Evan Vucci/AP

President Donald Trump, shown in Dallas during a briefing on hurricane recovery efforts, has a complicated relationship with the press, whose reports he regularly attacks as "fake news."

When a reputable poll recently found that nearly half of American voters – 46 percent – think the news media are fabricating stories about President Trump, alarm bells went off.

Mr. Trump’s constant cries of “fake news” must be working, some surmised. The president is actively degrading public trust in the media, his opponents say, and threatening a central pillar of democracy whose freedom is enshrined in the First Amendment.

For Trump supporters, the Politico/Morning Consult poll seemed to be vindication. The media have been unfair to Trump, they say, running with any unflattering gossip they can find or just making stuff up out of whole cloth, and people are starting to understand that.

The reality is more complicated. Public trust in mass media has been sinking for decades, as Gallup polling shows – long before Trump burst onto the political stage. And it’s impossible to draw a direct correlation between Trump’s statements and any growth in distrust. But the president is clearly taking advantage of this fertile ground – of voters prepared to believe the worst about news outlets – and using it to his advantage, say experts on the media.

“For 40-plus years, the public – especially conservatives – have been primed to distrust the mainstream media,” says Rutgers University historian David Greenberg, author of the book “Republic of Spin.” “There are arguments going back to [President Richard] Nixon that the objective media are actually biased in a liberal way, and hostile to Republicans.”

Add to that the advent of the Internet and especially social media, where it’s easy to spread and share these ideas, and it’s not surprising that a substantial portion of the electorate subscribes to that worldview, Mr. Greenberg says. And it’s not a big leap from perceived bias to claims of outright fabrication of news stories.

For Trump, the “fake news” charge is often the default reaction to media reports he doesn’t like, particularly those that portray palace intrigue in the White House and that are unflattering to Trump personally. The NBC News story about Secretary of State Rex Tillerson allegedly calling Trump a “moron” is a prime example. Trump vehemently disputed the story, although Secretary Tillerson has never directly denied making the remark.

But the reality is, Trump seems to love reporters as much as he hates them. The media, after all, fueled his rise to the presidency, covering one eye-popping Trump event after another during the campaign, and leaving the other candidates starving for oxygen. Now, as president, he is treated to round-the-clock coverage, chronicling his every public performance and giving him a ready platform for attention.  

In fact, Trump seeks out the company of reporters more than many of his predecessors. When traveling on Air Force One, he comes to the back of the plane to schmooze with the small traveling press corps on about every third trip, say reporters who travel with him regularly. That is far more than President Obama ever did.

Trump also, of late, has held impromptu press conferences that are unprecedented in the modern era. Last week, with little advance warning, he took to the Rose Garden to answer questions for 45 minutes. On Wednesday, he stopped for 15 minutes on the South Lawn, before boarding the presidential helicopter, and fielded questions from reporters. When asked if he should be more civil, he came back with an extraordinary answer that spoke to his grievances with media coverage – but also revealed much about his self-image.

“Well, I think the press makes me more uncivil than I am,” Trump said.

“You know, people don’t understand – I went to an Ivy League college,” he continued. “I was a nice student. I did very well. I'm a very intelligent person. You know, the fact is, I think, I really believe, I think the press creates a different image of Donald Trump than the real person.”

Feeling misunderstood

This notion of a president feeling misunderstood is hardly unique.

“Every president, at least every president I’ve studied, going back to Franklin Roosevelt, believes that he understands the truth better than the press does,” says Greenberg.

When stories reflect the president’s spin, or view of things, the president thinks the press is doing its job, he says. When reporters question it, and include dissenting voices in their stories or point out faults with the president’s claims, he thinks they’re editorializing or lying. Reporters, who consult multiple sources and provide other points of view, think they have a better purchase on reality.

Then there’s Trump’s free-wheeling way of expressing himself.

“One of the problems with Trump is, if one wanted to correct everything that he said that was misleading, there would be no time to cover the news,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and co-founder of Factcheck.org.

That leads Trump supporters to complain that journalists spend all their time attacking Trump, instead of reporting his accomplishments. “That critique actually has some legitimacy,” says Ms. Jamieson.

Low unemployment, a booming stock market, sweeping deregulation across many government agencies, and the seating of a conservative justice on the Supreme Court are all part of the Trump record that the president and his supporters feel are getting short shrift in the media.

Jamieson also advises that the media refine how it fact-checks Trump. Don’t restate the false information in the process of trying to correct it, she says, because that actually reinforces the incorrect information. And it’s best to avoid repeating the phrase “fake news.”  

“Call it viral deception,” says Jamieson. “ ‘Fake news’ means anything Donald Trump doesn’t like. You don’t want to delegitimize the word ‘news’ by calling it ‘fake.’ ”

Whom do you trust?

As for the media’s public image, the news isn’t all terrible. A June poll by Gallup found that US confidence in newspapers is still low but rising. The same poll found that confidence in TV news is also up – albeit from a record low of 18 percent three years ago.

A Quinnipiac poll released Oct. 12 also had some good news for the media, along with some bad: While American voters disapprove, 60 percent to 35 percent, of the way the media cover Trump, they also disapprove, 59 to 39, of the way Trump talks about the media.

