Olga Dietlin

Thorns and Blooms: Navigating Diversity of Thought with Charitable Curiosity and Discernment 

Olga Dietlin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Higher Education and Student Development, Guest Instructor for Christian Formation and Ministry, Program Director of HESD

Intellectual diversity, as claimed by our most recent CACE faculty seminar speaker, John Rose, is something to lament and look forward to ceasing in heaven. In the room of 20 Wheaton faculty members, you could almost hear a collective gasp at this assertion. John had some explaining to do.

John is the Associate Director of the Civil Discourse Project at Duke University, where he also teaches a popular undergraduate seminar titled “How to Think in an Age of Political Polarization.” He almost called his course “Disagreeing Better” because disagreements are inevitable, and he teaches his students to disagree well. Like most higher education institutions, Duke is not a very ideologically balanced space, at least not when it comes to faculty. According to the most recent Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) report on undergraduate teaching faculty, in 2016-2017, 0.4% of faculty identified as far right, 11.7% as conservative, 28.1% as centrist, 48.3% as liberal, and 11.6% as far left, resulting in a simplified liberal-to-conservative ratio of approximately 5 to 1. ¹  This imbalance influences what is perceived as lovely, pure, and worthy of praise (or condemnation). Even before cancel culture gained momentum, a 2020 survey of 19,969 undergraduate students from 55 colleges and universities found that “a majority of students feel they can’t express their opinions on campus, especially when they are in the ideological minority and even if they believe their college fosters a climate that supports free speech” (Anderson, 2020, para. 1).²  

As a Ukrainian immigrant, I constantly probe the traditional boundaries and impulsive commitments, seeking a Gospel-anchored perspective that transcends conventional ideological divides. I recognize the weight of labels and the diverse reactions they may evoke, and I fear oversimplification. It is not even the expressed position that may evoke apprehension; it is an implied position that people often assume at secular professional societies and gatherings. For example, after presenting at the virtual Pandemic Pedagogy Research Symposium (coincidentally at Duke), I learned that my multi-institutional team’s institutional affiliations created ‘a deep hurt’ among the virtual attendees of our session, seen as intrusion and lamented by the conference organizer in an op-ed published in Inside Higher Education.³

Do more ideologically conservative institutions present a mirror image of Duke’s environment? Perhaps to an extent. Although Americans generally view college campuses as more welcoming to liberals than conservatives, with the polls consistently showing less tolerance for conservative viewpoints,⁴  culture wars have no winners. Efforts to legislate institutional practices and curricula can create an inhospitable climate that also restricts freedom of expression. 

While I self-censor my views much less at Wheaton than at a secular professional gathering, the chances are high that my colleague on the other side of the ideological spectrum would also self-censor, perhaps for entirely different reasons. One common reason is the emphasis on creating and safeguarding safe spaces. However, at Wheaton, we face a different challenge and goal: how do we cultivate an environment that is not only safe but also brave, resilient, and faithful —a place where freedom of thought and expression flourish but also self-regulates in a paradoxically limiting yet liberating way in the light of the Gospel, as “we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5) and seek to reflect the Spirit’s fruit (Galatians 5:22-23)? 

I recently returned from the Association for Christians in Student Development annual conference, which had the theme of "Rest," where I presented a workshop titled “Rest in Disagreement.” Like John Rose, I think it is vital to teach our students to welcome, normalize, and approach ideological disagreements as reflective, navigable, and temporary. And thanks to John, I came to see intellectual diversity, which he defines as seemingly irreconcilable beliefs, as a lamentable reality of the post-Fall world⁵  that one day will be transformed into a unifying clarity: "For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12, NIV). 

This summer, I picked up gardening, which is hard work. While tending to my small garden, I have developed a more sensory longing for the Eternal Garden (Revelation 22:1-3), where people flourish with curses lifted (Genesis 3:17; Revelation 22:3) and beautiful plants grow without constant conflict—a future where diversity of thought no longer collides but converges in His Glory. 

 ¹ Ellen Bara Stolzenberg, Kevin Eagan, Hilary B. Zimmerman, Jennifer Berdan Lozano, Natacha M. Cesar-Davis, Melissa C. Aragon, and Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, Undergraduate Teaching Faculty: The HERI Faculty Survey 2016–2017 (Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles).

 ² Greta Anderson, "A Perception Problem About Free Speech," Inside Higher Education, September 29, 2020, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/29/fire-report-students-are-censoring-their-opinions.

 ³ Kim Manturuk, "Blind Review Is Blind to Discrimination," Inside Higher Education, May 24, 2022, https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/05/25/blind-review-process-can-perpetuate-discrimination-opinion.

 ⁴ Collin Binkley, Jocelyn Gecker, and Emily Swanson, "Few Americans Say Conservatives Can Speak Freely on College Campuses, an AP-NORC/UChicago Poll Shows," AP News, October 2, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/free-speech-college-campuses-0b2811fb35c9c6288b7517da7c9affd3.

 ⁵ Rose, John. Until Our Minds Rest in Thee: Open-Mindedness, Intellectual Diversity, and the Christian Life (Eugene, OR: Cascade Publishing, 2020), 3.