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Last week, the Republican National Convention added a plank to its party platform calling on state officials and trustees to police political indoctrination on the campuses and classrooms of public universities:
"We call on State officials to ensure that our public colleges and universities be places of learning and the exchange of ideas, not zones of intellectual intolerance favoring the Left."
"We call on State officials to ensure that our public colleges and universities be places of learning and the exchange of ideas, not zones of intellectual intolerance favoring the Left."
I won't weigh in on this challenge to our colleges and universities, but it does make me reflect on what a diverse and intellectually stimulating program we are blessed to have at the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville.
Our students come from every possible political perspective and they insure lively discussions and debates. They take university courses in every imaginable topic and from teachers they choose. Our students bring to the Center a diverse religious perspective–ranging from Southern Baptist to Islam to agnosticism. Our associated faculty have varying perspectives on contemporary issues and come from different academic disciplines across the social sciences and humanities; they come with backgrounds in comparative government, international relations, Kentucky history, the evolution of the constitutional order, the Supreme Court, James Fenimore Cooper and Shakespeare, to list a few.
The start to our 2012-2013 academic year demonstrates that great diversity of traditions, thoughts and perspectives. Our August retreat in western Kentucky focused on the life and legacy of Alben Barkley, a progressive Democrat U.S. Senator who became Vice President of the United States under Harry S. Truman. At that same retreat we met with the current Republican Leader of the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell, and enjoyed all of the speeches at the Fancy Farm political picnic. Two weeks ago we added the Scottish fairy tale writer George MacDonald to the mix in a terrific session on imagination and the lessons that can be found in story. Last Monday we hosted a session on F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and heard from one of the nation's foremost economic historians, Brian Domitrovic, who discussed the gold standard with us almost at the very moment the Republican Party was adding a plank to their platform calling for a gold standard commission to consider the issue. It's already been a wonderfully stimulating semester and we are just a couple of weeks in.
This year we are hosting a series of events we are calling "reTHINK." For these sessions we have asked a variety of faculty to lead discussions and offer lectures to help us "rethink" major issues and events in our politics and American history. In that series we will hit diverse political and academic perspectives, ranging from feminism to libertarianism and from progressive to conservative. What we want from them all is what we got so strongly from Professor Domitrovic's defense of the gold standard last Monday night–not conversion but thought, not indoctrination but exploration. I know his lecture has sent me back to my economic texts and the same has happened with numerous students. One McConnell Scholar told me after the lecture that he had never been so intellectually challenged as he was that night. Another spent the evening studying the counter argument so he could challenge Domitrovic the next morning in the seminar. That's exactly what we try to accomplish at the McConnell Center.
Still to come this fall we will host programs focusing on the Native American perspective on American history, a reconsideration of the Cold War, a challenge to "American Exceptionalism," a reconsideration of the meaning of gender and a preparatory session on upcoming cases before the Supreme Court. In the spring we have programs on tap dealing with everything from Buddhism to Adam Smith and from local food movements to novelist David Foster Wallace. Add it all to the classes the students will choose to take on their own this year, and you have the beginnings of a world-class and life-long education.
Regardless of the challenges made against colleges and universities today, its clear that the McConnell Center continues to model the best type of education–allowing students exposure to a variety of ideas and personalities so they can think (and reTHINK) for themselves.