Teaching students the skills of civil discourse—free inquiry, free expression and critical thinking—is only part of the work of preparing them for a life of citizenship; they must also put these skills to work many times throughout their academic career, according to Raj Vinnakota, president of the Institute for Citizens and Scholars.

“It’s like building a muscle,” Vinnakota says on the latest episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast.

Getting students to master the skills of civil discourse is what Vinnakota says is the “aspirational goal” of Presidents for Civic Preparedness, an initiative started by the Institute for Citizens and Scholars in 2023 with the aim of bringing leaders together so they could learn from each other, train faculty on how to bring contentious ideas into the classroom and then measure the work’s impact.

“These skills require constant practice, and at least today what our presidents and we have talked about is that it’s largely an opt-in culture, and that’s not just what we want to do. It’s incredibly important, but you want to get to the point where this is part of the campus culture,” Vinnakota told Sara Custer, editor in chief of Inside Higher Ed.

“This work is increasingly necessary and increasingly difficult at the same time,” Vinnakota added.

Participating presidents make three “civic commitments” that the Institute for Citizens and Scholars says “move beyond oversimplified debates around free speech versus diversity and inclusion.”

Vinnakota stressed that the commitments helped presidents create a vocabulary that “broke through the false binary they felt was being created on their campuses.”

“Yes, the language gets weaponized and we have to be careful, but I’m trying to get the presidents comfortable and owning the language,” he said.

“There are things about this that the progressive left will be very happy with. There are things about this that the conservative right will be very happy with—and vice versa, that they’ll both be unhappy with. But that’s the dynamic tension and work we’re engaging with on campuses.”

Listen to the full episode here.