I appreciated Joshua Park’s Sept. 29 Thursday Opinion column describing partisan troubles during Harvard’s 2022 Summer in Washington program [“We college students are partly to blame for our broken politics”]. I directed the program’s last iteration in 2019. In that summer, participants met with figures from across the political spectrum. Students enjoyed meeting Clinton and Trump advisers and politically diverse members of Congress. We packed as many young (generally left-leaning) people as could fit into the room to hear Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute.
What changed? Perhaps universities and the broader country have edged away from open-minded politics. But D.C. in the Trump era was hardly calm, and many young people idealize bipartisanship even if they do not practice it. In 2019, we emphasized that the program intended to introduce as many people, places, groups and views as possible (“the good, bad and bizarre” of D.C.), with as much disagreement as possible, purely for the sake of understanding Washington, a city whose constant changes should make it confusing even to its residents. Events explicitly and relentlessly cycled between topics and political orientations. This helped participants overcome notions that seeing another side could threaten one’s morals and identity.
Sadly, such programming is rare. Few donor-driven nonprofits and political groups want to fill the void. But I trust there are many young people who still quietly yearn to better understand how political opposites think, and if or while this remains true, I still see hope for more productive, cooperative times in U.S. politics.
The writer is a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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