But on the question on whom voters trust more to tell the truth about important issues, the media beat Trump handily, 52 percent to 37 percent.

Ultimately, for many voters, Trump’s cries of “fake news” have become such a constant refrain that a lot of Americans are just tuning them out, says Karlyn Bowman, an expert on public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute.

“People have made up their minds about Trump, about the media, about so many things,” Ms. Bowman says. “Washington just seems like a sideshow to most people.”

Omar Sobhani/Reuters

A Taliban insurgent is presented to the media after he was arrested with car explosive devices in Kabul, Afghanistan, Oct. 15, 2017.

The final Taliban threat was the most chilling, the culmination of months of pressure built against a single Afghan policeman – and it worked.

Introducing himself as “the scholar,” the Taliban operative warned that it would be the last phone call, the last threat to convince Ahmad, a veteran of frequent battles with the Taliban with calluses on his shooting hand, to leave the police force.

“He was younger, absolutely illiterate,” Ahmad says of the man who called him a few weeks ago. “He said: ‘If you don’t leave your job in the next two or three days, we will find you and behead you.’ ”

Within hours, the five-year veteran of the Afghan National Police – who asked that his real name not be used, for his own security – told his commander he was going on holiday, and left his base in Logar Province south of Kabul to find a new job in the Afghan capital.

Though the Taliban intimidation campaign was intense, in a region where Ahmad says insurgents are “becoming stronger day by day,” the fact that this Afghan policeman was not killed outright is but one illustration of how analysts say the Taliban have evolved in recent years from the uncompromising hard-liners who in the late 1990s ruled their self-declared “Islamic Emirate.”

Sixteen years after being toppled from power by US-led military forces – and that many years of insurgency later – the Taliban have been attempting to re-forge themselves into a more ethnically diverse and politically relevant national Islamist movement.

Mirwais Khan/AP

Taliban suicide bombers stand guard during a gathering of a breakaway Taliban faction, in the border area of Zabul province, Afghanistan, in August 2016.

Once a rural movement almost exclusively rooted among ethnic Pashtuns from the south, the Taliban today are religiously trained fighters, native to an area, who can understand and accommodate local politics and needs.

“This new generation is of course different from the Taliban of the 1990s,” says Obaid Ali, an insurgency expert with the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) in Kabul.

“They are locals, they are more radical, they are more religious-educated young people,” says Mr. Ali. “These people, while they study in religious schools, at the same time receive military training in Pakistan, and from there return to their home town, not only as a mullah, but also as a military commander.”

Battlefield gains

While the evolution has presented challenges as well as opportunities, it has coincided with significant battlefield gains for the Taliban, especially in 2015 and 2016. Today they control as much territory as they have since 2001 and control or contest at least one-third of the country, some estimate far more – including Ahmad’s district in Logar, where he says even his neighbors served as spies, alerting the Taliban when he returned home after work.

Ahmad’s story is far from unique. The Afghan army and police are suffering “disastrously high attrition” rates and shrinking recruitment as a result of Taliban intimidation, infiltration, and attacks, notes one Western official in Kabul.

And even if one facet of the Taliban’s evolution is to spare the lives of captured soldiers and police, the usual Taliban methods of targeting security and government facilities have inflicted record casualties in 2017.

According to numbers tabulated by The New York Times in August, 31 Afghan soldiers and police officers have been killed each day this year on average.

A wave of suicide attacks claimed by the Taliban, carried out on two days last week in every corner of the country, left more than 120 Afghan soldiers and police dead.

“There are two types of people in Afghanistan now, those who will take those risks of joining the security forces, and those who won’t,” says Masood Karokhail, head of The Liaison Office (TLO), a Kabul-based group that facilitates peace and rebuilding efforts. “One reason urban centers are becoming congested is because having a government job and returning to your village is not that easy.”

The Taliban have nevertheless tried to strike a balance between attacking the government for ideological reasons while demonstrating they do not just destroy everything that comes their way, says Mr. Karokhail.

“When the Taliban don’t claim responsibility for mass casualty attacks, like the Islamic State does … they are trying to posture themselves for a political deal at the same time,” he says. “They want to be a relevant political force in this country, so their propaganda mechanism … even announces it will not attack development programs, and large-scale infrastructure like schools and roads.”

A more modern approach

When the Taliban were in power two decades ago, they banned education for girls and even photographs of people. Taliban checkpoints were festooned with billowing clouds of unspooled video and cassette tapes confiscated from drivers. Mosque prayers were compulsory, with beatings as punishment.

Today the new generation is familiar with high-tech means of propaganda, and uses smartphones with social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and WhatsApp.

Since 2008 the Taliban also began to portray themselves as multiethnic, and since 2014 began recruiting ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen, and even Shiite Muslim Hazaras, says Ali from AAN. Large offensives were launched, even as US and NATO troops withdrew. And with opium smuggling and local taxation already locked down, attempts were made to control mineral and other self-sustaining resources.

Crucially, the Taliban also began “to be more flexible with locals, with local concerns,” notes Ali. That included mediation with elders that resulted in the safe release of captured policemen and soldiers, instead of “killing them straightaway, without mercy,” as had been policy until 2014, he says.

