about us

our story

Over half of American college students are afraid to discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict on campus, according to FIRE. Other important issues like abortion, gun control, and affirmative action aren’t that far behind. Clearly, campuses need more respectful, scaffolded environments where students can practice constructive disagreement, honing skills like intellectual humility, perspective-taking, and critical thinking.

We created Sway to address this need. Grounded in the approach Simon Cullen developed for his award-winning CMU course, Dangerous Ideas in Science and Society, Sway builds on our research on improving reasoning and communication. The success of Dangerous Ideas proved that students thrive when they’re given a scaffolded environment that fosters open, charitable, and rigorous discussions of controversial topics. With Sway, we're making it easy for instructors everywhere to give their students the same experience—no matter the available resources.

Our long-term aim is to empower millions of college students to cultivate essential intellectual virtues: humility, cognitive empathy, critical thinking, and the ability to engage productively across differences.

how sway works

Every Sway assignment begins by eliciting student judgments about instructor-assignment discussion topics. The platform then pairs students with opposing perspectives into private chats and scaffolds their discussions in two key ways:

1. An AI Guide participates in every chat in much the way that an experienced teacher would: It ensures everyone’s voice is heard, de-escalates tense moments, and asks tough questions to improve student reasoning.

2. When a student composes a message that contains unconstructive language, Sway suggests a rephrasing that aims to preserve the core meaning of the original message but in a clearer, more respectful way.

See Sway in action in this demo video, de-identified transcripts from actual student discussions, and de-identified Instructor Reports. Also check out our student feedback page.

We’ve built Sway to be easy for instructors to use. This 3-minute explainer video walks through setting up a discussion assignment for students. Instructors can find more info here, including language that can be adapted for syllabi and course announcements.

our impact

Since our first empirical studies in mid-2024, thousands of students from over 30 universities have used Sway. They have discussed a number of contentious topics, including: sex and gender identity, racism, tariffs, immigration, abortion, guns, addiction, homelessness, medical paternalism, and the psychology of humor—among many others.

We’ve seen an extremely positive response from students and instructors. Despite the potentially divisive subject matter of their discussions, the vast majority of students report that their chat partners are respectful and have better reasons than expected, that they aren’t offended by their partner’s perspective, and that it is valuable to chat with someone who holds a different perspective

looking ahead

We’re collaborating with faculty, campus leaders, practitioner organizations, and funders to normalize reasoned conversations between students with opposing perspectives. In total, over 120 instructors—collectively teaching over 10,000 students—have signed up to use Sway with their students. These instructors represent over 100 North American post-secondary institutions and 22 international schools from over a dozen countries.

We’ve also opened Sway to learners everywhere, making it easy for any two people to practice constructive conversation in a scaffolded environment on any topic.

Disagreements shouldn’t divide us. With Sway, we’re turning them into opportunities for learning and promoting civil discourse.