At Rice, our richly diverse community is deeply grounded in a culture of care, compassion and understanding. This offers an ideal environment for reflection and dialogue surrounding complex issues.

Rice Reflects is an initiative of the Office of the Provost to highlight opportunities for students, faculty and staff to have constructive conversations across differences, informed by scholarly expertise from within and outside the Rice community. The events and educational offerings address ideological, political, religious, cultural and other differences.

Rice Reflects builds on the Conversations on the Middle East offered for students last spring, with a wider audience and a broader focus.

Upcoming Events

Please check back periodically as new Rice Reflects events are added for the 2025-26 academic year.

Lifelong Civic Leadership Forum: Sustaining Engagement in Challenging Times
The Glasscock School of Continuing Studies' Center for Community Learning and Engagement will host the Lifelong Civic Leadership Forum series with the Center for Civic Leadership this fall. This free event, from 4-7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 18, will provide an interactive forum to sustain and deepen your civic engagement in challenging times. Please register by following this link.

The event features:

• Keynote Conversation: "Rest, Resilience, and Restoration: Essential Elements of Civic Engagement," Rebecca Brossoit, assistant professor of psychological sciences and Danielle King, associate professor of psychological sciences, with Cathy Maris, assistant dean, Center for Community Learning and Engagement
• Embodied Engagement: Mindfulness and Movement Break, Korin Brody, associate director of the Center for Community Learning and Engagement
• Workshop: Strategies for Sustaining Personal and Collective Action, Michi Heckler, assistant director of the Center for Civic Leadership, and Verónica L. Reyna, associate director of the Center for Civic Leadership, with Center for Civic Leadership students
• Nosh and Network with Houston nonprofits and neighbors, Andy Rodriguez, assistant director of the Center for Community Learning and Engagement

Boniuk Institute 2026 Senior Scholar Award: John Inazu
John Inazu, the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis, will receive the 2026 Senior Scholar Award from Rice's Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance this April. Inazu's teaching and scholarship focus on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and related questions of legal and political theory. His latest book is "Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect." His campuswide talk, open to all at Rice and invited friends and guests, is 4-6 p.m. April 3 at the Cohen House.

Past Events

After Gaza: Free Speech and the Power to Imagine a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine
Sandy Tolan, author of international bestseller "The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East" and professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, presented "After Gaza: Free Speech and the Power to Imagine a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine" on March 10 in the signature spring 2025 event. He summarized his talk this way: "Gaza is devastated: 47,000 Palestinians killed; more than a million internally displaced; homes, schools, hospitals reduced to rubble. Israel remains a nation traumatized in the long aftermath of the Hamas attacks that killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis. Against this backdrop it seems impossible to imagine a just peace between the two peoples. But is it, really? And how do new edicts on free expression threaten open dialogue? How, in the face of these restrictions, can we continue to explain the roots of the conflict, to document the facts on the ground and to imagine powerful, creative new solutions?"

Antisemitism
In September 2024, Naomi Greenspan, director of improving the Campus Climate Initiative at the Academic Engagement Network, led a voluntary, half-day workshop on “Jewish Inclusion and Effective Responses to Antisemitism in the Context of Academic Freedom and Free Speech” for university leaders, faculty and staff from the Offices of the Dean of Undergraduates, Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and Access and Institutional Excellence.

Classroom Dialogues Across Differences
In April 2025, the Center for Teaching Excellence hosted "Classroom Dialogues Across Differences," an interactive workshop designed to help educators navigate challenging classroom conversations with confidence. Through evidence-based strategies and collaborative exercises, participants developed practical tools for facilitating discussions about sensitive social, political, and cultural topics while maintaining a productive learning environment. Faculty, staff, and students across all disciplines were equipped with immediately applicable techniques for fostering meaningful dialogue and managing classroom dynamics effectively. Carissa Zimmerman, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, facilitated the workshop.

Dare to Speak: Suzanne Nossel
The Office of Access and Institutional Excellence hosted Suzanne Nossel, author of “Dare to Speak" and the former CEO of PEN America, on Monday, April 28 in the Moody Center for the Arts. In “Dare To Speak: Defending Free Speech for All,” Nossel outlined a collection of 20 principles meant to guide readers who are as dedicated to the values of free speech as they are committed to the requirements of building and maintaining a diverse and inclusive society. But the complex challenges of protecting speech and advancing equality are always shaped by peculiarities of the times. On college campuses, what are the unique challenges and opportunities of now doing both? Sam Peltrau, a Mellon-Mays Fellow and English major, moderated this conversation with Nossel.

Election 2024 Playbook
As the nation prepared to elect its next president, Rice and the Baker Institute for Public Policy launched a new initiative – the Election 2024 Policy Playbook – to build a more informed, productive discourse. The Policy Playbook presented context, data, and expert perspectives from the institute’s world-class faculty on the most pressing issues of the day: border policy, energy security, AI and emerging tech, economic policy, and national security.

Engaging Across Difference: Lifelong Civic Leadership Forum
Led by Rice’s Center for Community Learning and Engagement and the Center for Civic Leadership, this free community forum in April 2025 shared research, best practices and insights from scholars and practitioners on understanding and connecting across differences. Christine LeVeaux-Haley, a Glasscock School of Continuing Studies instructor, gave a keynote talk. Afterward, participants worked in small, facilitated groups to practice skills and share insights that may deepen understanding and connection. Rachel Bonini and Kelsey Ullom, both associate directors of Rice’s Center for Civic Leadership, kicked off the workshop with CCL student fellows and community partners. The forum ended with a time for networking with fellow Houstonians and campus and community groups committed to helping democracy and community thrive.

Flexible Morals: A Key Reason American Voters Support Divisive Misinformation
Minjae Kim, assistant professor of organizational behavior and sociology, shared a fresh perspective on misinformation and its role in American politics during the Rice Business Partners’ Faculty Roundtable Luncheon in October 2024. His research found that American voters from both major political parties sometimes support misinformation knowingly. Surveys reveal that both Democratic and Republican voters recognize some misinformation as factually incorrect yet still endorse it based on their moral flexibility, highlighting that addressing misinformation may require not just fact-checking but also the moral framing of information in contemporary politics.

Free Expression
In Spring 2023, PEN America, a national nonprofit organization that works to protect free expression worldwide, led a “Campus for All” seminar focused on issues at the intersection of free expression and inclusion on university campuses. The Office of Access and Institutional Excellence hosted the seminar.

In Fall 2024, a small reading group of first-year students discussed PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel's book “Dare to Speak." The Office of Access and Institutional Excellence is hosting related programming throughout the academic year.

Houston Histories
The Glasscock School of Continuing Studies offered a community course this fall developed and taught by University Historian Portia Hopkins, who highlighted and celebrated Houston’s multiple, interwoven histories and communities. The course featured visits from community guests and a Saturday “Houston on the Go” bus tour of downtown, the Eldorado Ballroom, the League of United Latin American Citizens Clubhouse and Chinatown.

Humanities Innovations: Historical Perspectives
In October 2024, the School of Humanities hosted “Historical Perspectives on the 2024 Presidential Election,” a conversation featuring Douglas Brinkley, the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Professor of Humanities in the Department of History, CNN presidential historian and Grammy Award winner; and W. Caleb McDaniel, the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Humanities, professor of history, and Pulitzer Prize winner.

Lifelong Civic Leadership Forum: Putting People Back in Democracy
In September 2024, the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, the Center for Civic Leadership, and community organizations hosted a free, nonpartisan event geared toward putting people back into democracy and putting democracy in action by equipping participants to practice lifelong civic engagement that is far deeper and more powerful than only engaging around elections.