Yet undermining the government has also meant continuing well-honed tactics to intimidate and strong-arm police and army recruits, regardless of any newfound flexibility.

One method especially potent among Pashtuns is to make their target – and the target’s family – feel impure about working for the government or taking any security job, says Rahmatullah Amiri, a TLO researcher focusing on the Taliban and other Afghan militants.

Diversity brings challenges, too

While such mechanisms work among Pashtuns and others as a local tactic, strategically the Taliban’s increasing ethnic diversity has been a double-edged sword.

“They are not as united as they were before, and the more they grow the more they face internal problems,” says Mr. Amiri. “The more they capture areas, the more difficult it is for them to control.… They need more support; there are new people with new ideas.”

Challenges include the growth of the local branch of the so-called Islamic State in Afghanistan, and internal Taliban divisions have been more pronounced since their former leader, Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Mansour, was killed in Pakistan by an American drone strike in May 2016.

Lack of a regional coordinating body and increased reliance on local funding sources – as past channels of cash from Pakistan and Persian Gulf countries dry up, or become more diffuse – have added to Taliban command and control problems.

“The fact that the Taliban continue to take territory out in the districts means that individual Taliban commanders and the Taliban as a whole are richer, because they have more smuggling rings,” says the Western official in Kabul, who asked not to be identified further.

Opium, hashish, white marble, timber, and lapis lazuli can be smuggled out more easily, he says, just as weapons and material can also be brought in more easily.

“That makes it hard to get peace negotiations started, because as much as diplomats and military officials keep insisting that we are in a stalemate, if ordinary Taliban commanders see that last week they had [control of] two villages, and this week they have three, they don’t consider that to be a stalemate – so they don’t have a huge incentive to negotiate,” says the official.

Trump's new policy

Another challenge to the Taliban, however, is the more aggressive US policy announced by President Trump in August, including the deployment of extra US troops and his declaration that he would not set a deadline for withdrawal before “victory” is attained.

The new US strategy “absolutely gives a window of opportunity to the government. But the government should do its homework, it should win locals’ trust [and] work better for the people,” says Ali, the AAN expert.

That homework is what is lacking in Logar, where ex-policeman Ahmad finally gave in after receiving Taliban threats on his phone each week for months, and where he found letters pasted at night to the front door of his house, warning his family that all would die if he kept his already dangerous job.

“The government was unable to control this area,” says Ahmad. “Now they [the Taliban] are very serious. Many of my friends left their jobs. The Taliban put checkpoints on the main roads; their intelligence is everywhere.”

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Students participate in a political ‘speed dating’ event, intended to encourage civil discussion of issues, put on by a group called BridgeND at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.

At the start of his freshman year, Rogé Karma finished up an evening hockey practice and joined the throng at the University of Notre Dame student activities fair, where groups were passing out information on everything from the Juggling Club to the Smart Woman Securities investment group.

He was looking for the College Republicans and College Democrats. He found the GOP denizens first. Rogé, who was apolitical at the time, asked if the group held discussions and debates because he wanted to learn more about pressing issues. “The guy actually laughed,” Rogé says.

Disappointed, he wended his way through the maze to the Democrats’ table. The young woman there told him they sometimes talked about issues in the news, but primarily they campaigned for candidates and causes. How could he campaign, he thought, when he didn’t even know where he stood?

Rogé felt “politically homeless.”

Just then, something caught his eye at a nearby table: side-by-side pictures of Presidents Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy. He had stumbled across a nascent College Moderates group, which drew him in with plans to hold a discussion on reforming student-loan programs. But Rogé and his like-minded friends soon realized that attracting only middle-of-the-roaders wasn’t addressing the real need, either: a place where people who have fundamental disagreements can actually talk without berating each other or threatening bodily harm. 

So they created one.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

WE NEED TO COUNTER THE ‘IDEOLOGICAL ECHO CHAMBERS THAT CREATE THIS VITRIOLIC DISCOURSE IN OUR COUNTRY.’ – Rogé Karma, a Notre Dame senior and co-founder of the political dialogue groups BridgeND and Bridge USA

Meet the bridge-builders – the young adults on college campuses trying to shape a culture that better reflects values they see as essential to their education and to American democracy. Their mission goes beyond national debates about free speech and civility. It’s about “responsible discourse,” they say – embodying respect, honesty, and a willingness to really hear one another.

By bringing people together to share viewpoints that don’t necessarily fit neatly into left and right talking points, they’re finding that students broaden and deepen their understanding of complex issues – and become more willing to jump into the messy but necessary work of political engagement.

Their partisan and activist counterparts grab more headlines through colorful protests and provocative tweets about “fascists” or “snowflakes.” But these earnest champions of less shouting and more civility believe they can help keep the country from plunging further into divisiveness. To the extent that colleges are forerunners of social change, members of this new “transpartisanship” movement could one day help elevate American society – and perhaps become part of a less pugnacious political class themselves.

***

By Rogé’s second semester, the moderates had refashioned and rebranded themselves to become BridgeND. The California kid who came to college obsessed with sports was increasingly developing a passion for political science. He stepped into a leadership role. 

