Why universities are failing at difficult conversations

Many university students and academics feel too afraid to address difficult topics, fearing they may say the wrong thing.

But approaching big issues with humility helps ease tension around them and break down barriers, the royal commission probing anti-Semitism has heard.

In a final tranche of public hearings, the commission is exploring how social cohesion can improve in education.

Monash University lecturers Farid Zaid and Daniel Heller said when they began teaching undergraduate students, they quickly found many struggled to hear the different views of classmates.

"We both saw conversations in the classroom play out along really rigid lines," Dr Zaid said.

"I was deeply surprised by my students' inability to distinguish discomfort in the classroom ... and distressed."

To cope, the majority of students and academics adopt a position of self-censorship over fears including they be called out on social media or garner an official complaint, they said.

"We know what's virtuous, what's moral, what's right; and anyone who disagrees is, in one way or another, morally reprehensible," Dr Heller said.

The pair run workshops under the Brave Conversations Project, aiming to teach students and teachers how to stay in the room when things become difficult.

The project encourages approaching disagreements with humility and not presuming to have all the answers before the conversation has even began.

"Before you set out to try and challenge someone's views, why not first pause, take a beat, and ask the question: how did we even come to see the same thing in such fundamentally different ways?" Dr Heller said.

One technique they teach is for the listener to clarify the meaning they are taking.

"Just asking the simple question of 'hey, this is what I heard you say, is this what you meant?'," Dr Heller said.

"Ninety per cent of the time, the person that said the statement is shocked to hear how it landed."