Shaped by a history of interaction with business, government and industry, UM-Dearborn has a distinct mission to integrate, research and service for the benefit of the people of southeastern Michigan. UM-Dearborn's proposal addresses three topics around which difficult dialogues regularly emerge on campus: the racial divide, particularly as it affects the African-American community, given Dearborn's past as a segregated city; religious diversity and religious intolerance in a region where nearly 3,000 religious centers representing more then 200 faith traditions have been documented; and the conflicts and tensions of the Middle-Eastern community in Detroit, which is home to the nation's greatest concentration of Arab Americans. Since there have been several hate crimes in the region and the campus has experienced tensions between the many religions represented, the goal of this project is to develop the ability of the university to help students understand and articulate a variety of perspectives in historical and intellectual context, and understand that the differences in these perspectives matter.

The project will focus initially on faculty and course development, and over the next three terms there will be a series of linked and synchronized courses that make use of faculty development, signature lectures and community forums. Faculty participants are expected to improve their ability and confidence in creating environments where conversations on ethnic, religious and political issues will flourish, and help students learn to initiate and sustain such dialogues inside as well as outside the classroom. In addition, the project will help to enrich the dialogue at UM-Dearborn through the participation of leaders and community members in Dearborn and metropolitan Detroit.