The club’s first big event was The Melting Pot, a panel discussion among student leaders of the Republicans, Democrats, environmental and women’s organizations, and a Right to Life group. It drew a standing-room-only crowd in the student center ballroom, on a campus where big gatherings are usually reserved for sports activities (the giant mural on the outside of the library, of Jesus with his outstretched arms pointing upward, is visible from the stadium and has been dubbed “Touchdown Jesus”). 

Many of the roughly 250 students arrived expecting to be entertained by a fiery left-right debate, Rogé says, but they came away with perspectives they had never considered. The environmentalist talked about climate change’s impact on migration patterns. The right-to-life student talked about the Catholic perspective on human dignity. 

“That’s the moment we truly realized, this new model is what’s going to work,” says Rogé, now a senior, sitting at a table in the bustling student center, home to everything from a barbershop to a Smashburger.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Students walk between classes on a fall day on the campus of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.

Membership grew, and the following year, Rogé connected with Courtlyn Carpenter, who was trying a similar experiment – with the help of trained moderators – at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Together they and two other students founded BridgeUSA. Chapters are now operating on six other campuses, including Arizona State, the University of Rhode Island, and the University of California at Berkeley. Another 10 are in development. Dialogue clubs, which have a similar mission, have also taken root on a number of campuses.

The new civil-discourse movement is emerging as freshmen arrive at colleges more politically polarized than any time in the past half century. Surveys show that many people are not willing to do much more than “tolerate” the other side. And a significant portion of college students favor restricting speech that’s deemed hurtful or offensive. A minority even say it’s acceptable to use violence to prevent the expression of such views, according to a recent poll by the Brookings Institution.

Yet a significant number of moderates exist on American campuses, too. In a 2016 national survey, UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute found that 31 percent of college students are liberal, 4 percent are far left, 20 percent are conservative, and 2 percent are far right.

But that still leaves 42 percent saying their political orientation is somewhere in the middle. (At Notre Dame, a 2015 informal survey found a split of about 37 percent each for left and right, with 25 percent independent.) 

Around the country, the right vs. left battle is galvanizing some students, while alienating others. Many are dissatisfied with the oversimplified narrative pitting free speech against efforts to make campuses welcoming and safe for historically marginalized groups. 

The question shouldn’t be “freedom of speech vs. safe spaces … but how do we create the context for people to engage each other [who have differences]?” says John Sarrouf, who trains college staff and students on constructive dialogue as a director at Essential Partners in Cambridge, Mass. “The purpose of freedom of speech isn’t to just say whatever you want…. It’s to have your idea heard and considered.”

But many college students see a need for more empathy and inquisitiveness. Half of them said Americans do not do a good job of seeking out and listening to different views, the Knight Foundation and the Newseum Institute reported last year. 

Bridge’s mission is “radical” and “very brave,” says John Duffy, an English professor at Notre Dame and the club’s faculty adviser. “It’s risky to be the messengers – to say ‘Let’s talk,’ rather than, ‘This is the right way and we’re going to advocate.’ ” 

***

It’s “Political Speed Dating” night, several weeks into the fall semester. Students wearing everything from T-shirts and hoodies to casual business attire cluster around 10 tables in the dark paneled Oak Room of the gothic South Dining Hall. 

Small black-and-white photos of past and current presidents of Notre Dame decorate one wall. Rogé circulates around the room, chatting with newcomers about their interests and hugging friends as they saunter in.

BridgeND president Christian McGrew kicks things off with a quick rundown of four key principles that should guide discussion at the event: respect, open-mindedness, civility, and courage. After airing views on each topic, he explains, two people from each table will move on to the next. (Exchanging phone numbers is optional, he jokes.)

Topics range from the benign (a debate over the best dorm on campus) to the sensitive (whether tax money should be used to pay for birth control). Next up on the list: “Do you agree with Donald Trump’s statement on Charlottesville?” Christian calls out.

“Which one?” someone asks cheekily. The “many sides” one, he says, in which the president neglected to attribute violence specifically to white supremacist demonstrators.

At one table, newcomer Zele Iyayi says, “I wouldn’t mind if [Trump] said, ‘Antifa is bad,’ but he wouldn’t even say, ‘White supremacy is bad.’ ”

Her three table-mates nod, but they each add their own spin. “As a leader of the free world, now it is time that the US president must … use the humanitarian approach – that one human cannot bash another human,” says Noble Patidar, also new to BridgeND.

Zele interjects that the phrase “free world” bothers her, because it suggests that all other countries are less free. 

Audrey Gyolai, a BridgeND member from nearby St. Mary’s College, pushes back on that. “There is some really not great government going on in the Middle East now,” she says.

“Oooh. You just, like, pushed a button,” Zele says, laughing. “That triggers so many monologues in my head.”

But it’s “speed dating,” so the participants quickly move on.

***

The exchanges among the students can bring shifts of opinion and flashes of insight. Rogé recalls being visibly moved at a previous political speed-dating event when two students shared personal stories about what led them to opposite stances on abortion, a particularly challenging topic at this Catholic university.

