Scholar says free exchange of ideas critical to university mission

Grand Valley's Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies will host a scholar whose expertise in academic freedom and the enlightenment will explore why a free and open exchange of ideas is critical to modern higher education, especially when these university values are challenged.

Alan Charles Kors will present "The Enlightenment and Academic Freedom" March 16 at 7 p.m. in Loosemore Auditorium on Grand Valley's Pew Grand Rapids Campus, 401 W. Fulton St., Grand Rapids.

He will argue that college campuses have become more concerned with the needs and wants of students to be protected from contrary opinions than with maintaining their unique and important position in American cultural life, where any opinion, no matter how contrary to others it may be, can be discussed and freely debated.

"Kors' view is that the idea of the university is based on free expression and open debate, that those are the ways that students can and should pursue truth," said Joe Hogan, program manager for the Hauenstein Center's Common Ground Initiative. "He'll argue that academic freedom and debate are of the utmost importance on college campuses, and that they are the true means by which we achieve social justice and find common ground with others."

Kors is an acclaimed intellectual historian and the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, and was the 2005 recipient of the National Humanities Medal.

For more information, visit hauensteincenter.org.