Northwestern University has received a $20 million donation from Trustee Jennifer Leischner Litowitz and Alec Litowitz to support the Center for Enlightened Disagreement. The gift aims to expand the university’s efforts in fostering constructive engagement and discourse among students in response to increasing societal polarization.
The newly named Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement will work to make enlightened disagreement an integrated part of student life, potentially impacting thousands of students across various schools and majors each year.
“Our role and responsibility as a university is to expose our students to different viewpoints and provide them with opportunities and training to engage respectfully across difference,” said Northwestern President Michael H. Schill. “We are so grateful to the Litowitz family for this transformational gift, which will allow us to make the study and practice of enlightened disagreement a hallmark of the Northwestern experience.”
The center plans a multifaceted approach including research, curriculum development, outreach, and conversation. Its goal is to equip students, community members, and organizations with analytical tools needed to manage disagreements productively.
“Exchanging conflicting opinions freely and openly can fuel innovation and change, force us to think critically and push us to expand our worldview,” said Jennifer Litowitz. “Alec and I are thrilled that Northwestern is taking the lead in developing evidence-backed methods to teach students how to build understanding that will not only benefit them while at Northwestern, but even more so when they transition into the broader world.”
“If we truly want to have meaningful dialogue and navigate across difference, we need to start with a better understanding of ourselves before we can try to understand others,” said Alec Litowitz. “The intent of the center is to teach this type of critical thinking to create a foundation of understanding for constructive discussion and debate. The result may not be agreement, but something equally valuable: enlightened disagreement. Jen and I see this gift as an investment in the future of the Northwestern community that will help drive real progress and change.”
The center will integrate principles of logical thinking into required courses such as Weinberg College’s first-year College Seminar, which enrolls over 1,000 incoming students annually. It also plans co-curricular programs through a partnership with Student Affairs, starting with a pilot initiative focusing on open-mindedness, cognitive bias recognition, collaborative skills despite disagreement, among other topics.
Launched initially at Kellogg School of Management in February 2024 based on four pillars—research, curriculum, outreach, conversation—the center is led by Kellogg faculty Nour Kteily and Eli Finkel. Both have backgrounds researching polarization between groups as well as strategies for addressing misperceptions.
“Our society has become so divided that people avoid talking to others with different views — and when those conversations do happen, they can quickly become toxic,” Finkel said. “The goal of the Litowitz Center is to develop research-backed methods that help people embrace differences, allowing for the free exchange of ideas that leads to innovation and expands our worldview.”
“Any healthy society requires both a diversity of perspectives and an ability for individuals to express and learn from their differences,” Kteily said. “At the same time, our research shows that people often inaccurately characterize the views of those with whom they disagree, assuming that others’ beliefs are more extreme than they actually are. We want to provide students with the tools to accurately identify where substantive disagreement exists and the confidence to express their dissent honestly.”
Jennifer Litowitz has previously contributed philanthropic gifts supporting creative writing graduate education at Northwestern as well as undergraduate experiences; she serves on several university boards including trusteeship roles. Alec Litowitz founded Magnetar Capital before his current position at QStar Capital; his family includes multiple generations of Northwestern alumni involved in academic or professional capacities at the university.