Written by Janina Walburg, Spring 2026 TAD Student Leader

Presenting Talking Across Difference at the Rutgers Democracy Lab Showcase forced me to confront a simple but often overlooked question: where does democracy actually happen? Spoiler alert: it happens everywhere!

Whenever I asked that question to students passing by the poster, they tended to think of democracy in formal institutions, such as elections, legislatures, courts, etc. But what became clear through both my work and the reactions at the showcase is that democracy is just as dependent on the quality of everyday interactions between individuals. If those interactions break down, so does the system that rests on top of them.

Talking Across Difference (TAD) is built around this premise. It is not designed to produce agreement, nor is it a space for debate in the traditional sense. Instead, it creates structured environments where participants can engage across political and social differences with an emphasis on listening, reflection, and intellectual humility. The goal is not to “win” an argument, but to better understand how and why others think the way they do and, in the process, to interrogate one’s own assumptions.

At the showcase, I presented this work alongside fellow TAD members, and what stood out immediately was how intuitive yet unfamiliar the model felt to many attendees. People are accustomed to conversations about politics being fast, reactive, and often adversarial. I often got the question, “How do I win?” TAD disrupts this idea of winning by slowing the conversation down and we get to “win” as a society when we are able to talk to one another.

During the showcase, this dynamic became especially visible through participant reactions. After engaging in dialogue, several students expressed a desire for more time and more space to continue the conversation, to ask follow-up questions, to sit with perspectives they had not previously considered. This deeply intrigued me as I realized that the issue is not a lack of interest; it is a lack of accessible, well-designed spaces for engagement.

In that sense, TAD reveals something important about democratic participation: when the conditions are right, people are willing, eager even, to engage. But those conditions do not emerge on their own. They must be intentionally created, facilitated, and sustained. If democracy is, at its core, a system that depends on collective decision-making among diverse individuals, then the ability to communicate across difference is not optional, but foundational.

And that is exactly what Talking Across Difference is trying to build.

Written by Anna Levinson, Spring 2026 TAD Student Leader

As an event lead for the Talking Across Difference Spring Social, I enjoyed facilitating an event that introduced students within the Rutgers community to the organization and our core values, such as having productive discussions without debates, setting ground rules, and creating an inclusive and safe environment for peers to discuss any topic. The event was meant to use engaging and fun discussion based activities to familiarize attendees with expressing their opinions in front of people with different backgrounds, listen to other perspectives, and come have productive conversations.

We created a word cloud where attendees were able to come up with their own ground rules after we shared our typical list of ground rules, such as being an active listener and giving others space to talk. Next, we set up a low-stakes game of “would you rather” where participants shared their preferences and their reasoning for them, as well as listened to others who disagreed with them. Several questions were related to the topic of having ‘difficult’ discussions, which helped attendees consult themselves with whether they would rather correct someone loudly or let them be wrong forever, or have uncomfortable conversations or avoid discomfort to maintain peace? Many people hadn’t thought about these sides to discussions before, and it brought a lot of personal revelations in terms of communication styles. We also played a game of human bingo, where participants completed a bingo sheet by meeting everyone in the room to learn about others who they may not have ordinarily met. This aided in comfortability speaking with people who have differences and leaving a communication comfort zone by getting to know peers.

Participants gained a sense of community and an understanding of the importance of ground rules in discussion. These are key skills for the future Talking Across Difference events, as we discuss topics such as voting, immigration, and disinformation in digital media. This allows for productive conversations in the future and encourages the Rutgers community to be more inclusive, diverse, and confident in their individual voices.