Rogé himself seems well-suited to be a crusader for honest but civil exchanges on today’s college campuses. He exudes a boy-next-door charm. His hair is tightly cropped on the sides and transitions to a thick, wavy shock on top his head. He is quick to flash a grin, and, on this day, is wearing khakis and a gray T-shirt with a Notre Dame logo. 

In some ways, he was almost bred to be a bridge-builder. He grew up, as he puts it, as an “in betweener.” He was less than a year old when his parents decided to have another child, and by the time he was 1-1/2, he was big brother to – surprise! – quadruplet boys, which over the years would test his mediating skills at the dinner table.

“My whole life I’ve been an arbiter between different viewpoints,” he says.

Rogé recalls coming home from college once and finding his brothers deadlocked with their parents over whether they should forgo college in pursuit of playing professional hockey. He became the neutral party in the “negotiations,” he says, helping his parents understand why his brothers didn’t want to give up their dream, while helping his brothers understand their parents’ view that college was essential to their success. Finally, they arrived at a compromise: a gap year for playing hockey and applying to colleges. At the end of that year, all four decided on college.

Rogé played hockey himself, as well as lacrosse, and other sports. He says he did so partly because he enjoyed the way team sports brought people together.

Many other members of BridgeND formed a probing mindset in their early years, too. Christian says he learned a lot by challenging his father’s conservative views at family dinners. Several grew up with parents who had to negotiate sharply different political viewpoints in their marriage. 

Many club members have become devoted to BridgeND in part because it lets them do what they feel they can’t in classrooms or in social conversations on campus: have an exchange of ideas without getting ridiculed or shouted down. In fact, students often avoid discussions altogether that could become contentious. The academic culture is very achievement oriented, and many students see college as an expensive and direct line to a job and financial stability – with little room left for political or philosophical debate.

Armani “Niko” Porter’s pre-med classes were mostly science lectures and labs. But BridgeND “just lit this fire that I did not know was there,” he says. “Last year I had class on Tuesdays from 9:30 to 6:30 with no breaks … and the best part of my day was my 7 o’clock Bridge meeting.” 

His newfound love for intellectual wrestling led him to double major in neuroscience and theology, and he now hopes to pursue a PhD, something he couldn’t have imagined as a kid growing up in Louisiana with no role models in academia. 

Rogé, raised in a low-income family, came to Notre Dame with an academic scholarship, expecting to study business and finance. But he soon switched his major to political science. “How can I be sitting here … wanting to go to Wall Street,” he asked himself, “when there are so many issues that we need to be solving?”

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Seniors, and roommates, Mimi Teixeira (l.) and Geralyn Smith (r.) participate in a political 'speed dating' event sponsored by BridgeND in September.

None of this means BridgeND hasn’t faced some serious tests. One of its outspoken Republicans, Mimi Teixeira, penned an op-ed in the student newspaper her sophomore year, positing that all the focus on income inequality was a distraction from actually solving poverty. The editors titled it, provocatively, “Is Income inequality that bad?” 

The responses came in fast and furious – and Mimi faced some personal attacks online, much of it based on her privilege as a well-off white woman from Hingham, Mass.

BridgeND seized the opportunity. It brought people together for a well-attended discussion about income inequality, featuring Mimi and some students who had written critical op-eds. 

“A lot of the evidence she presented wasn’t very sound,” says Natasha Reifenberg, a philosophy major who appeared on the panel. The audience asked good questions, and Natasha appreciated the opportunity to put forth her arguments. But rather than join Bridge, she has another way of fostering empathy and understanding on campus – through a dramatic monologue group that tells the anonymous stories of marginalized students who may be hesitant to share their experiences publicly. 

Mimi, for her part, says she saw attitudes soften because of the face-to-face discussion on income inequality. “When the people realized the liberals [on the panel] were respectful of my arguments, they were more open,” she says. “People who know me know I’m not just a country club person.”

It also helped that her roommate and close friend, Geralyn Smith, an African-American Democrat from New Orleans, could serve as her “character witness.” 

Geralyn says it was challenging to “defend the fact that [Mimi] is an authority in her own right, but also defend my own beliefs where I didn’t agree with her.” But in the club, and in her friendship with Mimi, “it’s more about the exchange than the views themselves,” she says. “It’s fun.”

The club also weathered an appearance last spring by Charles Murray, a libertarian political scientist who has espoused controversial views on race and welfare, not long after he had faced disruptive protests at Middlebury College in Vermont. BridgeND decided not to formally participate, but Mimi, president at the time, introduced Mr. Murray, who had been invited by a constitutional studies professor.

Students organized a protest outside the building where Murray spoke. Geralyn had friends in both places, and sat the whole thing out. 

“I was vehemently against going to hear him speak on my campus,” she says, but if a professor “felt it was of value …  then who am I to say that he shouldn’t?”

For Niko, BridgeND has made a huge difference in the kinds of conversations taking place, because it’s a place where “everyone is expected to defend their views with facts.”

“We have everybody from anarcho-capitalists to communists, all in one room,” he says.

Niko often points out the racial subtexts of political debates at club meetings. But he’s used to doing that as a Louisianan who is part black, part native American, and who grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood. On this stately campus with its iconic gold dome, just over 4 percent of students are black, and another 5 percent are multiracial. Some white students grew up in towns where they didn’t know any racial minorities.

