UCalgary Pluralism Initiative helps campus to have more effective conversation

The University of Calgary’s Pluralism Initiative is helping academics, staff members and students to better understand each other, especially when they may not agree, in meetings and in classrooms across campus by adapting the Pluralism House Rules established by the Global Centre for Pluralism (GCP).

Examples of Pluralism House Rules include: Reacting to sincere missteps with grace; searching for common ground and naming differences; and embracing complexity and uncertainty. 

The House Rules encourage people to come into dialogue with open minds and, even in disagreements, still be respectful of who each other are as humans with a “agree to disagree” philosophy, according to the GCP. Pluralism, according to the Ottawa-based global organization, is when multiple groups of people with differing views or backgrounds can come together without erasing those differences.

“The House Rules emerged in response to a community-driven priority. Communities told us that we don’t know how to disagree in a healthy way; we don’t know how to bridge differences to be productive, constructive and creative,” says Dr. Aleem Bharwani, MD, founding director of UCalgary’s Pluralism Initiative in the Office of the Vice-President (Research). In response to this community challenge, he convened UCalgary community voices who, after multiple dialogues,  arrived at a need for such guidelines, at which point UCalgary then collaborated with the GCP to bring them to life on campus.

In a society where diverse disciplines, sectors, ideologies, cultures, identities, world views and religions interact, co-creating institutional supports helps to host healthier dialogues, says Bharwani, stressing the House Rules are not a “one-size-fits-all” approach, but a jumping-off point to craft a version that works for us in our own contexts. 

These rules represent yet another success story for UCalgary’s United Nations-recognized Inclusive Governance Model, which is about “building systems capable of learning, listening and acting collectively without erasing difference.”

Says Bharwani: “Communities are asking, how can we have hard conversations and bring ourselves to the conversation without having to hide parts of ourselves?”

The Pluralism Initiative and the GCP are jointly offering consultation and workshops to the university community to adapt the House Rules to their own contexts. As no context is the same, the rules are built to be adapted.

Understanding the rules and each other

In 2025, UCalgary renewed a trilateral memorandum of understanding with GCP and The Aga Khan University to focus on how to adapt pluralism into the university context and across sectors and contexts.

“Often, what we see is people walking into spaces (conversations) needing to defend a point of view. Needing to be on the offence about their position, but also on the defence,” says Meredith Preston McGhie, Secretary General of the GCP.

“When you are in that kind of oppositional defensive space, what you are not doing is leaning into spaces of understanding what the different views are around the table, (and) also why those different views exist.” 

Because the House Rules focus on understanding and remove the need to agree, more meaningful and helpful dialogue can exist, Preston McGhie says, adding that this has been a practice used by Global Pluralism Award laureates across the globe.

“We see it being a really transformative way of people having conversations that lead to relationship and that lead to recognition of one another’s humanity, even if you don’t agree,” she says.

House Rules in action at UCalgary

One UCalgary example of the House Rules in action was at the Cumming School of Medicine where Dr. Thomas Bouchard, MD'10, PGME'12, adopted a variation of the Pluralism House Rules for meetings of the local chapter of the Hippocratic Society club he co-founded with medical student Simon Czajkowski and his colleague, Dr. Joe Askin, MD. The Hippocratic Society brings together med students, staff physicians and community members to engage in dialogue about concepts relating to virtue in medicine and comfort with ambiguity. 

“Having strong principles is very important, but when there’s flexibility in seeing the world in a new way, understanding someone a bit better, learning to disagree gently and thoughtfully, then we build bridges, we deepen bonds and create welcoming communities,” says Bouchard. 

“For me, an exercise like Pluralism House Rules helps me become a gentler speaker and a deeper listener, and that makes me a better physician and a better leader.”  

To learn more about the Pluralism House Rules and to receive consultation for your own group, contact pluralism@ucalgary.ca.