Nicholas Krisof speaks with temperance about free speech and community

by Mr. Sheehy

This is sensitivity but also intolerance, and it is disproportionately an instinct on the left.

I’m a pro-choice liberal who has been invited to infect evangelical Christian universities with progressive thoughts, and to address Catholic universities where I’ve praised condoms and birth control programs. I’m sure I discomfited many students on these conservative campuses, but it’s a tribute to them that they were willing to be challenged. In the same spirit, liberal universities should seek out pro-life social conservatives to speak.

More broadly, academia — especially the social sciences — undermines itself by a tilt to the left. We should cherish all kinds of diversity, including the presence of conservatives to infuriate us liberals and make us uncomfortable. Education is about stretching muscles, and that’s painful in the gym and in the lecture hall.

– Nicholas Kristof, for the New York Times, speaking tempered words about an important subject. Talk like Kristoff’s is the kind we’d use around the dinner table to discuss these issues; too often what we read and hear are comments and angles no one would utter around a congenial table over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine.