Free Speech, Fear, and Fixing Conversations on Campus – Raj Vinnakota

 

Airdate: February 11, 2026

Raj Vinnakota: "Be curious. Don't make assumptions." When someone says something that, I mean, I just makes you boil, right, and you're like, "I, I just can't believe that," first reaction should be, "I'm sorry. Why do you believe that?"

Julie Rose: Hey, it's Julie. Welcome to Uncomfy. Lately, it just feels really hard to stay open to other people when it seems like we are all living in completely different realities. We're seeing current events from entirely different lenses, and it makes it really hard to connect, let alone sit comfortably in one another's presence. I feel like I'm constantly walking on eggshells everywhere I go, but I don't wanna give up on connection or retreat into a bubble where everybody is just like me so it feels safer. I want to stay curious and hopeful and human, and that's what this show is about, so let's get Uncomfy.

Raj Vinnakota: It was such a powerful, visceral moment, right, and you don't, you don't, you can't stage those, they, but they were literally happening in front of me, and I was like, "Please do this right so others can see that we actually can be uncomfortable and still be in the same space."

Julie Rose: Folks, I want you to meet Raj Vinnakota. He's president of the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and his big push right now is helping universities, college campuses, figure out how to deal with conflicts that are happening around protest and free speech. It's a big challenge, so, Raj, it's so great to have you. Thanks for your time today.

Raj Vinnakota: Thanks for having me.

Julie Rose: All right, so this moment that you're just describing for us, you are on a stage, it's kind of an event, right? A room full, and it's on the campus, this is the University of Southern Maine, room full of academics. There are students in the audience. You've kind of given your speech, and you're, you know, kind of, I imagine at the, at the, before you get to the Q&A, you're kind of feeling like, "Yeah, you know, people are getting this. I, I feel like we're getting somewhere."

Raj Vinnakota: Well, it's even more than that, right? So, it's the largest auditorium on campus. It's more than 400 people, and I've invited a lot of my friends because I live in Maine, and so they don't usually see me in action, so here's a chance to invite all my community members and friends, and there they are in the audience in addition to academics, the administration and a lot of students from some of the different classes.

 Julie Rose: All right, so tell us about when the young man, young man stands up. He identifies as a college student and a conservative.

Raj Vinnakota: That's right. He says, well, first, first, he says, "I'm a disenfranchised conservative. I want to know how it is that colleges can actually be supportive of me." He cites a Harvard study that talks about 70 to 80% of faculty members, uh, being very liberal, uh, and then he talks, this is right after the Charlie Kirk assassination, and he mentions an example that he wore, in solidarity, a MAGA sweatshirt the next day, and he was walking across campus, and he was called a Nazi, um, and he basically said, "What do you do? What are you doing to actually help people like me?"

Julie Rose: What was going through your mind in that moment? This is, this is kind of just the beginning of the Uncomfy because the next couple of questions kind of up the ante, right?

Raj Vinnakota: Exactly, yeah. So, at that level, right, call it, you know, DEFCON, you know, 3? Like, this is not a real problem because these conversations need to happen. So, I point out to him that it's really hard, right, because it requires us to complicate the narrative, that, unfortunately, we're in a world right now, very, very comfortable with creating binaries, false binaries, where you're either a good person or you're a Nazi. Well, we need, as a society, and frankly, you know, the crucibles of our colleges, to understand that you need to complicate the narrative, and that's a responsibility of all of us, and I talked a little bit about that, and then the second thing I said is, "We know from a lot of survey and research that faculty members don't walk into a classroom with the intent of being biased, yet many conservatives have, get that feeling," and so the question becomes like, "How do you prepare and support faculty members to not have that bias in the room?" And that requires a lot of work as well, but, "At least the good thing," I say, "Is that you're all in there with an understanding of a shared humanity."

Julie Rose: ...and then the next question stands up.

Raj Vinnakota: That's right.

Julie Rose: What happens then?

