College classroom communication in the United States is linked to critical issues that are constructed in the larger sociopolitical and political background. As social conflicts and the unstable political environment in the U.S. continue to escalate, universities are caught in the midst of agitated public debates where identity politics continue to be at the center. Within this context, both faculty and students seem to be trapped in classroom dynamics where silence, taboo topics, stereotyping, and self-censorship are hijacking authentic opportunities for learning, critical debate, and human development. It is against this backdrop that this study takes place, with the aim to analyze students' and faculty's construction of communicative relationships within culturally diverse classrooms and a climate where sociocultural tensions continue to grow. The findings suggest that participants move between two communicative modalities or dispositions: (1) the avoidance of conflict by creating silence; and (2) the engagement of productive discomfort by creating trust. Participants agreed that the construction of the classroom as a safe place was a collective project toward the humanization of social interactions; however, they emphasized that the instructor played a critical role in moderating difficult conversations and helping students achieve moral imagination.