“It can be awkward,” he says. “But there’s no intellectual growth without that discomfort.”

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

‘WE HAVE EVERYBODY FROM ANARCHO-CAPITALISTS TO COMMUNISTS, ALL IN ONE ROOM.’ – Armani “Niko” Porter, a neuroscience and theology major

***

One question is how far the civil-discourse movement can actually go on college campuses. University quads have long been cauldrons of spirited protest – a result, in part, of young adults just starting to formulate their own political views. Student activists have always experienced pushback from establishment forces as well. 

But today, there’s an overarching debate about the political leanings of students themselves – and their professors. Some young people are eager to embrace political labels, but others shun having tags pinned on them if they share an opinion. One person’s free speech is another’s hate speech. 

Bridge chapters are working to carve out a space where there’s enough trust to lift such fears. At Notre Dame, the club’s severest test came at the same time one confronted the nation – with Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency. BridgeND’s weekly meeting, open to any interested student, happened to fall on the night after the 2016 election.

“Everyone was on edge,” says Christian, a board member at that time. 

Liam Dalton, one of the liberal members, faced off with a student who showed up wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. The volume dialed up quickly, and the rest of the room fell quiet.

“I couldn’t even understand where the Trump voters were coming from … and I’m supposed to be a leader of this club,” Christian recalls. 

“It got pretty intense… but by the end of it [we were] shaking hands,” Liam says. “You walk away with a slightly more enlightened view of who else exists besides yourself in this country. I far prefer those discussions to just another discussion I could have with another liberal.”

For Rogé, the immediate post-election atmosphere “created an existential crisis,” he says. He asked himself, “Everything we’ve done for these last couple years, is it worth it anymore? Do I even believe in what Bridge is?”

After several weeks, Rogé and the group’s leaders settled on an emphatic yes. “This isn’t indicative that Bridge doesn’t work,” he realized. “This is exactly why we need it” – to counter the “ideological echo chambers that create this vitriolic discourse in our country.”

Throughout his college years, including a stint this summer as an intern at the American embassy in Morocco, he has leaned conservative and liberal at different times. But he truly considers himself independent. 

The more he learns, the more he realizes how complex policy issues can be, and the more he values “intellectual humility,” he says. Last semester, Rogé studied in Jerusalem, which only magnified for him the necessity for respectful dialogue.

“With Israelis and Palestinians … you see there’s a wall that literally separates them,” he says. “Is this what our country could look like if we don’t have a way to understand one another?”

His dream after finishing college next spring is to work full time with BridgeUSA. He envisions, among other things, setting up a domestic version of study abroad, where students can immerse themselves in an environment that’s ideologically different from their home or campus.

If clubs can send out more graduates as “Bridge ambassadors [who] understand how to have discussions with people who disagree with them,” Rogé says, “I think our world will look like a very different place.”

Santi Palacios/AP

Two men, one wearing a Spanish flag, left, and the other wearing a Catalonian estelada, talk during Spain's National Day, in Barcelona, Spain, on Oct. 12.

Ever since neighboring Catalonia held a vote on declaring independence from Spain, this city has been festooned with the national flag in what might seem at first glance a collective exaltation of the Spanish state.

It fits the dominating narrative of two combating sides in the country’s biggest political crisis in decades – Catalans who seek self-determination and Spaniards who will do anything to stop it. The flags unfurled over balconies across Zaragoza, the capital of the Aragon region, match in visuals the sight of esteladas – the flags symbolizing Catalan independence – increasingly swaying in Barcelona.

Except most here say they feel misunderstood by this interpretation, or the way it might look at street level.

The political drama continues to unfold, with implications not just for the future of Spain but for the whole of Europe. And both sides seem to be digging in their heels. Catalan President Carles Puigdemont on Thursday turned the question of Catalan independence over to the regional parliament, leaving Madrid set to respond by taking the unprecedented step of assuming parts of Catalonia's regional authority.

But many residents here say they don’t support either Catalonia’s separatists or Madrid’s unionists, led by the ruling conservative Popular Party (PP) of Mariano Rajoy. They say they resent the assumptions when their protest against Catalonia’s independence drive is about legality, democracy, and belief in a united Spain. At the end of the day, many say they simply do not want to see Catalonia go, and if it were to, they should have their say in it too.

“Catalonia is not the husband or the wife in a marriage. In a marriage you can divorce,” says Yago Oñate, who writes a column for the local paper Hoy Aragón. “Catalonia is an essential part of a reality that is called Spain.”

“Catalonia is my country, and I want to decide on questions about my country.”

Of neither side

Zaragoza is not the only city to have dusted off national emblems in the wake of this crisis. But because of the city’s proximity to Barcelona, it has felt the crisis more intensely. A series of pro-Spanish protests surged here after the violence-marred Oct. 1 vote, when the central government dispatched Spanish police to quash the referendum.

Catalans, if they do not bristle at the demonstrations in Zaragoza, still have found it easy to dismiss a city already replete with Spanish symbols: from painter Francisco Goya; to Our Lady of the Pillar, an important Catholic basilica; to a major military academy that was particularly important during the Franco dictatorship. Ana Garcia, walking her dog in a park in Barcelona recently, says that she is not against the Spanish flag in theory. “But I feel that many are waving it not because it represents Spain, but because it is against Catalonia,” she says.

