Educating Character Across Differences: Conference Recap
More than 300 educators gathered at Wake Forest University in December for our “Educating Character Across Differences” conference. This was the fourth conference our Program has hosted since 2019 and the largest in-person conference to date. “I felt a real energy around the importance of character in higher education,” said Michael Lamb, our executive director. “We often talk about character, but this conference showed how educators are really seeking to develop character in their own contexts.”
The three-day event opened on Thursday, December 5, 2024, with a keynote conversation with award-winning author Jesmyn Ward, who discussed the value of empathy and described an honest reckoning with history as “a key to better understand and navigate your present.” On Friday morning, Irshad Manji led a presentation about “Moral Courage for Messy Times,” offering advice on how to navigate conflicts across differences. And on Saturday, attendees enjoyed a lively and thoughtful panel featuring John Inazu, Rajiv Vinnakota, and Rachel Wahl. Throughout the conference, more than 100 presenters shared their work on character and how they are developing it at their institutions. “One of my favorite things about it is the presence of both scholars and practitioners,” said Elizabeth Bounds, a doctoral student in Baylor University’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. “It’s been really enjoyable to hear theoretical or empirical perspectives on how to build character, and then connect with practitioners who are doing this work on the ground and how they see it applied.”
In all, the conference featured 35 distinct sessions on a broad range of topics, including programming, assessment, athletics, community building, and global perspectives. “I learned a lot,” said Lamb. “Our hope is that this conference will plant seeds that will continue to flourish in different parts of the country and even the world.”
From our Speakers
Jesmyn Ward
Nearly 1,500 people came to Wait Chapel to listen to MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, novelist, and professor Jesmyn Ward talk about her background, her writing process, and the character of the characters in her novels. She emphasized the importance of empathy in her fiction. “When a reader finishes my book, I hope they go out into the world and see people who look like characters in my book, and they feel something for them,” she told moderator Kenneth Townsend.
The main event was presented in conjunction with the Face to Face Speaker Forum. Before the keynote, dozens of Wake Forest students, including many who joined book clubs organized by the Program, were able to have an in-person conversation with Ward. “Getting to talk to such an esteemed author like that … in the more intimate space of a small group was really great,” said Talon Keeler (‘26), one of the student moderators.
- WATCH: What Keeler thought about Ward’s answer to a question about staying close to her roots.
- READ: How the conversation opened the eyes of Wake Forest students.
Irshad Manji
Irshad Manji is the founder and CEO of the Moral Courage College and the author of “Don’t Label Me: How to Do Diversity without Inflaming the Culture Wars.” During her opening presentation, she talked about why speaking truth to power may involve speaking to your own ego. “There is agency involved in us as educators,” she said.
- WATCH: Here’s a short excerpt of her dynamic presentation.
A Panel Discussion
On Saturday morning, Emily Hunt-Hinjosa moderated a lively conversation about how we think about the role of character in the context of deep difference and pluralism. Some highlights:
Rachel Wahl, University of Virginia: “When does civil discourse matter for changing an organization? I think, on one hand, we all know that organizations are made up of people, and who we are in our organizations matters for what the organization is. And so I think there’s an extent to which doing work on the individual level will, in that way, slowly over time, shift organizations, because who we are in our work matters to what that organization’s effect on the world is. At the same time, if we want dialogue to have a direct effect on organizational change, or any kind of individual work to have direct effect on institutional change, there needs to be structural supports for that to take place.”
Rajiv Vinnakota, Institute for Citizens & Scholars: “Part of the challenge that I work with is trying to get the rest of the world to understand that we all work with 18 to 24 year olds, and that part of that process is the mistake-making process….It’s the Boy, am I glad Facebook wasn’t around when I was an undergrad process. And the reason I raised that is, we’re assuming that there are traditions in the community that help to drive whatever traditions you’re developing in young people, but part of what you want to do in that time is also have them experiment and do things, so that eventually they decide how they’re going to model character over time.”
John Inazu, Washington University in St. Louis: “You can’t speed up trust. It has to be earned over time. I think one of the reasons some of our institutions got in hot water last spring is you had institutional leaders in the middle of crisis talking about our community values, and nobody believed them, because there hadn’t been any work on community values prior to the moment of crisis. You can’t snap your fingers and create that.”
- WATCH: Here’s a short excerpt from one of Rajiv Vinnakota’s answers during our panel discussion, where he talked about the importance of creating a space to make mistakes.
Personal Reflections
On the final day of the conference, we asked several attendees what educating character across differences meant to them. Here’s what they said:
Paul DeBell, Fort Lewis College: “To me, educating character across differences is all about creating the ability, the will, and the skill to take on the biggest problems that we face as communities locally, regionally and globally. I’m a political scientist, and so I see time and time again how the problems that we face can be used to divide us. But I think that through educating character traits such as courage and empathy and community spiritedness, we can create a new generation of leaders who use these challenges as opportunities to unify and really solve problems.”
Rodney Cunningham, North Carolina Central University: “Educating character across the differences means being able to identify with people and know about differences and learning how to disagree. I thought that was one of the points that was brought forward in one of the talks and sessions. If we can do that and approach civility in a better way … and understand that each of us may have a different experience, to learn from that will help us go forward.”
Savita Madan, Association of Children’s Museums: “To me, educating character across differences means creating implementations and community measurements and interventions that actually resonate with the people and really serve the goals of the community that they’re trying to serve. It’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all answer. It’s going to be something that has to be attuned and responsive to the times, to society, to the culture, to the specific requirements of a community that it strives to serve. And I think it has to be, more than anything, sustainable … It has to be something that really inspires long-term change.”
Heather Keith, Radford University: “Educating character across differences requires that we learn not only to be in dialogue and conversation with each other, to tell each other our stories, to think about our own values, to think about how we can educate values in others. But it also implies that we work together to solve problems, that we can collaborate, that we can use our strengths and our values, as different as they may be, to work together to solve some of the most difficult problems of our time. And that’s something that I really value in an educational experience, and something that I think we’ve got in spades in this community.”
We are grateful to everyone who came to the conference and shared their knowledge, ideas, and perspectives. As our ECI director Jennifer Rothschild put it during the closing session: “The success of this conference is a tribute to all of you.”