The University of Chicago welcomed its class of 2020 with a warning.
Students may face discomfort with the “rigorous debate, discussion, and even disagreement” fostered by the school’s devotion to freedom of inquiry and expression. Diversity of opinion and background, the school wrote, is a “fundamental strength of our community.”
Around the country schools like the University of Chicago face increasing pressure to adopt “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” which protect students from encountering offensive views. In virtually all, these policies favor progressive classes and guests at the cost of conservative ones.
Hillsdale College has the advantage of being known as a bastion of conservatism. With conservative political class offerings and a belief in honest and unflinching discourse, Hillsdale College attracts students prepared to encounter a conservative point of view.
Unlike schools where conservative speakers have been cancelled or booed off the stage, Hillsdale hosts conservative favorites like Mollie Hemingway, Jonah Goldberg, James Rosen, and Victor Davis Hanson, not to mention the celebrated Justice Clarence Thomas.
While conservatives condemn policies that restrict the marketplace of ideas in other schools, our own school may be guilty of a similar offense.
It’s time Hillsdale invited a progressive to campus.
The First Amendment codified freedom of expression by prohibiting laws that abridge freedom of speech, or of the press.
The First Continental Congress wrote that the purpose of freedom of the press was to humble oppressors and direct everyone toward truth, science, morality, and unity.
Diversity of thought within an academic setting achieves the same ends as freedom of the press in America.. When students are exposed to thoughtful ideas other than their own, they are forced to exercise their reason in order to evaluate which of the arguments is best.
While Hillsdale does offer a number of classes on progressivism, liberalism, and contemporary political thought, none of these classes are taught by anyone who earnestly believes in the validity of those ideas. If truth is truly to rise to the forefront, it should be given the chance to defend itself against the best arguments and earnest opinions of the other side.
President Barack Obama reflected on diversity of thought in academics during a 2015 town hall in Des Moines Iowa. He said:
“…it was because there was this space where you could interact with people who didn’t agree with you and had different backgrounds that I then started testing my own assumptions. And sometimes I changed my mind. Sometimes I realized, maybe I’ve been too narrow-minded. Maybe I didn’t take this into account. Maybe I should see this person’s perspective.”
In 1644 John Milton published the Aeropagitica, a speech to Parliament advocating for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. The Aeropagitica opposed government censorship arguing that truth and falsehood should be allowed to challenge one another in an open forum because all else being equal, Truth will always triumph.
Approximately 275 years later, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes drew upon the same principle during his dissent in the landmark freedom of speech case Abrams v. United States. Holmes wrote, “…the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market…”
Conservatives should not hesitate to grapple with the best progressive minds on their campuses. If conservatism is correct, its arguments will prevail in the battle of ideas.
Hillsdale College can become a standard-bearer for academic freedom of inquiry and expression, just like the University of Chicago has. Expanding the diversity of ideas on Hillsdale’s campus by hosting a progressive guest would teach students to better defend their own beliefs and it would promote their understanding of Truth.
Mork is a senior studying politics and journalism
