After seeing how successful its approach was in addressing polarization around abortion, the Public Conversations Project went on to apply the approach to projects in numerous fields, including biodiversity in Maine and a worldwide denomination's stance on homosexuality. Click here to learn more about the wide variety of ways in which the Public Conversations Project has applied dialogue to conflicts.

In 1989, family therapist Laura Chasin watched a televised debate spiral from disrespectful to angry to chaotic. She posed the question that would define a new organization and its mission: Could the same methods that help families have safe, constructive conversations in counseling sessions help people talk with each other about polarizing public issues?

Laura invited a small group of colleagues at the Family Institute of Cambridge to join her in exploring this possibility. Out of this brainstorming group the Public Conversations Project was born.

In spring 1990, the new Public Conversations Project explored this question by applying  family counseling strategies to the design and facilitation of conversations between citizens on both sides of the abortion debate. The goal was to help participants deepen their understanding of each other by shifting the way they communicated.

Thus, PCP's long-standing practice of working collaboratively with dialogue participants began. Through eighteen dialogues with more than one hundred citizen participants, PCP developed and field-tested a reliable model for opening new ways of communicating on the contentious issue of abortion. This model was significant not only for the nascent organization but also for the newly evolving field of dialogue: PCP had developed a new approach that proved adaptable and successful not just for abortion but other divisive issues. Instead of seeking to change people's opinions, it shifted perceptions of those who held different views and how people chose to interact with those on the opposite side of political fault lines.

The organization's second phase of major and visible dialogue work came about when, in 1994, two staff at Boston-area women's health clinics were shot and killed. Almost immediately, then Governor William Weld and Cardinal Bernard Law issued a joint call for "common ground talks" between activists. PCP responded by convening a meeting between six highly influential pro-life and pro-choice leaders and conducting two series of "citizen" dialogues as part of a multi-faceted initiative to improve the climate surrounding abortion in the Boston area.

In tandem with mediation firm Susan Podziba and Associates, PCP designed and facilitated a series of highly confidential dialogues between the six leaders. The aim was to de-escalate the tension and potential for volatility that followed the health clinic shootings. Though leaders committed to only four dialogues when they began, they continued to agree to additional meetings, and the project expanded into five years of off-the-record, intense dialogues. In addition to significantly shifting the leaders' relationships and the public climate, the dialogues resulted in several concrete actions, including a jointly signed letter telling a violent activist that his presence and protests were not welcome in Massachusetts. The dialogue series culminated in 2001 with a co-authored account of the members' experience published in the Boston Sunday Globe.