Resource of the Week: A Tool for Facilitating Dialogue Across Difference

Screenshot from IDP website

The Intergroup Dialogue Project website indicates that IDP was founded as a series of undergraduate-focused courses and resources at Cornell University (2012). By 2016, IDP had developed “the first and only graduate and postdoc dialogue program in the country.”

Beyond the programs and courses IDP offers at Cornell, they provide an overview of their core tool, the LARA Method: Listen, Affirm, Respond, Add Information. They write, “LARA is a tool used to communicate across differences. We find that regular use of this tool helps to reframe one’s ability to engage in conflict empathetically in a way that invites diverse perspectives in an effort to create shared meaning.”