But for those in Zaragoza, the Catalonian independence debate is not so black and white. Olga Moreno, who started an association in Zaragoza called Transparency that aims to repair corrupted politics in Spain, admits resentments are running high on both sides. Sometimes she thinks that if she could vote on Catalan independence, it might make sense to vote “yes” and part ways.

But she says she wouldn’t, because Catalan independence runs counter to her European consciousness. “I am against any kind of separatism. It doesn't make sense to make more physical borders. Because today it is about globalizing everything and about union,” she says.

Across the political spectrum, residents of Zaragoza place differing degrees of blame on the ruling party and the Catalan authorities, as well as other political parties jockeying for position. Some agree that Catalans should have a legal right to vote on independence. But no one said they accepted the results of the vote, which was declared unconstitutional. Nor would they like to see Catalonia leave. 

Juan de la Cal, a student on break at the Zaragoza School of Arts, says Spain would suffer from the economic loss, since Catalonia generates 20 percent of the nation’s GDP. Others, like Mr. Oñate, say they would reassess their views if the region itself enjoyed a majority supporting independence. Instead, a new Catalan government poll this week showed 52.2 percent wanting to remain a part of Spain as it is or within a federal state, with 34.7 seeking independence.

'I don't like all of these flags'

This “gray zone” is where most Spaniards sit, says Pablo Simón, a politics professor at the University Carlos III in Madrid. That is why the main political parties, with the exception of the PP, are voicing support for some kind of constitutional reform that could see referendums possible in the future. But politics is widening the gap between the two sides. “Each is demanding from the other the only thing the other can’t give,” he says. “Of course the gray zone is in the middle, and there is a huge range of options between both extremes.”

The crisis has left many Spaniards even more disillusioned with their political actors. Fran Navarro, a barista at the plant-filled Cafe Botanico in the center of Zaragoza, supports Podemos, the only political party that has expressly supported the Catalan right to vote. He does too. But he thinks both sides are simply diverting attention from their own corruption and mishandlings.

The flag-bearing is problematic, says Professor Simón, because it makes a consensus harder to find. “The situation right now is one of increasing polarization, and other Spanish flags and those esteladas on the other side are making actors less prone to move their positions.”

For Mr. Navarro, the flags hanging around his city feel unsettling. “I don’t like all of these flags,” he says. “It feels strange.”

Moreno sees the blazing red and yellow stripes around as progress. She hung one up outside her own home only one time before: when Spain won the World Cup in 2010. “When I go to other countries, people have their flags, some on masts in their gardens. We have had too much of a complex about it,” she says. “I feel liberated. I can show it and not be called a facha,” she says, the Spanish slang for fascist.

Or at least not, she concedes, in Zaragoza.

In 2013, when Keith McElvee got out of prison after a 12-year stint for a drug conviction, he returned to a neighborhood in northwest Detroit that he didn’t recognize. “This is like Beirut,” he thought. “Like a war zone.”

Mr. McElvee is naturally gregarious and social-minded. Out of prison he struggled, but then found work doing homeless outreach at Cass Community Social Services (CCSS), a nonprofit. Four years later he’s a full-time employee tasked with helping more than a dozen clients secure housing and jobs, and speaks proudly of success stories, like the man he helped to curb alcoholism and earn his truck-driving license. “My passion is people,” he says. “I like to help people.”  

But McElvee’s background and low salary meant his own housing was precarious: His apartment in the same neighborhood cost $450, nearly half his monthly income. In August, he moved into a new place, a “tiny house” that costs him significantly less per month – and that he’s on track to actually call his own.

“That’s the key,” McElvee said of his projected home ownership. “That’s a beautiful thing.”

Detroit’s Tiny Homes Project, run by the same organization, represents an innovative approach to low-income housing: Instead of high-density apartment buildings, residents pay low rent on well-constructed tiny houses that range from 250 to 400 square feet and include kitchens, washer/dryer units, and heating and cooling.

Tiny homes are a popular housing trend, popularized by shows like HGTV’s “Tiny House Hunters,” and have been sprouting up as a novel approach to curbing homelessness. But the Cass project marks the first where residents, after paying rent for seven years, will actually be given the deeds to their homes.

“We thought, ‘With an asset they would fare better in the longer term,’ ” says the Rev. Faith Fowler, CCSS’s executive director. “And tiny homes really became the vehicle for that.”

Reverend Fowler, a native Detroiter and longtime pastor at the Cass Community United Methodist Church, has through decades of service earned a reputation as one of Detroit’s most devoted and innovative citizens: Among the various CCSS programs she oversees are projects that employ local homeless people to transform thousands of illegally dumped tires into sandals, doormats, and hanging planters. 

Since 2002 the organization has run homeless residency programs. It was in 2013, Fowler says, that she first considered tiny homes. Her mother had recently died, and she was thinking a lot about inheritance – and how the poor often miss out on what can be an important economic safeguard.

