thank you it was the fall of 1989 and I
just graduated from college in the Bay
Area and I found myself heading down to
Los Angeles to start a year-long public
policy fellowship even though I was a
stranger to LA I was brimming with
confidence and excitement I was about to
engage in a year-long series of debates
about public policy and public affairs a
few weeks into the fellowship I was
joking around with one of my colleagues
a progressive latina who’s known in the
area for her college activism I don’t
remember exactly what I said but I knew
I said something terribly boorish and
was relieved that she knew that I was
joking with her and we laughed out loud
about it and then all of a sudden she
got very serious and she said you know
Jonathan that’s not politically correct
I froze my tongue got tied I stumbled I
didn’t know what to say I trying to back
out of this very awkward situation and
then looked stunned as she leaned her
head back and laughed out loud at my
expense she is having a lot of fun at my
expense
well played at that moment I found
myself at the beginning of a great new
friendship and I missed some found
myself at the beginning of an education
about political correctness upon
reflection it’s just odd that I didn’t
know what she was talking about in fact
when I think about my own college
experiences my own political orientation
it just seemed strange that I might have
been missing something terribly obvious
it turns out I was you see I went to
Stanford University in the late 1980s
and before anybody gets too impressed by
that in fact if they would be impressed
I shared this image they said it
humanizes me I don’t know exactly what
was so special about me in a Mickey
Mouse poster but there it is in any
event in my freshman year I found myself
at Stanford in the late 1980s and this
was Stanford before the 5% had been
in fact I remember in the spring of my
freshman year when the Stanford daily
ran a headline about the incoming class
of freshmen and it announced for the
first time in Stanford’s history the
average rate had fallen below wait for
this 20% and while I sat there wondering
how in the heck did I get into Stanford
one thing wasn’t the mystery I knew that
I was at Stanford during a time when
there are roiling debates on campus
about the primacy of Western
civilization and culture I was part of a
generation of freshmen in particular who
were sorted it randomly into three
different tracks all focusing on some
sort of approach to studying Western
culture and civilization the most
traditional of these tracks was called
great books and great books focus on
familiar treatises of the Western canon
these seemingly timeless texts that
explored love and friendship politics
civics philosophy religion and you’re
familiar with some of these names
I wager Plato Socrates and some guy
named Saint Augustine had a few things
had to get off of his chest
now I was a true guinea pig I was in the
randomly sorted into a series called
conflict and change in Western culture
this was the radical approach to the
study of Western civilization I remember
on my first day of class the teacher
went to the front of the the lecture
hall went to the podium and offered a
broad overview of world religions and he
said that we shouldn’t be so quick to
dismiss as part of his lecture we
shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss those
religions that practice performed of
acts of cannibalism seems strange but
then he said think about it at the very
heart of Western civilization is a very
commonly accepted practice that in the
sacramental wine you’re drinking the
blood of Jesus Christ and in the wafer
consuming his body was completely hooked
I knew that I could calm at least I
would be eating three hours of lecturer
a week of these upside-down ways of
viewing the world and then I can call my
parents and get them completely stressed
out about the education I was receiving
at Stanford and I actually did this I’m
not joking around I did this and my
parents didn’t take the bait they
weren’t concerned at all about these
crazy ideas they mainly wanted to know
why are you calling home so often so it
goes my family in any event this little
glimpse into my freshman year is
important not because of my experience
is because it actually for what it says
about what happens when an institution
like Stanford took a serious look at the
presumptive value of Western
civilization Stanford the B Kollek
country club like campus known as the
farm found itself mocked for the role it
played in the culture wars raging across
college campuses and find herself
vilified for the role that was playing
contributing to the devaluation of
Western civilization and the
mis-education of a generation of
soft-headed pampered youth sound
familiar
now this freshman course that I took was
one in a series of dust-ups during my
Stanford career that taken together
asked really important questions about
values the what had value
who had value and what happened when the
very idea of asking questions about
value was raised in all of us I never
heard the phrase political correctness
but it’s quite clear to me that the kind
of energy and attention being paid to
these issues that we were doing the kind
of work that led to what would soon be
called political correctness and the
fact that is happening on a college
campus made complete sense
college campuses after all are and
