In what ways can we create a campus atmosphere where academics engage with controversial material and have civil conversations about differing perspectives? This book reveals how to navigate issues that may impact media professionals and instructors teaching these developing professionals.

Tough topics are inescapable for journalism and mass communication academics. If it’s in the news, journalism and mass communication instructors have to discuss it in class. In Testing Tolerance, Candi Carter Olson and Tracy Everbach of the AEJMC Commission on the Status of Women bring together a broad range of perspectives, from graduate students to deans, in conversation about ways to address tough topics in and out of the university classroom.

Helping instructors navigate today’s toughest topics through discussions of the issues and pertinent terminology, this book provides hands-on exercises and practical advice applicable across student and instructor levels and disciplines. Readers will gain an understanding of the issues and acquire tools to address these topics in sensitive, yet forthright, ways.

1. Introduction: Testing Tolerance in the Classroom

Tracy Everbach & Candi Carter Olson

PART I: Confronting Tough Topics

2. Walking With Our Students: Turning Theory-based Courses Into Hands-on Media Production Opportunities

Candi Carter Olson

3. Taking Heat: Navigating Diversity and Confrontation in the Classroom

Tracy Everbach

4. Making the Invisible Valuable: Strategies for Translating Work at the Margins

Meredith Clark

5. Pedagogy of the Stressed: Mental Health in the Mass Communication Classroom and on Campuses

Chelsea Reynolds

6. Being a Female Public Intellectual in the Age of Social Media: Navigating Backlash, Mansplainers, and Trolls

Rebecca Hains

7. A Communication Unit Administrator’s Perspective on Speech Controversies in the Classroom and on Campus

David Perlmutter

PART II: Fostering Tolerance

8. Flipping the Script: Difficult Dialogues and Blended Learning for Traditional and Online Journalism Courses

Marquita Smith & Mia Moody Ramirez

9. Confronting “Bro Culture” in the Sports Journalism Classroom

Steve Fox

10. Conflicted: Student Media Advisors, Sexual Assault Coverage, and Mandatory Reporting Under Title IX

Meg Heckman

11. #NAJAEverywhere: “I” in Indigenous (People) is Capitalized

Victoria LaPoe, Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton, & Rebecca Landsberry

12. Wait…Hold on…Just let me explain this to you…

Laura Castañeda

13. Graduate Student Instructors: Tackling Tough Topics for the First Time

Khadijah Ejaz

14. An Intersectional LGBTQ+ Pop Culture Approach to Critical Pedagogy

Nathian Rodriguez

15. Exploring Intersectional Approaches to Pedagogy

Paromita Pain

16. Conclusion: Recommendations and Class Resources

Candi Carter Olson & Tracy Everbach