Villages of tiny homes for the poor already existed or would soon exist in cities like Portland, Madison, and East Austin. Fowler dreamed of building a community on Cass’s large campus that would provide both housing and assets for Detroiters who needed them most.  

“So do you think anybody will want to live in these?” Fowler remembers a board member asking.  

There was no shortage of need. Detroit, despite a recent economic revitalization, still has the country’s highest poverty rate among big cities, at 36 percent. A January count found more than 2,000 homeless people in the city, and the rapid gentrification taking place in some areas has led to new fears of housing shortages. “The city is at a critical crossroads in its history,” Detroit councilwoman Mary Sheffield recently told the Detroit Free Press. “How we address the housing inequities that will inevitably arise will determine ... if all Detroiters are included in the revitalization.”

Last fall, CCSS received 122 completed applications for the initial batch of seven houses. Plans call for a neighborhood of an eventual 25 tiny homes, all with unique designs and their own lots. In the six months after the initial window closed, more than 900 people requested applications.  

“I think it says probably two things,” Fowler says of the demand. “One is that folks are needing good, clean, safe affordable housing. And two is: Everyone has the aspiration to own their home.”

No government funding is involved. Construction costs come out to about $50,000 per house and have been subsidized with donations, including a $400,000 gift from the Ford Motor Company. Architects provided plans pro bono, and the houses are built both by teams of volunteers and paid contractors. Low-income tenants – a planned mix of formerly homeless people, senior citizens, and young adults who have aged out of foster care – agree to pay the organization one dollar per square foot, plus electrical bills. The rent goes toward program fees but doesn’t actually pay for the houses directly. Residents also agree to take classes on maintenance and financial literacy, and attend regular meetings of their new neighborhood’s homeowners association.

“This is going to be a little community,” says McElvee.

Even before the first batch of homes was built, the project received an avalanche of attention: Much of it was positive, but Facebook posters railed about “future tiny crack houses” and “another step toward communism.” Others doubted that such a project could work here – “Detroit isn’t like Austin and Portland. Get a clue” – or questioned the decision to build new structures at all in a city that already has tens of thousands of abandoned houses.

Fowler isn’t opposed to rehabbing – she points out that her organization has already revitalized more than a dozen homes – but this particular space happened to be vacant. The construction costs are significant, she says, but still amount to far less than building new full-size houses or even extensive rehab work. “We’re building quality homes that will last decades.”

In August, after donating many of his possessions so that he could downsize, McElvee moved in to his new 310 square-foot beige one-story, part of an initial community that ranges in age from 24 to 74 and has an average annual income just shy of $12,000. (Six of the seven currently constructed homes are now occupied, with a tenant scheduled to move into the seventh Nov 1. Five more homes are expected to be completed next April.)

His first night in the new house, he says, he anxiously paced for 20 minutes. “I kept walking around. I said, ‘This is so small, am I going to like it?’ ” He was also overwhelmed by tourists and other curious visitors who came for unannounced visits, sometimes talking right outside his window or knocking.

But he quickly settled in, also finding his place as a good neighbor. McElvee patrols the area at night and helps out his elderly neighbor, watering her grass and taking up her garbage bin. When the residents’ washing machines had a glitch, another resident went around to each house offering to fix it.

“That was the whole point,” says McElvee, “so that everybody knows each other and looks out for each other.”

And the lower rent and future ownership also means that, decades after he grew up as a ward of the state in a rough boys’ foster home in the same neighborhood, McElvee has in middle age the promise of a new economic security.

“Now I can breathe,” he says.

Reuters

Guests and family members of opioid victims look on as President Donald Trump displays a presidential public health emergency declaration on the nation's opioid crisis in the East Room of the White House.

One reason that President Barack Obama took major steps last year to halt the nation’s opioid crisis was to shift the public’s attitude from blanket condemnation about drug addiction to one of confidence that it can be avoided by education and that addicts can be cured with the right support. Now President Trump, in an Oct. 26 order of a public health emergency, has endorsed this approach.

Mr. Trump’s actions in directing more federal resources to this complex problem reflect an emerging national consensus that prevention and treatment, as much as law enforcement of the opioid trade, will work to reverse the rising death toll.

“We can be the generation that ends the opioid epidemic,” Trump said.

Under the federal emergency, addicts in rural areas – where much of the problem lies – will find it easier to obtain treatment. States will be allowed to use special funds for treatment. And federal dollars will flow to education campaigns aimed at children.

While better medical intervention with addicts is needed, it is just as important to support the best treatment and recovery programs. Addicts must be viewed not as victims of a chronic brain disease or only as criminals but as capable of overcoming patterns of behavior. As neuroscientist – and former drug addict – Marc Lewis wrote in a memoir, addicts can be enticed to have a “powerful surge” toward goals other than using drugs – “goals about their relationships and feeling whole, connected and under control.”

States are on the front line in solving this epidemic. Massachusetts, Ohio, Vermont, New Hampshire, and other hard-hit states are coming up with innovative approaches. But the key is public support of addiction treatment – and more treatment centers. More federal support will help, especially if it is grounded in replacing a fatalistic view of addicts as flawed in character with one that empowers them with hope and certainty about living a drug-free life.

The public, like government, can play a major role in ensuring that addicts are given that opportunity and hope.