You Can’t Say That

Experience a class where people say the things you aren’t supposed to say; where students participate in a quiet revolution toward cross-cultural understanding; where the philosophy is simple: conversation can change the world.

About the Hosts

Dr. Sam Richards

Dr. Sam Richards is an award-winning teacher and sociologist at Penn State and the instructor of the largest race and cultural relations course in the United States. He is not afraid to push boundaries in the classroom and maintains an unwavering desire to encourage people to uncover and question every assumption they have unwittingly inherited so that they learn to think for themselves. It is because of his willingness to take risks and push new ideas that the education activist David Horowitz called him one of the “101 most dangerous professors in America.” Dr. Richards’ Radical Experiment in Empathy is one of the most widely viewed TEDx talks online, having reached more than 3 million people.

Dr. Laurie Mulvey

Dr. Laurie Mulvey is the executive director and co-founder (with Sam Richards) of the World in Conversation Center for Public Diplomacy at Penn State. Under Dr. Mulvey’s leadership, World in Conversation has become the largest university-based cross-cultural dialogue program in the United States and has forged alliances with international partners, such as the United National Development Programme, UNESCO, and NATO, along with local and regional organizations in Pakistan, Iran, Palestinian Territories, Israel, Kuwait, Qatar, China, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and nine nations in the NATO Alliance. Dr. Mulvey’s commitment to student-centered learning catalyzes more than 3,000 peer-facilitated dialogues about contemporary cultural issues each year, with special emphasis on U.S. race relations.

The work of Drs. Richards and Mulvey has been reported on in The New York Times, MSNBC, The Christian Science Monitor, and PBS, as well as other international media outlets.