About

Project Dialogue is a year-long, University-wide program that seeks to involve the entire Vanderbilt community in public discourse and reflection connecting classroom learning with larger societal issues. Project Dialogue also serves to increase contact between students, staff, and faculty and encourages interaction among student organizations through implementing various methods of perspective including: lectures, debates, films, art displays, theater productions, panel discussions, and reading material.

Project Dialogue has been run every other year since 1989, allowing each student generation to participate in two Project Dialogue years while attending Vanderbilt. Each year’s programs center on a particular theme. Themes in the past have included “Power: Freedom and Responsibility,” “Can We Talk? Exploring the Limits of Dialogue.” “Crime and the Ultimate Punishment,””Generation Lap: The Rising of the Millennials”and “Civility: And Justice for Whom?”

Speakers and Artists for Project Dialogue have included: Sandra Bernhard, Naomi Wolf, Cornel West, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Oliver Sacks, Danny Seo, Mary Lucking-Reiley, Neil Howe, Scott Turow, Adrienne Outlaw, John Douglas, Gore Vidal, Barbara Ehrenreich, Al Franken, John Ashcroft, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Elie Wiesel, Cokie Roberts