LAUNCHING SEPTEMBER 2026
Disagreement is a skill;
let's build it together!
The Disagreement Project is a national educational initiative to enable productive disagreement on college campuses.
Most higher-ed civil discourse initiatives focus on skill building and tactical training but stop short of facilitating authentic disagreements on controversial topics. We are changing that by building the first project-based, experiential learning curriculum where students build skills through engaging in honest, real-world disagreements.
We do not "throw the students in the pool"; instead, we have developed a safe (but not too safe) and scaffolded learning process with four critical curricular components:
Confidentiality
Students are incredibly fearful of saying anything that might be used against them online or in-person. As a result, we match students from different campuses to create the most fertile conditions for them to speak freely.
Topic-Specific Modules
Each unit centers on a highly topical and complex ethical issue. We curate a set of shared facts so that students can have informed, evidence-based disagreements.
Skilled Moderation
We are training a critical mass of skilled human moderators to guide the conversation and ensure safety.
Summative Storytelling
After moving through the curriculum, each student will produce a podcast or short video reflection and post it on their own channels and The Disagreement platform. The goal is to catalyze a grassroots, educational movement focused on bridging our divides.
We launched our first pilots in early March and are seeing highly impactful outcomes.
Many participants said it was the first time they had an honest disagreement on a political issue. We will launch our next round of pilots in April on AI Companions. Please reach out if you or your organization is interested in participating in the pilot. We are looking for mission-aligned, early adopters to help us iterate on the user experience.