should be dedicated to experimentation
just think about it new ideas are being
tried out every single day undergrads
are taking courses on topics they didn’t
know existed grad students are diving
deeper into the unknown with every
single day and faculty are pursuing
experiments in science and in the
archives and performance bases in
pedagogy that take them in to the
unknown as well universities are about
experimenting and finding new voices and
new ideas but of course they are also
charged with preserving very old ideas
and talking about what is valuable in
those ideas I mean think about it
National Archives government or posit
orys and universities are the three
entities if you will who are charged
with preserving our national patrimony
but how do you process this kind of
conflict an institution that is about
new ideas and preserving old ideas
adding a layer of complexity to all of
this is the fact that when I was in
college the demographic trend lines in
California became clear that within a
generation
a little less than a generation in fact
the state would become majority minority
and for those people who found this a
terrifying kind of idea they were pushed
over the edge when they realized that in
a generation
the states universities and college
campuses we’ve become majority minority
and since this minority did not have
white skin people were convinced that
they were looking at the death knell of
Western civilization and culture
now the anxieties in forming this logic
or this logic is deeply flawed because
Western civilization has never been
owned by one type of people or one hue
but since human beings since human
beings are deeply flawed we need to take
this anxiety seriously we need to look
at these debates about political
correctness and see in them what it says
about who we are today and what we will
become a few years after my slow
epiphany at Stanford I found myself at
Yale University for graduate school and
after that soon after that on the
faculty there and I looked at while I
looked at California always as a place
of deep anxiety for its commitment to
experimentation and disruptive thinking
it turns out that Yale was no stranger
to the same kinds of anxieties when new
ideas and new voices were being
articulated and these anxieties are
argue are the kinds of things are
wrapped up in claims on or about
political correctness one way to start
thinking about this is to talk about
this idea really a phenomenon at Yale
called the Yale way now when I first
heard this phrase uttered in a
university committee I actually almost
laughed out loud I was certain that the
person who said the phrase the Yale way
it is a real phrase was joking around
maybe being ironic now since I was new
to the university and definitely not
tenured at that point it’s a good thing
I was able to bite my tongue and not
laugh out loud he was being very serious
the Yale way as it turns out is a call
to tradition a call to preserving those
thing that had those things that have
made Yale great over such a long period
of time after a while on the faculty as
I climbed the rungs of the ladder and
then found myself in the administration
I came to
appreciate that one of the things that
made a deal great was its own reverence
for its past that it sawed off as a
keeper of the flame when it comes to
great traditions but then there was
something gnawing at me
and what was gnawing at me was the fact
that this refusal in a sense to open
oneself up to the latest new idea to new
ideas and new faces meant that Yale was
absolutely leaden footed it couldn’t
move when these new voices emerged and a
way to illuminate both aspects of the
Yale way the good and the bad of it is
to tell a story that shines light on how
we think about Education change over
time and the kind of political battles
of the culture wars that are made
manifest in political correctness about
four years ago when I was still at Yale
I was invited to give a guest lecture to
a class called directed studies known
locally as D s d s is a year-long
intensive course very much like a
traditional great books a year-long
examination of those great texts in
Western culture and civilization I was
invited to talk about the great African
American intellectual WTB Du Bois and
since I had just finished writing a new
introduction to his classic text the
souls of black folk I was ready to go
and was happy to be there at the end of
my lecture a young man raised his hand
right away and wanted to know what I
thought about a cannon that was
exclusive and that limonade it did not
engage racial minorities and didn’t
include women I found out at that moment
that this lecture the penultimate
lecture of the year on the souls of
black folk was the very first time in
DS’s 40-year history that a book by
black author was put on the syllabus I
also found out that the next week’s
reading which featured a woman author
was the first time that year that a
woman authored be featured the
penultimate and last weeks of the course
so the student asked the question what
did I think of a cannon that was racist
and sexist and my answer to him
surprised him said I supported the idea
of the cannon in fact every single book
they read was something I felt that
every Yale student should read however
there’s a big however I believe the
cannon should not be fixed in time the
importance for me of the cannon is that
a group of strangers coming from