Raj Vinnakota: So, we go to the other side of the room, right, and this woman gets up, and, literally, there's a moment of silence and hesitation, and she goes, "So, I'm very nervous, and, uh, just to be very clear here, I am a, a 73-year-old pro-choice lesbian, and I'm very nervous because of the, who just asked the question," and, uh, says, "You know, you're talking about this in a philosophical level, but how does this translate in the room? What does this look like, right, when I'm incredibly nervous about this young man who just came up right before me and asked this question?" And the room, like, pin drop moment, right? Like, you cannot, and you could feel the nervousness because, I mean, she was taking deep breaths. She was like taking, like, she, it was taking her a while to get through the questions, but it was, it was palpable in the moment. And what I could tell her is, "I can give you specific examples of when young people saw this kind of situation and said, 'I'm gonna lean in, I'm gonna reach out'." So, I started talking about examples, and also one of the things that I say is, "We as a nation need to figure out how to do this and how to engage because 73 million people voted for the current president. They're not going anywhere, so we're all here in this shared boat, and we need to figure it out."

Julie Rose: Um, but in both of those questions/comments, pleas to you from those individuals, there's a thread of, um, "I don't feel safe. I'm afraid," and so, so I wanna talk a little bit more because, because the, kind of, the continuation of this is that a couple of, like, maybe two questions later, a young person stands up and identifies, "I'm a student here. My pronouns are they/them," and their comment then talks about how trans individuals, students of color, and this individual themselves are in danger, feel, there is evidence that you could literally be injured, assaulted, killed, and your, just to kind of jump forward a little bit, your, your response is very empathetic, but it's very much kind of the same thing. It's like, "But we still have to figure out how to be in the same room together," and so, so what I really wanna talk to you about then is how, how do universities do this? Because you're trying to help these college professor, I mean college presidents, even, like, leaders of these organizations, figure out how to create a culture of engagement in a way that feels safe for all of these people to be able to voice and to exist authentically in their full complicated selves, and people across the board do not feel safe, and especially young people. So, how do you create safety and also allow for full and deep disagreement and difference?

Raj Vinnakota: So, I, actually, this is part of my answer to that third question. I start off with saying, " You have an absolute right to create the norms for the conversation and to debate what those norms should be before you even get into the content."

Julie Rose: So, what do you mean by that? Flesh that out. What, what, what do you mean creating norms? Are we talking about creating language that's appropriate, that's not appropriate? Are you talking about, like, silencing, policing language, because even the idea of creating norms makes, makes, you know, could feel like anti-free speech?

Raj Vinnakota: Yeah, usually the kinds of norms that we talk about is when there is a moment where someone doesn't feel safe, that there is an opportunity to stop the conversation and discuss why that person's safety, you know, is, is compromised and how to address that before you go back into the content, and so when there's a moment where things aren't working out, you take a time out and you're like, "Why aren't they working out?" And then you get back to doing the work, but the question becomes, "What is the moment, what are the mechanisms where you can say, 'Whoa, hold on. We gotta put that, we gotta do a timeout here.'?" So, that is usually how you'd wanna drive the norms. You can also have more constrained norms, right? If everyone agrees to them, that's fine, but you start with saying like, "Okay, there are a few things that you wanna make sure are inviolate: Shared humanity, we're all trying to work to get to an answer; assume good faith," and then there's a set of processes that say, "Okay, if somehow there, you suddenly feel like we've just gone outside of the norms, what's the mechanism by which we're going to try to tackle that, that issue?"

Julie Rose: Interesting. Okay.

Raj Vinnakota: One of the things that we're struggling with right now is we've lost figuring out what are the habits, practices, norms, what are the things we do and how we interact with each other, and no amount of written rules or legislation will get you all the way there. In the end, it's "culture". And so, when we talk about our work, we say that, "What we're trying to do is create a campus culture that values productive conversations and using, utilizing and discerning credible information and then working collaboratively across difference to solve problems." That culture requires a whole set of changes that go outside of skills. What do I mean by that? Unfortunately, when you try to solve these kinds of problems, you're like, "Oh, we just need to teach everyone the skill of listening and empathizing and how to work together." Yes, absolutely necessary, nowhere near sufficient because you're missing two other big things. One is you have to create the motivation for the people in that community to want to do this. "Okay, so why do I wanna learn these skills?" Now, in the case of colleges and universities, it's actually fairly easy to make the case because guess what? Employers are clamoring for these skills now, and we can point that out. I mean, like, there was just a survey a few years ago that said that, "80% of employers are looking for this and that they are real important skills to determine hiring, retention, and promotion," right? So, you can talk about all of that to create some motivation, but even that's not enough, Julie, because you need to have a third piece, which is you need to create the social permission on campus to do this, right? So, it means, like, even if I know how to do it, and even if I'm motivated, like, "This is what I need to do," when the moment happens, are you like, "Hmm, I don't know if I should do this," and that social permission only occurs if you have peer permission. No adult is gonna convince all of these college students to do it, and so a lot of our work is how do you get the student government, fraternities and sororities, leading athletes on campus, other members who are well recognized to say, "Hey, look, this is the way that we should act," and have examples of it, 'cause you don't need everyone to model it; you just need a few people to model it for it to start creating, moving the flywheel.

