What’s Up With Those Listening Tables?

The new initiative offers students the opportunity to move past protest and toward mutual understanding and respect.

Image: Nate Maretzki/Columbia Sundial

On October 7, 2024, as two screaming protests battled for a crowd’s attention on Low Plaza, a man stood nearby passing out purple flyers. His message was simple: what if there was an alternative? Shouldn’t there be a better way to communicate?

As students streamed by, occasionally taking pictures of the unfolding fiasco, the man asked students if they wanted to be part of a change in campus discourse and offered them lunch. Although most walked past him, some stopped to chat. He directed them towards Butler Lawn where a few people sat at a folding table, huddled in conversation so they could hear each other over the adjacent demonstrations.

From afar, this appeared neither substantial nor impressive. The assortment of undergraduate and graduate students who sat in the sun’s glare that Monday morning engaging in a hazily marketed free speech initiative was, needless to say, an odd sight. Two students draped in Israeli flags sat opposite a man wearing a keffiyeh, and a Spectator reporter flanked the latter.

Regardless of their opinion, the participants were united by the motivation to talk openly and civilly.

The aptly named Listening Tables initiative is a foray into what communication on our campus ought to look like. The project is run by the Trust Collaboratory, a group started last year by Dr. Gil Eyal, a professor in the Department of Sociology, and Cristian Capotescu, the aforementioned flier-brandishing man, who serves as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Incite Institute, the overarching organization that runs the Trust Collaboratory.

In Eyal’s own words, the Listening Tables are “an experiment.” When I asked him what measures they use to determine how successful the tables are, he stated that there aren’t any expectations. Their primary goal, which they have achieved, is to construct a space where people can “have a conversation in which they first of all try to understand why the other person supports the other side,” he told Sundial.

That day, the table was hosted by Eyal and Columbia’s provost, Angela V. Olinto. The table quickly grew from a mere three people to more than twenty-five over the span of three hours. The conversation I participated in for two hours on October 7 felt like a breath of fresh air. Steered by a talking stick—a small foam globe (“The future is in your hands!”)—the conversation probed us on how we felt about the state of free speech at Columbia. One by one, we each described how we felt expressing our personal views on campus. Jewish and Palestinian students alike described not wanting to make themselves targets amidst the current hostility, and how they ultimately just wanted to get through the academic year in peace.

I asked Dr. Eyal how he intends to keep the tables civil and safe. “True listening means that you are sometimes challenged. You hear things you don't want to hear. You're being asked to put yourself in shoes you don't want to occupy,” Eyal said. “There is no guarantee that the table will completely prevent that.”

The Trust Collaboratory does not promise a disagreement-free space; on the contrary, I heard more civil disagreement there than I have heard anywhere else during my almost-one semester on campus thus far. I heard views that opposed my own, experiences that I will never grasp, and perspectives I will never truly understand. Nevertheless, I kept listening.

The Listening Tables are designed to facilitate these conversations—the exact conversations we desperately need—and they are messy. The point is not to find a solution. The war in the Middle East continues to ravage lives, and the conversations we have in folding chairs can’t stop that. The objective, instead, is to listen.

The contrast between the thunderous ruckus behind and our exchanges was stark. As pro-Palestine protesters called for a globalized intifada, we sat peacefully in their shadow, unpacking the viewpoints of people who had friends and family members killed in the war. Instead of joining the protests and propagating the cycle of polarization on campus, these Columbia affiliates chose to sit down and communicate.

The pertinence of the tables is perhaps best described by TJ Gill, CC ’22 LAW ’27. Gill has developed an intimate understanding of the school’s climate surrounding free speech. “There wasn't always a full, complete, comprehensive exploration of key issues,” he said, which has led to the hyper-polarization that this campus has become well-known for.

As a planning member of the Trust Collaboratory, Gill’s own hope for the tables is that they will “force people to humanize individuals with different worldviews and take that beyond the space of just Listening Tables themselves.” Through this “cathartic, emotional, informal experience,” the Collaboratory hopes to cultivate a distinct open-mindedness, bridging perspectives through mutual respect.

“A success for the Listening Table initiative would be in the near-term having students of different viewpoints—Zionists and Palestinians—sitting at a table and actually listening to each other,” Gill said. Despite Columbia’s “tradition of passion and fervor, sometimes we don't give ourselves enough credit for the fact that we can actually sit down and have these conversations.” After decades of raising our voices in protest, perhaps Columbia could take the opportunity to listen to itself.

Notably, the Trust Collaboratory is not a Columbia-affiliated organization, Eyal and Gill were both quick to clarify. Despite prominent members of the administration hosting tables and using the initiative to connect with students, the Trust Collaboratory remains entirely distinct from Columbia’s own lackluster attempts to fix itself. This distinction allows the project to avoid getting entangled in Columbia’s notorious bureaucracy.

Most importantly, Listening Tables have helped define students’ experiences as early as their first semesters on campus. Aum Desai, CC ’28, who I met at the October 7 Listening Table, has already felt the impact of the initiative. Desai says the simple act of connecting with University President Katrina Armstrong in a public, accessible format and hearing her vocal support for initiatives like these has shown him and other first years the best side of the administration, giving them a glimpse of hope for their future years.

“I think what she reassured me is that she has the best interests of students at heart,” Desai said, a far cry from the pessimism that students have historically regarded the administration with. By listening and making herself available, Armstrong has effectively circumvented this phenomenon, at least for students who care to engage. Hopefully, this leadership and intentionality will continue, as we are in dire need of it.

Lately, the focus of the tables has shifted from campus issues to opening an honest dialogue around the Presidential election results. Their hope, like always, is for the Listening Tables to “force people to humanize individuals with different worldviews,” Dr. Eyal said, doing their small but substantial part to crack the polarization that permeates Columbia and the country.

As a first-year at Columbia College myself, I have already become accustomed to walking on eggshells when discussing sensitive campus issues. After deciding to attend Columbia while watching an encampment spark worldwide conversation, I knew the campus climate would be rocky. In many ways, the tables have felt like the first truly safe space for dialogue I’ve experienced, and hearing a passionate yet respectful conversation about the Israel-Palestine conflict was beyond rejuvenating. After attending three myself, I can safely say that I’ve grown in my ability to productively discuss many of the issues that separate us.

We come to Columbia not just to become educated, but to challenge ourselves intellectually and have productive conversations about crucial issues. The student experience at Columbia, especially for nervous first-years, is currently scarred by the image of overwhelming protests and a fear of asking questions. By transforming confrontation into conversation, the Listening Tables remind us that progress only begins when we truly hear each other. There is no change without communication, and there will never be communication if we do not listen.

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Mr. Maretzki is a staff writer for Sundial and a first-year studying data science at Columbia College.