In Creative Fidelity to Dialogue: Bringing Intergroup Dialogue to Jesuit Campuses

This article explores how intergroup dialogue (IGD) offers a contemporary enactment of the Jesuit pedagogical tradition of creative fidelity—a balance between fidelity to Ignatian origins and responsiveness to urgent social challenges. U.S. Jesuit colleges and universities face a dual obligation: to reckon with their entanglement in histories of colonialism, slavery, and systemic racism, and to prepare students for transformative action in a pluralistic, global context. IGD, as an empirically tested and dialogic pedagogy, aligns with Ignatian values of discernment, accompaniment, and cura personalis, while fostering whole-person formation across differences of race, culture, and identity. By situating IGD within the Catholic intellectual tradition and the Jesuit mission of educating “men and women for others,” this article identifies key possibilities and pitfalls for implementing dialogue on Jesuit campuses and argues that Jesuit higher education is uniquely positioned to lead in advancing intercultural, justice-oriented dialogue.