Growing up on Long Island, Kristi Clemens had always lived and learned in a diverse community. But when she enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Vermont, she quickly realized this isn’t the case for everyone.
“When I came to Vermont as a 23-year-old, it was the first time I had been in a really white space,” Clemens says. “That, coupled with the work that we were doing in my graduate program, created this moment for me where I realized I didn’t want others to be in the same situation that I found myself in: Where they had never considered that they had privilege until they were in a different environment.”
Clemens’ revelation prompted her to incorporate social justice education into her practice as a student affairs professional. In 2006, inspired by her experiences working in residence life at New York University, Clemens began to develop a framework to create brave spaces in higher education—a facilitation practice that has influenced the way educators, human resources professionals, and community leaders foster constructive dialogue across differences.
Now, Clemens is expanding her work as executive director of the Dialogue Project, which launched in January and is a component of Dartmouth Dialogues. The Dialogue Project provides training in essential collaborative dialogue skills such as empathetic listening, managing emotions, navigating conversations, and finding points of connection.
After serving as Dartmouth’s Title IX coordinator and in various student affairs positions, Clemens now focuses exclusively on the Dialogue Project as its executive director.
“I’ve always asked myself, ‘Where can I make positive change? How can I leave an institution in a better place than I found it?’” Clemens says. “The fact that brave spaces are becoming the foundation of this transformative initiative at one of the oldest institutions in the country is mind-blowing to me. It’s incredibly meaningful to give back to this community that has given me such great opportunities.”
Creating the conditions for bravery
After completing her master’s degree at UVM, Clemens took a role in residential life at her undergraduate alma mater, NYU. Brian Arao—Clemens’ friend and former UVM classmate—joined the university’s staff a year later.
“Brian and I both had similar orientations: We were both doing this functional work in residential life, but we also knew we had an important role to serve in holistically educating students,” Clemens says.
In 2006, Clemens and Arao were asked to develop a diversity module as part of NYU’s resident assistant training program. The duo decided on a group exercise to help the students understand privilege.
“Afterwards, we heard from both facilitators and participants that the exercise went really poorly,” Clemens says. “Brian and I regrouped and asked ourselves, ‘What did we do? We thought we play-tested this well—what went wrong?’”
As Clemens and Arao reflected and listened, they realized the crux of the issue lay less in the exercise itself, and more in what the students thought it meant to be in a safe space.
“We told students, coming into the activity, that this was a safe space,” Clemens says. “What that really looked like was that people with dominant identities could say whatever they wanted and couch it under the excuse, ‘This is a safe space: I can say things that might be hurtful or difficult to hear, and nobody’s allowed to feel any kind of way about that.’ The students with less identity privilege felt like they couldn’t challenge them or speak their own truth because they didn’t want to be seen as invalidating their peers’ experiences.”
Clemens and Arao started brainstorming a linguistic alternative to “safe space.” The result of their discussions was “brave space”: A facilitation practice that emphasizes the courage needed to engage in difficult conversations and establishes community-elected ground rules to ensure respectful interactions.
“Brave space community agreements are formed by the people in the room; we give them jumping-off points and recognize that people are going to be brave if they feel like we’ve created the conditions to do so,” Clemens says. “One way to create those conditions is to be honest about the fact that if you say something that might be ignorant or harmful, there’s a potential impact on somebody else in the room, and you have to own that impact—even if it wasn’t your intention.”
In 2013, Clemens and Arao contributed a chapter to the book The Art of Effective Facilitation, “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces.” The chapter is widely considered one of the first appearances of “brave space” in the higher education context.
Since it was published, Clemens and Arao have continued to refine the brave space framework and share it with leaders at colleges, universities, and organizations through coachings, workshops, and speaking engagements. As dialogue in many corners of society continues to devolve, Clemens and Arao have begun considering reframing—or fully revising—the framework.
“I think we’re at a watershed moment—both in higher education and in society,” Clemens says. “There’s so much going on in the world right now that could benefit from intentional dialogue across differences.”
Transforming the fabric of Dartmouth
Clemens came to Dartmouth in 2009 as the associate director of residential education. She held several positions in student affairs before accepting the role of Title IX coordinator.
“As a first-generation college student from a working-class family, working at an Ivy League institution is so beyond where I ever thought I could personally be,” Clemens says. “I’ve been really lucky to have so many great opportunities at Dartmouth to rise up the ranks, build new initiatives, and transform programs.”
In June 2023, Clemens read then-president Phil Hanlon and president-elect Sian Leah Beilock’s op-ed in the Boston Globe.
“They were saying that it’s important that we cultivate brave spaces on our campuses, and that this concept is something President Beilock hopes to bring to Dartmouth,’” Clemens recalls. “I thought, ‘Ooh, that’s me!’”
Clemens reached out to Beilock to introduce herself and share the chapter from The Art of Effective Facilitation. Beilock wrote back, encouraging Clemens to speak with Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Elizabeth F. Smith about the nascent Dialogue Project.
“I connected with Elizabeth and learned about the work she’s been doing since 2019,” Clemens says. “We found that our experiences on opposite sides of the Green were similar. She was hearing from faculty who were asking for resources and suggestions on how to manage conflict in the classroom. I was having people come to me to report issues that weren’t Title IX-related at all—they were just interpersonal conflicts that students didn’t know how to solve.”
Clemens and Smith’s conversations became the foundations of the Dialogue Project.
“Honing these skills are at the heart of the Dialogue Project,” Smith says. “They are essential not only for fostering meaningful collaboration and an inclusive campus community, but for the innovation and leadership our divisive times demand.”
“We have an opportunity to change the fabric of what this place could look like in a short amount of time,” Clemens says. “We expect every member of our community to engage in difficult dialogues with each other, and we’re going to teach our students how to do that. We’re going to provide them with lots of different tools, knowing that some tools will work better for different people in different situations.”
The Dialogue Project launched with workshops, major speakers such as emotional intelligence expert Marc Brackett, and its first special topic series, Middle East Dialogues— led by Dartmouth’s Jewish Studies and Middle Eastern Studies faculty. This year’s special topic series will be announced soon.
The project has also partnered with StoryCorps to bring One Small Step, the initiative that brings two people with different political beliefs together for a conversation, to campus.
“The response to our partnership with StoryCorps has been overwhelming,” Clemens says. “The student community—and even the Hanover community writ large—has been so excited about this project and clamoring to answer their questionnaires. We had our first introductory conversations in the winter with the launch, and we recorded 25 more conversations in May.”
The next on-campus recording sessions will take place on Nov. 13, 14, and 15, with a deadline to apply to be matched with a conversation partner by Oct. 13.
This past summer, the Dialogue Project kicked off a partnership with the Constructive Dialogue Institute, a nonprofit that develops research-based educational tools to equip schools, universities, and workplaces with practical skills to engage constructively across differences. Facilitators led sessions with students, faculty, and staff on how to facilitate meaningful conversations on contentious issues.
And earlier this month, Clemens and Smith led a dialogue skills-building session for incoming ’28s as part of New Student Orientation.
As the project’s first programs gain momentum, Clemens is actively seeking new ways to infuse the Dialogue Project into every aspect of the student experience at Dartmouth.
“I’m really trying to figure out what’s possible,” she says. “Where is this work already happening? How can we amplify the good work that has already been done? My hope is that, when this incoming first-year class is ready to graduate, they have gained the skills to be able to talk with colleagues or classmates who think differently from them in a way that’s respectful and productive, and that they take those skills beyond Dartmouth and into the world.”