radically different experiences and
background came together focusing on a
single text and engaged in thoughtful
probably passionate heated conversations
about the messages of that text its
values in its resonances and just as
populations change over time
just as the look of Yale changed over
time so should a cannon now when people
hear the idea that a cannon should be
opened up that the reading list should
change it sets people’s teeth on edge
and they begin to think look there’s an
example of political correctness run
amok I just don’t see it that way I see
it as an education in education should
be challenging and difficult and filled
with vibrant new ideas even at the same
time that it’s calling people to think
in careful ways about very old ideas and
to sort out where their particular set
of values are articulated that’s an
education now I want to move forward a
little bit and turn my closing attention
to an examination of how political
correctness is articulated these days on
debates about safe spaces on college
campuses and for many of you you’ll
already know that talking about safe
spaces means that I’m talking about I’m
talking about home and bringing the
lecture this this talk to close by
talking about Northwestern University in
August of 2016
the University of Chicago sent a letter
to its first-year students and in that
letter it said the University of Chicago
values free speech over anything else it
is sacred
and that therefore they do not disinvite
speakers no matter how controversial
they may be and they do not believe in
safe spaces immediately people all
around the country and headlines talked
about University of Chicago coming to
the rescue
of Western civilization protecting all
that is sacred especially free speech
during this very complicated era some of
these same people looked back in their
files and then criticized Northwestern
University President Morty Shapiro who
seven months earlier in a Washington
Post editorial had talked about the
importance of safe spaces and why
they’re needed on college campuses to
those critics morty shapiro was seen as
somebody there’s another embodiment of
that that that college administrator who
was coddling the next generation of
students who simply couldn’t handle the
challenges of a modern world they read
past the fact that in in Shapiro’s
editorial he actually talks about the
classrooms being a place that should be
unsafe where disquieting ideas are
worked out and wrestled over but he said
shouldn’t isn’t it reasonable then that
there should be some places on campus
that are safe because do we really have
to be in that hyper engaged way 24 hours
a day it’s not healthy shouldn’t there
be a place for those people especially
who get the messages consistently that
they do not belong at Northwestern for
any set of reasons that they can is find
a place that they consider home when
people talk about safe spaces is
important to understand they’re not
talking about
well when I’m talking about safe spaces
it’s important to understand that I’m
not talking about a place that is a
shelter to stay away from difficult
ideas to stay away from the modern world
in all of its complexities no quite the
opposite when I think about so many
students who are here at Northwestern
and the challenges they had to surmount
the hurdles they had to cross in order
to get here it makes sense to me that a
safe space might be warranted after all
these are students who people who are
accused of being snowflakes who can’t
handle the heat
who
for their entire lives have been
surrounded by messages that say they
don’t matter as much their voice doesn’t
need to be heard you don’t have to make
as much money as the next person
you really don’t need access to the
corporate suite the executive suite and
corporations and you know you would be
hireable but there’s this lingering
concern about fit I think it’s fair to
say that these students already have a
pretty good idea what the real world is
saying and is waiting for them out there
one more thing to say about safe spaces
they aren’t new they just are now called
safe spaces the names they were used
before and these have been they have
been at universities for as long as
universities been around the names that
were used before were the chapel the
faculty club the department meeting and
let’s face it the fraternity and
sorority chapter so given the fact that
safe spaces aren’t new why the anger why
the vitriol why people so upset why is
this a claim that advocating for safe
spaces is about protecting a generation
of people who simply can’t handle the
truth I put it to you that these debates
about safe spaces in our 21st century
world are driven by the same kinds of
anxieties that inform those debates
about the culture wars in the late 80s
and 90s and they are driven by an
anxiety about change and in both cases
there was a concern that the face of the
university was changing when the the
face embodied the students was changing
and they’re right it is changing with
each new iteration of a new class of
students at Northwestern northwestern is
becoming more racially diverse
geographically diverse and
socioeconomically divorced diverse this
is really good and I’m really proud to
be part of that commitment to a North
so we need to ask ourselves some really
important questions if we are coming to
Northwestern for an education are we
coming here to be comfortable to be safe
