Liza Oliver is frequently asked how she, an associate professor of art specializing in visual culture across Europe, South Asia, and the West Indies in the 18th and 19th centuries, came to be the director of the Pluralism Initiative at Wellesley.
The initiative is a nonpartisan forum that brings speakers to campus whose work “challenges the orthodoxy of liberal, conservative, and centrist positions,” like Melissa Solórzano, a scholar-at-risk from Nicaragua who studies government dispossession of Indigenous land, and Yael Lempert, former U.S. ambassador to Jordan. Surely a political scientist or sociologist would be the more likely choice?
“Pluralism is something that we should be practicing in all of our classrooms. So I’m not sure why an art historian wouldn’t do it.”
—Liza Oliver, associate professor of art and director of the Pluralism Initiative
Oliver answers, “Pluralism is something that we should be practicing in all of our classrooms. So I’m not sure why an art historian wouldn’t do it.” Plus, having been raised in a conservative, religious family, she wasn’t exposed to a variety of viewpoints growing up. “As a result, I have an aversion to groupthink, whether it’s from the left or right. … So I think that makes me well suited for this,” she says.
The Pluralism Initiative grew from a conversation Oliver had with an alumna several years ago about the campus climate and viewpoint diversity. “It was a major problem,” she told the alum. As at many tight-knit, small liberal arts colleges, Oliver says, students have been “scared of each other” and the role of anonymous online platforms. They worry that saying something “wrong” will lead to serious social consequences. She also thinks faculty can be concerned about raising certain issues for similar reasons.
During that conversation, Oliver floated the idea of what would become the Pluralism Initiative, which would create spaces for reasoned conversations about controversial issues. The alumna ultimately decided to provide seed funds for the initiative, and Oliver began building it—with agreement from the College leadership that it operate outside the administration. “This really needs to be a faculty-led thing,” she told the Office of the Provost, with Oliver and the initiative’s faculty advisory board given complete freedom to select the topics and speakers. The Pluralism Initiative is currently funded by many alums.
The first event was “What’s in a Word?: Zionism” in September 2024. “I saw the word ‘Zionism’ getting thrown around in many different contexts, in many different ways,” says Oliver. “Part of the issue was definitional. … It was getting leveraged as an epithet. And so, one, I think education needed to happen on the topic. And, two, it was a way to demonstrate that I mean it when I say that we’re going to have conversations about controversial issues.”
The event, a roundtable with four experts led in discussion by Stacie Goddard, Betty Freyhof Johnson ’44 Professor of Political Science and associate provost, Wellesley in the World, covered the diverse historical and contemporary meanings of the word. Oliver says word got out that the event was “educational and critical,” and that helped drive strong interest in subsequent gatherings, which have focused on everything from UFOs to decolonization.
This academic year, the Pluralism Initiative offered a yearlong student fellowship. It included an Israel-Palestine seminar led by Ezzedine Fishere, a Dartmouth expert on Israel-Palestine; constructive dialogue sessions led by Oliver; and a paid summer internship in civic engagement funded by the Lulu Chow Wang ’66 Center for Career Education. Nearly 60 students applied for the 15 spots.
Emily Ruben ’29 got in. She was drawn to the fellowship, she says, because growing up in St. Louis, Mo., she didn’t have many opportunities to engage with classmates on controversial subjects. The Israel-Palestine subject material interested her in part because her mother is an international law professor “and she’s Arab American, and we also have a lot of family who live in Syria on my mom’s side,” she says. She knows a fair amount about the conflict from one perspective, she says, “but I wanted to be able to engage with it academically and form my own opinions.”
Ruben would enthusiastically recommend the fellowship to other students. “It’s just been so interesting meeting so many people who all came together just to have these discussions, while also being from completely different parts of the world,” she says. The experience has shown her that “two things can be true at once—two thought processes and two world views can exist at the same time, and one doesn’t negate the other.”
Controversial Conversations: A selection of Pluralism Initiative events
“The Multiracial Right”
Daniel HoSang, professor of American studies at Yale University, in conversation with Petra Rivera-Rideau, associate professor of American studies at Wellesley
“We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite”
Musa al-Gharbi, assistant professor of sociology at Stony Brook University, in conversation with Jennifer Chudy, associate professor of political science at Wellesley, about his new book of the same name
“How Liberals Built Prison America”
Naomi Murakawa, associate professor of African American studies, Princeton University, in conversation with Jennifer Musto, associate professor of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley
“(Don’t) Hold Your Mouth: The Power of Language”
John McWhorter, associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University, in conversation with Kathryn Lynch, Katharine Lee Bates and Sophie Chantal Hart Professor of English at Wellesley
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