The Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement uses a multifaceted approach that combines research, curriculum, outreach, and convening to provide students, community members, and organizations with intellectual and analytical tools and skills to navigate disagreement. It helps them harness the power of difference in service of greater understanding, knowledge, and progress.
With the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement, co-directors Eli Finkel ’97 and Nour Kteily are on a mission to transform how we engage across divides. In this video, they explore how thoughtful, respectful disagreement can fuel understanding, innovation, and progress—offering a powerful antidote to today’s polarized discourse.
Enlightened Disagreement
From the political arena to the business world to higher education, conflicting ideas drive innovation and change, force critical thinking, and reveal untapped solutions to pressing problems. Yet growing divisions and deepening entrenchment have corroded the ability to engage across difference and undermined the pursuit of constructive discussion and debate.
The Litowitz Center builds upon extensive research within Kellogg and throughout Northwestern University that identifies best practices for promoting engagement with different perspectives and motivations. It consists of four interconnected pillars: research, curriculum, outreach and convening.
The Litowitz Center serves as a hub for scholars and practitioners advancing the study and practice of enlightened disagreement. It connects experts across Northwestern—including from Kellogg; the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences; the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications; Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; and the McCormick School of Engineering—and attracts influential thinkers from beyond academia. Through events, residencies, and collaborative projects, the Center fosters dialogue and innovation in how we engage across difference.
Studies have shown a growing need for college students nationwide to learn how to communicate more effectively. The Litowitz Center leverages new research to enable faculty to better educate Northwestern undergraduates on the most effective methods of engagement across difference. The Center helps to infuse research principles of enlightened disagreement into the learning goals of the Weinberg College first-year seminar, a required course taken annually by more than 1,000 incoming students. Through a partnership with the University’s Division of Student Affairs, the Center offers an innovative co-curricular program for students living on campus. Sessions will focus on research-backed approaches to cultivating open-mindedness, identifying one’s own cognitive biases, working collaboratively with others despite disagreement and more.
The Litowitz Center reaches many through its research, curriculum, and convening pillars, but the Outreach pillar is the primary means through which the Center’s insights make their way into the public discourse. By publishing essays, expert perspectives and consulting with practitioners (e.g., business executives, nonprofit leaders, and diplomats), the Center shares its best-practice guidelines for enlightened disagreement with the broader public.
The Litowitz Center’s bedrock is evidence. Some reasonable ideas for turning disagreement into a constructive force are counterproductive, and some longshot ideas prove revolutionary. The Center employs the most rigorous scientific methods to weed out the bad ideas and to strengthen the best ones. The Center incorporates well-supported ideas from around the world to ensure its methods are effective and impactful.
Faculty Directors
The Litowitz Center is led by two leading experts whose groundbreaking work offers an array of perspectives on conflict and dispute resolution. Together, their innovative research and varied perspectives shape the Center’s bold vision of fostering transformative, constructive dialogue.
About Jennifer Leischner Litowitz ’91 and Alec Litowitz
The Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement is supported by a $20 million gift from Northwestern University Trustee Jennifer Leischner Litowitz ’91 and Alec Litowitz (’22, ’27 P). This gift continues the Litowitzes’ generous philanthropy at Northwestern. Their previous giving includes establishing the first-of-its-kind Litowitz Creative Writing Graduate Program at Weinberg College, along with supporting undergraduate student experiences and research.
A Northwestern alumna and parent, Jennifer Litowitz ’91 serves on the University Board of Trustees, the Weinberg College Board of Visitors and the Parent Leadership Council (with Alec). Jennifer is also director of hospitality for the Litowitz family office, QStar Capital. There she leads strategy and design for projects such as Guildhall Restaurant in Glencoe, Illinois. Alec Litowitz is the founder and former CEO of Magnetar Capital, a leading alternative asset management firm. Alec currently serves as the founder and managing partner of QStar Capital. His parents are Northwestern alumni: his mother, Bonnie Litowitz ’70 MA, ’75 PhD, earned graduate and doctoral degrees in linguistics from Weinberg College, and his father, Norman Litowitz ’61 MD, earned his medical degree from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Bonnie Litowitz also served as a member of Northwestern’s faculty for several years, with appointments in what is now the Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders in the School of Communication as well as the department of linguistics in Weinberg College.
“Exchanging conflicting opinions freely and openly can fuel innovation and change, force us to think critically, and push us to expand our worldview. Alec and I are thrilled that Northwestern is taking the lead in developing evidence-backed methods to teach students how to build understanding that will not only benefit them while at Northwestern, but even more so when they transition into the broader world.”
“If we truly want to have meaningful dialogue and navigate across difference, we need to start with a better understanding of ourselves before we can try to understand others. The intent of the Center is to teach this type of critical thinking to create a foundation of understanding for constructive discussion and debate. The result may not be agreement, but something equally valuable: enlightened disagreement.”
Our Donors
Thank you to our supporters, whose vision and generosity have helped make the Center possible:
- Trustee Jennifer Leischner Litowitz ’91 and Alec Litowitz (’22, ’27 P)
- James A. Axelrad ’85 MBA
- Pascal ’01 and Amalie Bandelier ’02
- John M. Bremen ’90, ’00 MBA and Lara S. Frohlich ’90, ’91 MA (’24 P)
- Elizabeth Burrows
- Trustee Tarek Elmasry ’94 MBA and Susan Elmasry
- Timothy D. Friedman ’98 MBA and Paula D. Friedman (Reynolds Family Foundation)
- Suk Han ’96 MBA and Andrea A. Vittorelli
- Sidney Huang ’02 MBA (Oriental Oak Foundation)
- Betsy Korn ’95 MBA and Douglas Korn
- Dr. Jay Kumar ’88
- Anthony Pritzker Family Foundation
- Barbara Stewart ’85, ’95 MBA and Peter A. Bowe