How do we dialogue across differences? Art by Katie Speck.
On Sep. 28, 2025, Bedari Kindness Institute (BKI) director David N. Myers and deputy director Maia Ferdman were featured in a UCLA Newsroom article by Lucy Berbeo and Citlalli Chávez-Nava: “From polarization to pluralism: Harnessing the power of the public university to bridge divides.” The article describes the BKI and the two organizations under its umbrella: the Dialogue Across Difference (DaD) and Initiative to Study Hate (ISH), as well as their programs and research.
An excerpt from this article reads:
“There is tremendous synergy, and there are very profound linkages, among all three components of what can be seen as the ‘Bedari triangle,’” Myers says. “The study of hate and the study of kindness — empathy, altruism — are closely related, and there’s a lot of work in psychology, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology and other fields that grasps intuitively the connection between these two. And we also see dialogue as a delivery system for the results that arise from our research on both kindness and hate.”
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