Speaking at the QS Reimagine Education Awards and Conference in London, Dr Spence explained how UCL’s Disagreeing Well campaign, launched in 2023, has been helping equip students with the skills to make sense of a world in which not everyone thinks in the same way as them and that this was a key part of the university’s offer.
To an audience of around 600 higher-education stakeholders, Dr Spence said disagreeing well was an art in our increasingly polarised world and underlined the importance of universities setting an expectation that their communities practise it.
The UCL Disagreeing Well campaign, which has included a series of high-profile public events, is about being able to strongly disagree but still attempt to understand where an opposing view is coming from and disliking an opinion or idea but not the person holding it.
He said the aim of the campaign was to create "a place where ideas can meet and people can listen to one another and discuss their different understandings of the world".
It was about disagreeing well and constructively, not "disagreeing agreeably", adding: "It’s about demonstrating the traditional epistemic virtues; how you listen to one another; how you identify with some precision the points on which there is some disagreement; how you choose language commensurate with the goal of increasing understanding; how you respect the experiences or professional expertise of other participants in the conversation; how you demonstrate epistemic humility and go into the conversation from the position that you might be wrong."
Over the past year, UCL has held public events with a diverse range of panellists on topics including how to disagree well in an online world and also in public discourse.
UCL also offers its students Disagreeing Well online resources and skills training and its students’ union (SU) runs an Impartial Chairs programme, upskilling students in how to manage potentially controversial debates. The SU runs more than 1,000 student-led events with external speakers a year through its clubs and societies.
Dr Spence told the delegates: "For me the marker of success is that our students’ groups and staff across the university have begun to hold their own events, seminars and conversations about what disagreeing well means to their own particular areas."
Following his speech, Dr Spence took part in a panel event on the future of universities. The discussion centred on the challenge higher education institutions face in the context of changing funding models and economic pressures and how universities can best adapt to ensure they are providing students with the skills they need for the modern world, for instance with the rise of artificial intelligence.
The QS Reimagine Education Awards and Conference aims to gather together university leaders, faculty and educators, innovators, investors, startups, employers and policymakers for an electrifying exchange of revolutionary strategies, ground-breaking ideas, insightful dialogues, and meaningful networking opportunities.
The three-day conference was returning to London for the first time since 2019. It will be permanently based here going forwards.
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Nick Hodgson
(0)7769 240209Email: nick.hodgson [at] ucl.ac.uk
