Always Thinking? Hardly.
Written for Campus Magazine Online
A university campus prides itself on being a sanctuary for the “free exchange of ideas”, and ideally a university should live up to this. Sadly it does not. At the University of Illinois I have encountered little of this free exchange. What I do encounter are entrenched ideologies moving to annihilate all opposition. So much so that hardly any real debate takes place on campus anymore. Or for that matter, any real thought.
That’s not to say there aren’t panel discussions on the issues of the day. It’s just that those panels all present the same position. For instance, a gay marriage panel discussion that took place a few years ago consisted of three people in support of gay marriage and one person married to his gay lover. That isn’t discussion, that’s a political rally. Almost all panel discussions or talks set up by the University present only one side of any issue.
The other nail in the coffin of free exchange on campus is the complete inability of most people, including undergraduates, to engage in an intelligent debate with someone they disagree with. Being the token conservative for the campus mainstream paper, I generate more letters to the editor than any other columnist. I also generate the most letters to the editor that cannot be published.
When most students are presented with an opinion that disagrees with theirs, they assume that their opponent has some sort of intellectual deficiency. For instance, someone posted some message about how great Sen. Obama is to a mailing list populated with law students. I rather passively dissented in the form of asking five questions. Not one person responded without making a personal attack. Not one. All of these kids are going to be lawyers one day; you’d hope they’d know how to argue.
The fault in this matter lies directly with instructors, particularly in the liberal arts. They present information based on unmentioned and underlying philosophical presuppositions. The students accept these presuppositions unknowingly. When faced with someone who holds different underlying presuppositions or who has a disagreement with those presuppositions, they simply have no idea how to respond. They don’t believe there is any other way to think.
Professors, for their part, don’t generally react with personal attacks when presented with ideas they disagree with (at least when a student presents them). They simply react with sneering paternalism and then utterly fail to address the actual points presented. As such, there are no examples of intelligent debate on campus at all.
The College Republicans, for their part, aren’t much better. After having been on the business end of thought-blocking pettiness they, like much of the “right,” have decided to return the favor. No one debates points anymore because no one wants to debate points anymore. The result is all that’s left… the blow-by-bloody-blow of partisanship.
The University of Illinois’ motto is “Always Thinking”. Unfortunately, the University has sold its birthright of free exchange for doctrinarism. It’s long past time to try and buy that birthright back.
