Northwestern University Trustee Jennifer Leischner Litowitz ’91 and Alec Litowitz (’22, ’27 P) have made a $20 million gift in support of the Center for Enlightened Disagreement to accelerate the University’s impact on promoting constructive engagement and discourse in an increasingly polarized world.
The Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement will take a comprehensive approach to making enlightened disagreement a fully integrated part of student life, with the potential to reach thousands of Northwestern students across schools and majors each year.
“Our role and responsibility as a university is to expose our students to different viewpoints and provide them with opportunities and training to engage respectfully across difference,” said Northwestern President Michael H. Schill. “We are so grateful to the Litowitz family for this transformational gift, which will allow us to make the study and practice of enlightened disagreement a hallmark of the Northwestern experience.”
In recognition of the Litowitzes’ generosity, the University has renamed the center in their honor. Through a multifaceted approach of research, curriculum, outreach and conversation, the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement will provide students, community members and organizations with the intellectual and analytical tools and skills to navigate disagreement and harness the power of difference in service of greater understanding, knowledge and progress.
“Exchanging conflicting opinions freely and openly can fuel innovation and change, force us to think critically and push us to expand our worldview,” said Jennifer Litowitz. “Alec and I are thrilled that Northwestern is taking the lead in developing evidence-backed methods to teach students how to build understanding that will not only benefit them while at Northwestern, but even more so when they transition into the broader world.”
“If we truly want to have meaningful dialogue and navigate across difference, we need to start with a better understanding of ourselves before we can try to understand others,” said Alec Litowitz. “The intent of the center is to teach this type of critical thinking to create a foundation of understanding for constructive discussion and debate. The result may not be agreement, but something equally valuable: enlightened disagreement. Jen and I see this gift as an investment in the future of the Northwestern community that will help drive real progress and change.”
The Litowitz Center will infuse research principles of logical thinking and enlightened disagreement into the learning goals of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences’ first-year College Seminar, a required course taken annually by more than 1,000 incoming students, as well as an integrated part of student life.
Through a partnership with the University’s Division of Student Affairs, the Litowitz Center will offer an innovative co-curricular program for students living on campus, with a pilot launching during the upcoming academic year. Sessions will focus on research-backed approaches to cultivating open-mindedness, identifying one’s own cognitive biases, working collaboratively with others despite disagreement and more.