Who’s Afraid of ‘The Night of Controversies’?

The way of thinking proposed by the institute represents a riposte to the growing societal polarization seen around the world in recent years, regarding issues from climate change to gender identity, immigration and abortion. A study by researchers at the University of Cambridge in February 2026 found that divisions on social and political issues in the U.S. have increased by 64 percent since 1988, with most polarization after 2008. Polling by Pew Research Center similarly found a sharp rise in partisanship. In 2022, 72 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Democrats viewed the opposing party as “more immoral” than other Americans, up from 47 percent and 35 percent in 2016.

“We are in a disagreement crisis,” says Julia Minson, a Harvard Kennedy School professor and behavioral scientist, pointing to the uncivil behavior of political leaders and divisiveness of social media. “When it comes to the U.S., people on the other side of the political spectrum are seen as unmoral, untrustworthy, not worthy of debate.”

Yet Minson, who in March published the book How to Disagree Better, argues that disagreement is a crucial component of human life: from deciding with your child what to eat for breakfast, to choosing a phone plan with your partner or deciding where to have dinner with a friend. 

“Disagreement, it’s just inevitable,” she adds. “We need to think about how we can have these conversations more constructively. We have to get better at this.”

The French institute has run “controversy” events for over a decade, predominantly as part of its work with small and large companies and even politicians. More than 2,000 people have participated in the institute’s trainings on disagreement to date, spanning topics such as food production, climate change, AI, biomimetics and governance. The training might be intensively over a week or spread over several months of sessions.

“We reinvent the way that people approach disagreement,” says Jean-Luc Verreaux, director-general of the institute. “When it comes to the problem of division, we tend to leave it to experts to resolve. But it is a problem that individuals must confront.”

Inspired by philosopher Patrick Viveret’s model of Productive Disagreements and Bruno Latour’s Cartography of Controversies, Verreaux argues that as a society, we have three choices when confronted with different opinions. First, we can withdraw from interaction and keep to our inner circle. Second, we can try to dominate and impose our beliefs on others. Or thirdly, we can learn to live and grow with them.

“Listening to opposing opinions can enrich us,” he elaborates. “A diversity of perspectives can only improve how we build the world of tomorrow.”

In recent years the institute has also expanded its remit, offering events open to the public that have been focused on single-issue debates. But the Night of Controversies was the first all-out, multi-session event dedicated to disagreement. 

More than 600 Parisians attended the evening, which was spread across four stages at the Gaîté Lyrique venue in the French capital. And far from only featuring experts like De Wenden and Kuhanathan, public participation was a key part of the process. 

Following their initial exchanges on borders, audience members were allowed to make comments or pose questions.

One bald, middle-aged man quickly raised his hand, challenging De Wenden: “I feel like you avoided the question,” he said. “I’ve been to Morocco. All the youth there said they dreamt of coming to France. If we opened the borders, how many would come?”

She acknowledged his point, but countered: “Not as many as you think. In fact, it’s the poorest who are the least likely to move. The fishermen, the farmers.”

Then she clarified her position: “I don’t think we should completely abolish borders, but we should open them more.”

Next, a young woman with frizzy hair intervened. She said that she believed borders should be abolished, but didn’t know how in practice that would work.

“Maybe we could take a federalist approach, or that of global governance, and have a larger state who could run the system,” she said, thinking out loud. “The worldwide cooperation on climate change that we’ve seen could work as a blueprint.”

A third audience member, describing himself as French but of immigrant origin, then joined the discussion, clearly with the intention of stoking some controversy.

“The ‘Great Replacement,’ it’s justified,” he said, referring to the extremist far-right theory that Muslims are replacing Europe’s white Indigenous population.

“Given colonialism, we are due reparations. This is not a political or economic argument, but a moral one.”

Professor Minson praises the approach used by the institute, but underlines the fact that for disagreement to be constructive we must have clarity about what our goals are and that it is something that needs to be learned and practiced regularly.

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“Everybody should be doing more of this,” she says. “But you really need to practice and put in the effort. You need to do this regularly, it is done most effectively in small doses all the time, not one-time workshops.”

Back in Paris, at the end of the session on borders, there was time for a debrief. At the start, they had been asked to rate on a scale of one to 10 to what extent they thought borders should be abolished. Now, after the debate, had that rating changed?

The answer was resoundingly yes.

Attendees were pushed both ways. One became more certain of her belief, shifting up from six to eight. Another shifted her rating down by a couple of points. And some made huge switches, going from five to one, after hearing the arguments.

“I don’t think we are fundamentally in disagreement,” said one man, explaining his reasoning in a transparent and fair way that would surely have pleased the event’s organizers. “Where we differ is our understanding of the political context.”

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