The Case for Conflict

How the University of Utah is teaching students, and communities, the lost art of productive conflict.

Think of the last time someone openly disagreed with you online. Where did you instantly go with it—anger, confusion, or an opening toward some new understanding?

"There's surely more space for compromise and mutually acceptable agreement than we're currently finding," says Michael Middleton, senior associate dean for the Colleges of Liberal Arts & Sciences, director of the Center for Civic Discourse and Debate, and communication professor at the University of Utah. He’s referring, of course, to today’s public discourse in a nation that can seem hopelessly divided. "So let's develop the tools to do that. And where we can't, let's develop tools to help us understand each other so that we can live in common, even if we're continuing to live in disagreement about some things."

It's a deceptively simple idea. And in 2026, it feels like a complicated one.

We are more connected than ever, more talked at, more algorithmically fed, more passively absorbing strangers' opinions than any generation in history. But somewhere in that noise, something essential got lost. We've grown afraid of discomfort, allergic to being wrong, and increasingly convinced that the person on the other side of a disagreement is simply not worth engaging.

The consequences are visible everywhere: in gridlocked legislatures, in fractured communities, in workplaces where hard conversations go perpetually unaddressed, in families where certain topics have become permanently off the table. We've built a public culture that's very good at performing disagreement and very bad at actually working through it.

"We have forgotten the importance of disagreement," says Duncan Stewart, director of the John R. Park Debate Society and communication professor at the U. "We have forgotten the value in discomfort interpersonally and culturally. And we have begun to fear being wrong."

This is the problem the U's Center for Civic Discourse and Debate (CCDD) was created to address. It starts with a belief that might sound obvious but turns out to be surprisingly radical: the skills required for productive civic participation can be taught.

What Civic Education Actually Means

When most people hear the phrase "civic education," they think of high school history class—the three branches of government, the Bill of Rights, how a bill becomes a law. That kind of civic education matters, but it addresses only a portion of the problem. Knowing the structure of democratic institutions doesn't tell you how to function inside them: how to make an argument, listen to someone you disagree with, or find common ground with someone whose starting assumptions are entirely different from yours.

"Civic education can be about the processes of civic participation, not just particular types of content," says Middleton. "How do we cultivate the practices? How do we build the tools that allow us to have durable, welcoming communities that we are able to exist in?"

Stewart adds that disagreement isn't exclusively about conflict. "Part of disagreement is also being able to identify not only how we are mutually affected by a given issue, but demonstrating that ‘I understand how you are affected in ways that I am not, and here's what I might do about that.’"

Debate, properly understood, is one of the most powerful tools we have for teaching both.

The Debate Problem—and the Debate Solution

For many people, the word "debate" lands wrong. In the popular imagination, it's combat—two people trying to destroy each other's arguments, with a winner declared at the end. It's what happens on cable news when two pundits clash. It's the high school activity where quick-talking kids overwhelm their opponents with sheer volume of argument. That conception isn't wrong, but it captures only one use of a much more versatile tool. And it misses something more fundamental: the fear of conflict that makes productive disagreement feel impossible in the first place.

"I think a thing we have begun to fear is conflict," Stewart says, "because it means I am no longer in my lane and you no longer are in yours. We are taught that conflict is a bad thing to share because it is uncomfortable." But the premise the center pushes back on is exactly that. "There is nothing wrong with conflict. It is inevitable, and I would even say good, because conflict gets us closer to better decisions, closer to truth, especially in times of mass uncertainty."

Formal debate rules provide a framework for making that conflict productive, beginning with an agreement about what we're actually disagreeing on. Speaking times enforce turn-taking, a shared topic creates shared stakes, and crucially, you have to listen: not prepare your next argument while the other person is talking, but actually take in what they're saying. At its core, debate requires that you articulate your position clearly, distinguish between what you actually disagree about and what you merely assumed you disagreed about, and evaluate evidence. 

"Debate is a tool that people can put to a lot of different uses," Middleton says. "It can be put to the use of developing better understanding, developing stronger knowledge, making better decisions and finding compromise. It has benefits that are both direct and indirect." Students who participate outperform their peers academically, report higher communication confidence, and are more likely to take on leadership roles. Over time, the practice of inhabiting viewpoints that aren't yours changes how you think about people who disagree with you: not as incomprehensible or malicious, but as people who have reasons for their views and are worth understanding, even if you ultimately reject those views. "It is not about being 'right,'" says Averie Vockel, associate director of the Park Debate Society and adjunct assistant professor of communication. "but about discovering understanding for themselves and as a group. Students end up developing a confidence that is hard to ignore." The goal isn't just to produce competitive debaters; it's to use the structure and discipline of debate to build capacities that serve people everywhere, from the workplace to the community meeting to the dinner table.

Discipline of perspective-taking

The challenge is that these outcomes have historically been available only to students who participate in competitive debate programs. That's where Debate Across the Curriculum comes in. A collaboration between the Colleges of Liberal Arts & Sciences and the John R. Park Debate Society, the program, housed in the CCDD, embeds structured debate into courses across disciplines—chemistry, history, literature, business, medicine—anywhere sustained inquiry is already happening. "The entire reason a discipline exists is to engage in sustained question-asking," Middleton says. "Debate Across the Curriculum provides a tool to teach civic participation skills at the same time that we enrich how students engage with those disciplinary questions."

