To Dial Down Campus Tensions, Colleges Teach the Art of Conversation

On a warm November day, a group of Columbia University professors set up “listening tables” near the center of campus and hailed students rushing to class, inviting them to stop and talk.

About a dozen students, alumni and faculty members sat down, grabbed some free pizza and chatted about how the protests over the Israel-Hamas war had alienated some of them and inspired others.

Then, a woman in a kaffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian scarf, spoke up and the tension rose. Over the past year, her view of the conflict had evolved, she told the group. She talked about “this genocide.”

“I wouldn’t call it a genocide,” said Scott Barry Kaufman, an adjunct psychology professor moderating the group. “Do you hate me because I disagree with you?”