Julie Rose: So, if we can just take this really personal for a moment, then, what does, you, you're working on the highest levels, on university campuses, but all of us in this country are in the same boat, right? We're all kind of swimming along, and it feels very choppy right now, and, on any given day, I'm feeling the urge to jump out of the boat or to push somebody else out of the boat, right? And so, as a personal practice, what is something that I can do to not do either of those things and maybe contribute in some way to, like, having the boat experience be more positive for all of us?

Raj Vinnakota: So, the single most important thing I tell people who ask me this question is, "Be curious. Don't make assumptions." When someone says something that, I mean, I just makes you boil, right, and you're like, "I, I just can't believe that," first reaction should be, "I'm sorry. Why do you believe that?" Or, "I'm really curious because I don't understand the point of view, but I wanna learn. Like, why is that true?" And just be curious and just seek to understand, which in, in those kinds of heightened moments is incredibly difficult, right? So, if you can just work on one skill, that's one. The second in that context, is to practice, really practice listening skills, right? So, the question that follows that curiosity question is, "Okay, so if I understand correctly, the reason that you feel that is X. Do I understand that?" Simply doing those two things will both lower the temperature in that conversation, but also open up the posture of the other person to be more willing to say, "Okay, yeah, oh, if you have a different point of view and push back, I've been heard and people haven't judged me." Those are the most important things that you can just do on a day to day, kind of moment to moment basis.

Julie Rose: Is there a disagreement in your own life, a difference of views, that you've had to actually put this to practice so that you could both stay in the boat effectively?

Raj Vinnakota: Julie, there's always conversations like that. I have an adolescent at home, so, by definition, yes, but I'll bring up a very specific example that's, uh, content related, which is, um, my daughter and I kind of have different views around patriotism, right? I'm an immigrant. I moved here with my family when I was seven. Uh, this country has given me the opportunity to get extremely well educated, to have a tremendous life, to be able to do the things I wanna do, to be financially stable. You know, I love this country. My daughter, who was born here 20 years ago, has seen many of the worst parts of this country and is worried about, you know, what's going on in terms of society, in terms of a democracy that doesn't seem to be willing to actually address the greatest challenges that they see, that is willing to go to war at the drop of a hat, um, worried about structural, major issues in climate change and so on, and so she's like, "You know, I, I'm not really convinced whether democracy's actually doing so well, and I'm not so convinced that we're the shining light," and so we've had this conversation. I remember the first time I was kind of like thrown, right? I just assumed that she was just as excited and believed in this country just like I did, and I came to realize she had a different set of data from her own experiences, and so, yeah, we're gonna be in the same boat because we're related and we're be, going to be in the same boat because I love her unconditionally, but we're also gonna have some difficult perspectives, and that's just one example of it.

Julie Rose: Do you hope to change her mind?

Raj Vinnakota: No, I, I've gotta be very comfortable that, uh, that she's, and I, look, I'm very comfortable that I've, uh, supported and made sure that she's educated to make her own decisions. For me, the single most important thing is that she will listen to other people's positions while she's developing her own.

Julie Rose: Raj Vinnakota is the president of the Institute for Citizens and Scholars. You can learn more about their work at citizensandscholars.org. Raj, thanks so much for your time today.

Raj Vinnakota: I loved being here. Thanks for really diving deep into this moment.

Julie Rose: And thank you for getting Uncomfy with us today. How are you practicing having better conversations with people you disagree with? I'd love to hear what's working for you or even what's not. Let's learn from our mistakes, yeah? You can email me at uncomfy@byu.edu or find us on social media to keep the conversation going; we are @uncomfy.podcaston Instagram. Uncomfy is a BYUradio podcast. Samuel Benson produces it, and the team includes Hyobin Kim and Sam Payne. Our theme music was composed by Kelsey Nay. I'm Julie Rose. Can't wait to get Uncomfy with you again next week.