Debate & Dialogue

Foster open and respectful speech

Cultivate understanding and build leadership through dialogue

Cultivate understanding and build leadership through dialogue

Insight Debate & Dialogue works with your organization to foster depolarization, collective inquiry, and collaborative understandings.

Trusted by educators and students across the country

Real-life results

Our program is adored by students

“I liked the structure of it. As someone with very strong and, honestly, extreme opinions, it was very tempting at times to want to jump in and argue with people. But after the beginning, I got over that urge and learned to sit down and actually listen to people.”

Reggie Anderson

“This is my first time joining something like this, and I really liked it. It’s been so informative and insightful to hear both sides of the arguments and be part of a community that’s accepting everyone’s opinions.”

Luis Fowler

How we can help

Our Approach

At our core, we believe that addressing today’s complex challenges requires more than specialized expertise or critical analysis alone. We transform how we solve complex challenges together by building resilient communities through leadership development and collective inquiry.

We equip people to be better leaders, colleagues, and citizens

We cultivate solutions through three interconnected principles:

Civic Resilence

Foster resilience by bringing together insights from across the political spectrum to develop sustainable solutions. Lasting resilience comes from understanding how technical, social, and ethical factors interact in real-world contexts.

Leadership Development

Nurture leaders who can navigate complexity with practical wisdom and serve the collective good with creative problem-solving. Our leaders learn to balance competing priorities, integrate diverse perspectives, and make ethical decisions suited to specific contexts.

Collective Inquiry
The best solutions emerge when we bring together multiple ways of knowing. Through structured dialogue and collaborative exploration, we create spaces to develop nuanced understanding and actionable solutions that work.
Let’s Connect

Help people in your organization engage with different perspectives

We utilize proven methodologies that allow for curious, empathic, and open-minded engagement.

Our Team

About Us

April Lawson

Co-founder

April Lawson founded Braver Angels’ Debate and Public Discourse Program. She grew up in Kansas, studied anthropology at Yale, and now lives in Los Angeles with her dog June. She worked for David Brooks at the New York Times for four years and previously co-founded and served as associate director of Weave: The Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute.

Justin Eckstein

Co-founder

Justin Eckstein (PhD) is a distinguished scholar and practitioner in argumentation. Dr. Eckstein has made contributions to the academic discourse through his recently published book, “Sound Tactics,” his co-edited collection “Cookery,” and numerous peer-reviewed articles. Eckstein’s expertise is grounded in decades of competitive debate experience, spanning various formats at local, national, and international levels.

This practical knowledge has informed his academic work and led to innovative applications in real-world settings. Dr. Eckstein worked the past 10 years with state debate coalitions designing and organizing candidate debates for both local and national offices. In higher ed spaces, Dr. Eckstein has pioneered the implementation of circular debate formats which fosters more engaging and inclusive forms of democratic engagement.