The role of formal education in the reduction of prejudice of, and intolerance toward, members of a different race, ethnicity or national origin, religion, gender, social status and sexual orientation has long been recognized by social and political psychologists. Higher education, i.e., college education, for example exposes students to diversity of political and religious beliefs and people of different national origin, race or ethnicity, which they often have not encountered in their life previously. The college campus then is an important training ground for one critical component of democratic citizenship – civic enlightenment. Tolerance – the willingness to extend civil liberties and equal opportunities to those you dislike because of their ideology, religion, ethnicity, etc. is at the very core of enlightenment. Looking at a diverse set of undergraduate students across majors enrolled in an introductory course to American Government, our research attempts to make a contribution to the study of civic education and tolerance. First, early in the semester, we assessed students‟ general understanding of tolerance and equality. Students then viewed an hour long documentary on the history of racial, ethnic and religious intolerance in the United States produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). In an assignment following the documentary students were asked to describe their emotional and cognitive reactions to the film; we also asked them about their previous knowledge of the described incidents of intolerance. Throughout the remainder of the semester students were asked to discuss in writing and in groups a variety of controversial political and social issues. During the last day of class we finally administered a questionnaire asking students to assess the impact of this introductory class on their tolerance toward people of different religion, race, etc. Our findings show that students – regardless of their race - have very little historic knowledge of intolerance or prejudice in the U.S., largely confined to the case of African Americans (but not Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Jews, etc.). A majority of students experiences strong negative emotional reactions to the video. Some white students report feelings of shame and guilt (about being white) after being confronted with the breadth of intolerance historically. We further find that while completion of the course did very little in changing students‟ self-reported political beliefs or values, a majority believes that they have become more tolerant, interestingly particularly regarding religious diversity. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the larger implications of our study.