Chris Satullo is the project manager for the Red and Blue Exchange and the Can We Talk? forums, and an instructor in the Paideia course “Can We Talk?: Courageous Civility for Troubled Times.” The course was designed to help students dialogue about controversial issues such as an international health crisis or race and the criminal justice system in America. Satullo, one of three co-instructors for the course, commented on the course response to the pandemic in a Penn Today article, “At the beginning of the semester, we stressed that the most important learning would come from the student’s willingness to be brave, candid, and kind with one another. The students worked to carve out the ‘brave space.’ Emotions sometimes flared, but by the time COVID-19 scrambled all our lives, I’d contend the group had begun to develop a reservoir of respect and trust for one another.”
Satullo is the principal of Keystone Civic Ventures LLC, a media and civic engagement consulting firm. He is civic engagement consultant to the Commitee of Seventy, a good-government non-profit for which he directs of the PA Project for Civic Engagement.
Previously, he was vice president/news & civic dialogue for WHYY, Philadephia’s public media company. He also was editorial page editor and a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, a syndicated columnist for Thomson Newspapers Inc., and managing editor of the Express-Times newspaper in Easton, PA.
He has won more than 60 awards for journalism and civic engagement, including the Columbia-duPont Award for broadcast journalism (shared), the James K. Batten Award for Civic Journalism (shared), the National Headliner Award for journalistic innovation, and the Person of the Year award from the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
He is a graduate of Williams College and a former Fulbright Fellow. He lives in Philadelphia.
The course we teach for Paideia could not be more of the moment. It’s designed to help students navigate this exciting but challenging time in America’s history, as new voices rightfully insist on being heard but a troubling pushback against authentic free speech can also be glimpsed. We aim to expand students’ grasp of themes in American history that bear directly on today’s ferment, while giving them tools to carry out the difficult conversations the moment demands.