Freedom of Speech

Here's an interesting and mostly fair article in today's New York Times on the growing movement of conservatism on college campuses. The article dispenses with the usual snideness regarding the concept of "young conservative" and actually tries to put what it's seeing in a non-ideologically-biased context. And it's the New York Times!





Thoroughly unsurprising is the reaction of left-leaning academics to the intellectual antibodies these young righties avail themselves of. One professor charges that the tilt to the right has put an end to "the openness of a number of students to new ideas and new ways of thinking." I hesitated to actually put that in quotes, as it seems so stereotypical. Arguments in bad faith are often worded thus: to disagree, even disagree vehemently with a position never means that you have weighed an idea and found it wanting. Oh, no. It must mean that you are emotionally shut-off from such ideas, that your brain crimethoughts them away.





But let us take the professor at his word, and accept that "students are much more willing to write off something as 'liberal talk' -- oh, I don't need to think about that, that's just ideology -- as opposed to thinking, in a complex way, about all of the different ideas and evaluating them." From what I remember of college, 18-to-21-year-olds are like that (as are just about everyone older). At what point were Professor Schneider and his ilk ever "open" to old ideas? Did they ever truly think, in a complex way, about concepts like the Laffer Curve or the anthropic principle? Or did they dismiss them as "bourgeois talk" - mere Republicanism?





No accusation is easier to make than "hey, you do it, too," and that's really not my purpose. If the young conservatives are ideologically driven, if they take their marching orders according to a set of dogma and deviate not from them, then that's something a university should challenge. But I expect that most universities are ill-equipped to do so, because they have only their own dogmas to fall back on. Thinking in a complex way about ideas does not mean, or should not mean, fuzzy-mindedness, and openess to new ideas is not the same as dedication to them. Until the professors can demonstrate a real willingness to consider all ideas, their platitudes to that effect will be met with rolling eyes.