The Colgate University Heretics Club relaunched this semester with the Spring 2025 theme “We Disagree! (But We Do It Well!),” continuing a long-standing lunchtime discussion series that was suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally founded in the early 2000s, the Heretics Club is designed to create spaces where students can come together to discuss life’s “big questions.”
Jenna Reinbold, associate professor of religion and director of the Native American studies program, and David Dudrick, George Carleton Jr. professor of philosophy, collaborated with the interfaith community on campus to re-establish the club, hosting a series of five conversations with Colgate faculty and guest speakers in the Memorial Chapel basement.
The inaugural event of the revived series was held Thursday, Feb. 6. Reinbold and Dudrick hosted Simon Greer, founder of the social entrepreneurship program Bridging the Gap, to discuss “Building Trust Across Difference.” Students hosted the second discussion event on Thursday, Feb. 20, which focused on “Disagreeing Well with Our Political ‘Frenemies.’”
President Brian W. Casey joined for the third event of the series, “Disagreeing Well in the University,” on Thursday, March 6.
As a foundation for the discussion, Casey shared a personal anecdote about his time at Stanford Law School. At the time, there was legal controversy surrounding President Ronald Reagan’s use of constitutional power, which led to lively debates on Stanford’s campus. He and his fellow law students vividly remembered one specific debate between constitutional law scholars Gerald Gunther and Paul Brest about executive authority.
“For over two hours, they went at each other,” Casey said. “And they went at each other hard.”
Casey emphasized how niceness was not at the forefront of that debate, and how this lack of civility would be unthinkable to the Colgate community today. He explained how most of the positive feedback he receives about his office’s programming — including the “Road to the White House” speaker series and the ongoing “University and the Public Good” speaker series — centers around the ability of the guest speakers to have cordial conversations and stay amicable in their interactions with each other. To spark discussion, Casey posed several following questions to the audience.
“Are we trying too hard to be nice?” Casey said. “Could we have here, on this campus, a debate in which two scholars debate intentionally and well, where cordiality and civility isn’t the point? Are we too afraid not to be nice?”
Many students underscored the difficulties of having nuanced, impassioned conversations in the current political and campus climate. Sophomore Katie Mathews noted how spaces like the Heretics Club are important in creating those exact kinds of conversations.
“This is the second Heretics Club meeting I’ve been to, and it’s really refreshing to be in a space where I know other people feel the same frustrations as me — the frustrations being that it just feels really impossible to have any sort of differing opinion on this campus sometimes,” Mathews said. “It was interesting even with the meeting, though, [because] I could tell people were holding back from saying certain things.”
Reflecting on the discussion and her role in the revival of the Heretics Club, Reinbold emphasized the importance of creating space for future discussions.
“I think my basic hope is that we can have discussions like this more often if we create venues where students know that they can come and have an interesting and maybe even a controversial idea thrown at them — that they can have an interesting conversation about it, and have people understand that that’s part of the point,” Reinbold said.
The Heretics Club will host two more discussions this semester, “What Does It Look Like to ‘Disagree’ with Yourself?” and “Disagreeing Well Across Religious Difference,” on April 3 and April 24, respectively.
