LSE's Campus Relations Innovation Fund supports the School's first ever Common Ground Supper Club
- 10 September 2025
LSE Generate hosted the first-ever Common Ground Supper Club at The GenDen, in an event that brought together LSE staff from across professional services and academia for an evening of connection and conversation over food. It also featured a discussion on understanding and engaging with different perspectives across the LSE community.
The evening began with drinks and networking before Professor Paul Dolan introduced ideas from his new book Beliefism, exploring how our beliefs, more than facts, shape behaviours and decisions. Through the four key sources of belief he identified as nature, nurture, norms, and exposure, Dolan encouraged the group to examine how we form our deepest convictions and, importantly, how we might engage more thoughtfully with those who see the world differently.
"We tend to push people to the extreme of the views we disagree with to make them easier to dismiss," Dolan stated, highlighting how this tendency prevents genuine understanding and engagement. He advocated for what he calls "intellectual humility," to consider that we might not always be right, and that universities should be places where diverse, even uncomfortable ideas can be explored.
The discussion took on particular relevance for LSE's community as colleagues reflected on how academic environments, despite prizing objectivity, can become echo chambers where dissenting views are dismissed without careful and constructive engagement. As one participant noted, the challenge is not just recognising obvious intolerance, but addressing the subtler forms that can flourish in educated settings when we surround ourselves with like-minded individuals.
Following the discussion, guests enjoyed a three-course Jamaican-Greek fusion dinner prepared by LSE alumni ventures. Conversations flowed freely, giving attendees a space for cross-departmental connections and continued reflection on how they might better foster understanding across different perspectives within the LSE community.
The evening embodied LSE's commitment to creating spaces where differences can be bridges for thought and engagement, rather than barriers, and encouraging the kind of respectful dialogue essential for a thriving academic community.
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