'"
Debate, properly understood, is one of the most powerful tools we have for teaching both.
The debate problem-and the debate solution
For many people, the word "debate" lands wrong. In the popular imagination, it's combat-two people trying to destroy each other's arguments, with a winner declared at the end. It's what happens on cable news when two pundits clash. It's the high school activity where quick-talking kids overwhelm their opponents with sheer volume of argument. That conception isn't wrong, but it captures only one use of a much more versatile tool. And it misses something more fundamental: the fear of conflict that makes productive disagreement feel impossible in the first place.
"I think a thing we have begun to fear is conflict," Stewart says, "because it means I am no longer in my lane and you no longer are in yours. We are taught that conflict is a bad thing to share because it is uncomfortable." But the premise the center pushes back on is exactly that. "There is nothing wrong with conflict. It is inevitable, and I would even say good, because conflict gets us closer to better decisions, closer to truth, especially in times of mass uncertainty."
Formal debate rules provide a framework for making that conflict productive, beginning with an agreement about what we're actually disagreeing on. Speaking times enforce turn-taking, a shared topic creates shared stakes, and crucially, you have to listen: not prepare your next argument while the other person is talking, but actually take in what they're saying. At its core, debate requires that you articulate your position clearly, distinguish between what you actually disagree about and what you merely assumed you disagreed about and evaluate evidence.
Students who participate outperform their peers academically, report higher communication confidence and are more likely to take on leadership roles. Over time, the practice of inhabiting viewpoints that aren't yours changes how you think about people who disagree with you: not as incomprehensible or malicious, but as people who have reasons for their views and are worth understanding, even if you ultimately reject those views.
"It is not about being 'right,'" says Averie Vockel, associate director of the Park Debate Society and adjunct assistant professor of communication, "but about discovering understanding for themselves and as a group. Students end up developing a confidence that is hard to ignore."
Discipline of perspective-taking
The challenge is that these outcomes have historically been available only to students who participate in competitive debate programs. That's where Debate Across the Curriculum comes in. A collaboration between the Colleges of Liberal Arts & Sciences and the John R. Park Debate Society, the program, housed in the CCDD, embeds structured debate into courses across disciplines-chemistry, history, literature, business, medicine-anywhere sustained inquiry is already happening.
Most programs designed to build civic skills are opt-in; they reach the students already inclined to seek them out. Debate Across the Curriculum reaches every student in the room, regardless of prior inclination. A community of people who approach disagreement with genuine curiosity is a fundamentally different community than one where disagreement is purely adversarial.
We need "civic capacity" now
Polarization in the U.S. has been worsening for decades, but something has shifted in how it feels. Stewart wrote his dissertation on American conspiracy theories and QAnon-a project that taught him that Americans have a long history with disinformation and conspiratorial thinking. What's changed isn't human nature. It's the environment. "Given our contemporary media landscape, our algorithmic media diets and precise measurement tools, we can identify that political polarization is worsening," he adds. And, because of that same media environment, "we have become less effective at disagreeing with each other."
Middleton adds that the way polarization is represented to us may be amplifying and distorting the divide itself. We've been trained to see our opponents as more extreme and more hostile than they actually are, and that distortion deepens the divide. But whether the problem is getting worse or just feels that way, Middleton's answer is "you build up civic capacity."
There is a version of this story that is simply about skills-communication skills, critical thinking skills, the practical tools of argument and evidence evaluation. That version is true and important.
But the deeper argument is about something more fundamental: the kind of community we want to live in, and whether we're willing to do the work required to maintain it. Democratic community requires that we arrive, together, at decisions we can find mutually acceptable: that we see each other as capable of reason, as worth engaging with, as participants in a shared project rather than obstacles to our individual preferences.
None of that comes naturally, especially in an environment designed to make it harder. It has to be practiced. It has to be modeled. It has to be taught.
The Center for Civic Discourse and Debate, the John R. Park Debate Society and Debate Across the Curriculum at the University of Utah are, together, a bet that these capacities can be built: that people given the right tools and the right experiences will engage differently, think differently and treat each other differently as a result. It's a bet on the possibility of a more functional civic culture, built one conversation at a time.
This piece was abridged from an original article posted by the College of Humanities.
