Universities need more free exchange of ideas, critic says

Issues of free speech and 'safe spaces' on college campuses have come to the forefront in the mainstream media in recent months, specifically at the University of Missouri and Yale.

While both of those schools experienced issues surrounding race, the other common tie is how responses to protests and rallies were met by students and advocates. In both situations, some students very publicly shouted down people with opposing points of view and demanded protection from a questioning media and individuals who didn't hold the same perspective as the gathered masses. 

The Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies will host a dialogue on the issue of a marketplace of ideas in higher education as they host Harvard English professor and The New Yorker columnist Louis Menand on December 10.

The situations raise the question of whether or not college campuses are in danger of losing one of their most important traits: as being places where a free exchange of ideas, regardless of conformity to one opinion or another, works to both challenge and educate students with diverse backgrounds and opinions.

Louis Menand: The Marketplace of Ideas

December 10, 2015, 7 p.m.

Pew Grand Rapids Campus, Loosemore Auditorium

RSVPs requested at hauensteincenter.org

Joe Hogan, program director of the Hauenstein Center's Common Ground Initiative, said Menand is an outspoken critic of academia, even though he teaches at one of the nation's highest-ranked universities, and will argue that universities today need to be centers for promotion of intelligent discussion.

"Menand will tell us why he thinks that some universities are doing students a disservice by constricting a free exchange of ideas under the guise of political correctness or avoiding offense," Hogan said. "Our aim for this program is to encourage discussion about how students will be better leaders for tomorrow by taking part in intelligent discussion of matters of opinion without immediately taking a simple disagreement as a personal affront."

Menand's address will also touch on why students need to learn to judge ideas based on relative merits without shouting down people who hold those opinions, and why they should learn to think and dialogue civilly with people with opposing points of view.

For more information, visit hauensteincenter.org.