Friday, August 16, 2019

Sounds like a good idea …

… Restoring a Great Intellectual Tradition to America’s Campuses — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.

College campuses are a natural venue for debates over the full range of political, economic, and philosophical issues that face us. Colleges have (or at least should have) a commitment to inquiry and the free exchange of ideas. And seeing how adults who have prepared for the intellectual combat of debate handle themselves is an important aspect of the preparation for citizenship that’s part of higher education’s mission.
Unfortunately, debate has largely disappeared on most campuses. That is the finding of political science professor George La Noue in his book Silenced Stages: The Loss of Academic Freedom and Campus Policy Debates. Based on his study of 97 colleges and 28 law schools during the 2014-2015 academic year, La Noue concludes, “For most students in American higher education, the opportunity to hear on-campus debates about important public policy issues does not exist.”
I wrote a piece about the accuracy of The DaVinci Code because I was asked to by my boss at the time, who had been to dinner over the weekend attended mostly by Ph. D’s (husbands and wives) who thought its historical as wondrous. It isn’t. Makes you wonder.

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