Most programs designed to build civic skills are opt-in; they reach the students already inclined to seek them out. Debate Across the Curriculum reaches every student in the room, regardless of prior inclination. A community of people who approach disagreement with genuine curiosity is a fundamentally different community than one where disagreement is purely adversarial. Debate Across the Curriculum is one of the most direct paths to building that community, one classroom at a time.

We Need ‘Civic Capacity’ Now

Polarization in the US has been worsening for decades, but something has shifted in how it feels. Stewart wrote his dissertation on American conspiracy theories and QAnon—a project that taught him that Americans have a long history with disinformation and conspiratorial thinking. What's changed isn't human nature. It's the environment. "Given our contemporary media landscape, our algorithmic media diets, and precise measurement tools, we can identify that political polarization is worsening," he adds. And, because of that same media environment, “we have become less effective at disagreeing with each other."

When you open your phone, Stewart points out, you're already being civically educated, whether you want to be or not. "Engaging in some sort of intentional activity that helps you become aware of how you are affected by that information only empowers you as an individual to be more autonomous in your decision making."

Middleton adds that the way polarization is represented to us may be amplifying and distorting the divide itself. "While polarization may be worsening, the way that polarization is represented to us amplifies it. Perhaps [it] distorts it." We've been trained to see our opponents as more extreme and more hostile than they actually are, and that distortion deepens the divide. But whether the problem is getting worse or just feels that way, Middleton’s answer is "you build up civic capacity."

Stewart's own path is a testament to what that capacity can do. He was not planning to go to college after high school until Middleton, who had remembered him as a high school debater, called with a scholarship offer. "From that position," Stewart says, "I just kept saying yes to the debate opportunities in front of me." That string of yeses led to a master's degree, a PhD, and eventually a return to Utah and the work he knows best. Debate, he says, showed him "the reverse of polarization—that there is always more than two sides." That revelation changed how he teaches. "Disagreement can be the medium by which we are curious about one another."

Beyond the Classroom

Public debates, open to the entire community, are a cornerstone of the CCDD's programming. When the University of Utah hosted these events, two or three hundred community members attended, experiencing something rarer than the conflict they might expect: people engaging with a difficult topic in ways that are informed, respectful, and oriented toward understanding rather than victory. "One of the reasons people are so bad at engaging in difficult conversations is that the social learning—what they see out in the world—tends to be less than effective," Middleton says. "Pretty combative examples of how to work through disagreement." The center's public debates offer a different model.

Nowhere is that model more visible than in the Park Debate Society's Refugee Debate League. Launched in 2022 with the Utah Department of Workforce Services' Refugee Services Office, the 10-week program brings debate instruction to refugee-background youth in Salt Lake City, covering argumentation, research, and presentation skills, and culminating in a campus tournament judged by debate society members and faculty. Participants receive college credit, tournament winners receive scholarships, and every student is invited to a college informational session about opportunities at the U.

"A debate classroom requires collaboration with students in order to be effective," says Vockel. "Students cannot passively consume material. In debate, they must participate in a co-constructive way—and their participation is not only encouraged, but highly valued." That matters for students told to sit still and listen, sometimes even told not to speak in their native language. The league's classrooms are multilingual, with interpretation services available and students encouraged to participate in whatever language they prefer.

The impact shows in the stories. One student, working on a unit about healthcare accessibility, asked whether the class could discuss the need for interpretation services in medical settings, so children wouldn't have to translate complex diagnoses for their families. He'd wanted to raise the issue for years but hadn't known how. By semester's end, he had applied to the U and decided to pursue a career in healthcare.

"On the other side of discomfort is a whole lot of fun—and also, whether you think it or not, a whole lot of connection," Stewart says. "You see deep disagreement between debate rivals. And then after the round, despite their deep disagreement, you see the best of friends. That type of connection through disagreement can be crucial in alleviating the consequences of polarization."

What kind of community do we want? 

There is a version of this story that is simply about skills—communication skills, critical thinking skills, the practical tools of argument, and evidence evaluation. That version is true and important.

But the deeper argument is about something more fundamental: the kind of community we want to live in, and whether we're willing to do the work required to maintain it. Democratic community requires that we arrive, together, at decisions we can find mutually acceptable: that we see each other as capable of reason, as worth engaging with, as participants in a shared project rather than obstacles to our individual preferences.

None of that comes naturally, especially in an environment designed to make it harder. It has to be practiced. It has to be modeled. It has to be taught.

The Center for Civic Discourse and Debate, the John R. Park Debate Society, and Debate Across the Curriculum at the University of Utah are, together, a bet that these capacities can be built: that people given the right tools and the right experiences will engage differently, think differently, and treat each other differently as a result. It's a bet on the possibility of a more functional civic culture, built one conversation at a time.

In a moment when that possibility can feel remote, that bet is worth making.

By Natalie Pyne