About Bridging Differences
Bridging Differences: What It Is and What It Isn’t and resources.
Bridging Differences is how we build belonging. When people bridge well, communities become more cohesive and resilient; people feel seen and valued; and more of us thrive.
The Bridging Differences Program teaches and disseminates science-based practices to to help people understand backgrounds and perspectives different from their own across differences, solve problems together, and build cohesive communities.
We are a team of award-winning researchers, facilitators, clinicians, media-makers, and leaders of community change.
We work within clear guardrails: we respect human dignity and don’t ask anyone to bridge with those who deny others’ humanity or threaten safety. To learn more about these guardrails, click here.
We reject norms and practices that marginalize or exclude because they undermine belonging, well-being, and learning.
Dignity is non-negotiable; bridging is how we grow people toward it. Our science-based practices (e.g., listening with empathy, understanding values, finding shared goals) help people engage productively without asking them to compromise their values.
Our resources equip educators, community leaders, and institutions to connect across race, culture, faith, ideology, and geography–and grow their curiosity, intellectual humility, courage, patience, empathy, and compassion. To learn more about the character virtues involved in bridging, click here.
Our programs scale research-based practices, evaluate them, and strengthen networks so more communities can thrive. Whether we’re working with a college campus or an entire state, we help communities create cultures where people feel seen and valued.
There’s a big appetite for this work, and our programs and resources are finding eager audiences:
- More than seven million downloads or views of our Bridging Differences multimedia resources, including articles, videos, and podcast episodes
- More than 450,000 downloads of our Bridging Differences Playbook
- More than 11,000 students enrolled in our Bridging Differences online course. Data from course surveys suggest that participating in the course boosts learners’ levels of intellectual humility, openness to people with different views or backgrounds from their own, and feelings of connection to others, which are all key factors in reducing polarization.
We are grateful to Einhorn Collaborative, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, New Pluralists, The Denver Foundation, The Educating Character Initiative, and Allan Spivack for their generous support of our Bridging Differences program.
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