This month in Washington, DC, I met with one of the university professors at the American Enterprise Institute. I hadn't seen him for 20 years. He hadn't even returned to campus recently. He used to be my boss, but now he's my colleague. He has been teaching for over 50 years.
I asked him about my alma mater, what's new and what's changed. He grimaced. “Allen, I hate to say it, but things are not good.” He said young faculty are training undergraduates to be ideologues, and that opinionated students are hijacking class discussions and bullying their colleagues. It is said that he had threatened her. A polite and orderly student transfers to another school, and a disorderly and disorderly student enters the school.
“When they come to me during office hours, my best students admit that it's because they're too scared to ask sensitive questions or discuss controversial issues during class.” he complained. They want social harmony, but this comes at the expense of real learning. ”
Too many students use classrooms for activities, belligerently silencing competing opinions, so much so that other students do not present their opinions at all, preferring to remain silent rather than offend their peers. is good, he added.
A culture of intimidation undermines the pursuit of knowledge and truth. Universities committed to open inquiry should foster the organic exchange of ideas.
Some universities are legally and missionally constrained by fixed doctrines. For example, private religious colleges may limit what faculty can teach or assign. Christian seminaries can legally fire professors who promote atheism or heresy.
Vocational schools train for skilled trades and do not have scientific discovery or humanistic instruction as their organizational purpose. Of course, this generalization does not always hold. Because technology and innovation involve moral and ethical complexities that students and faculty ponder, even in primarily technical courses.
However, the standards, rules, and practices of public universities, which prioritize objective research, and secular liberal arts universities, which require investigation and discussion as a condition for intellectual advancement, are (or should be) different. Still important.
Differences of opinion are inevitable. Students must learn how to keep it at the level of rhetoric and discourse so that it does not degenerate into violence and coercion. And you need to experience how friendship, or at least civility, is possible even when there are conflicts and quarrels.
An unwillingness to challenge personal assumptions or suspend judgment for the sake of clarity and understanding leads to intolerance and illiberalism. This widespread inability to accept opposing beliefs may explain the country's overall political dysfunction.
Why can't we be friends with people who disagree with us? The late Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg provided a model for this kind of friendship. Although they opposed each other on nearly every issue and were champions of rival jurisprudence, they nevertheless developed deep and enduring bonds. Their differences created mutual respect rather than animosity or hatred. They did not impose inappropriate motives on the other person and recognized a common desire for sound reasoning and the right answer.
This week's “Words to the Wise” comes from Eugene Scalia, son of the late justice. Reflecting on Justice Ginsburg's death, he said she and his father “believed that what they were doing was thoughtfully arriving at their views and advancing them.” Vigorously–it was essential to the national interest. ”
He added: “They believed that if there was less discussion, their friendship would diminish and so would our democracy.”
Few of us are insightful enough to understand the potential scope of a single friendship.
Note: This article was adapted from Allen Mendenhall's regular segment “Word to the Wise” on Troy Public Radio.