in our world or homogeneous worlds is
safe from the challenge of course not to
be come here so we can only look back at
Northwestern with perfect nostalgia
about a great and easy time of course
not
we’ve come to Northwestern because we
know at some level we’ve come to a place
where we’re going to be challenged where
our ideas are going to be confronted
with someone else’s convictions and
we’ve got to find a way to work through
that it’s really hard and that’s really
difficult but we need to get to that
place we need all of us need to
participate in the hard work of looking
at the code words we use in society and
recognizing what’s really going on
behind the scenes when you look at the
code words that we use and find a way to
resist the temptation to use them we
need to open up our minds to the world
that is around us now I’m not saying we
need to change our minds we simply need
to open our ears open our minds so that
we can listen to what someone else has
to say because it may happen we may
learn something from them or it may
happen that by listening to these other
ideas we are more convicts vent of our
own idea in its correction and that fact
that it’s correct in the first place
that’s okay too
the fact is in education is really
difficult it’s really challenging it’s
deeply uncomfortable
it’s disquieting sometimes it’s
dangerous and it’s always unwieldy and
thank goodness for that thank you [Applause]
just graduated from college in the Bay
Area and I found myself heading down to
Los Angeles to start a year-long public
policy fellowship even though I was a
stranger to LA I was brimming with
confidence and excitement I was about to
engage in a year-long series of debates
about public policy and public affairs a
few weeks into the fellowship I was
joking around with one of my colleagues
a progressive latina who’s known in the
area for her college activism I don’t
remember exactly what I said but I knew
I said something terribly boorish and
was relieved that she knew that I was
joking with her and we laughed out loud
about it and then all of a sudden she
got very serious and she said you know
Jonathan that’s not politically correct
I froze my tongue got tied I stumbled I
didn’t know what to say I trying to back
out of this very awkward situation and
then looked stunned as she leaned her
head back and laughed out loud at my
expense she is having a lot of fun at my
expense
well played at that moment I found
myself at the beginning of a great new
friendship and I missed some found
myself at the beginning of an education
about political correctness upon
reflection it’s just odd that I didn’t
know what she was talking about in fact
when I think about my own college
experiences my own political orientation
it just seemed strange that I might have
been missing something terribly obvious
it turns out I was you see I went to
Stanford University in the late 1980s
and before anybody gets too impressed by
that in fact if they would be impressed
I shared this image they said it
humanizes me I don’t know exactly what
was so special about me in a Mickey
Mouse poster but there it is in any
event in my freshman year I found myself
at Stanford in the late 1980s and this
was Stanford before the 5% had been
in fact I remember in the spring of my
freshman year when the Stanford daily
ran a headline about the incoming class
of freshmen and it announced for the
first time in Stanford’s history the
average rate had fallen below wait for
this 20% and while I sat there wondering
how in the heck did I get into Stanford
one thing wasn’t the mystery I knew that
I was at Stanford during a time when
there are roiling debates on campus
about the primacy of Western
civilization and culture I was part of a
generation of freshmen in particular who
were sorted it randomly into three
different tracks all focusing on some
sort of approach to studying Western
culture and civilization the most
traditional of these tracks was called
great books and great books focus on
familiar treatises of the Western canon
these seemingly timeless texts that
explored love and friendship politics
civics philosophy religion and you’re
familiar with some of these names
I wager Plato Socrates and some guy
named Saint Augustine had a few things
had to get off of his chest
now I was a true guinea pig I was in the
randomly sorted into a series called
conflict and change in Western culture
this was the radical approach to the
study of Western civilization I remember
on my first day of class the teacher
went to the front of the the lecture
hall went to the podium and offered a
broad overview of world religions and he
said that we shouldn’t be so quick to
dismiss as part of his lecture we
shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss those
religions that practice performed of
acts of cannibalism seems strange but
then he said think about it at the very
heart of Western civilization is a very
commonly accepted practice that in the
sacramental wine you’re drinking the
blood of Jesus Christ and in the wafer
consuming his body was completely hooked
I knew that I could calm at least I
would be eating three hours of lecturer
a week of these upside-down ways of
viewing the world and then I can call my
parents and get them completely stressed
out about the education I was receiving
at Stanford and I actually did this I’m
not joking around I did this and my
parents didn’t take the bait they
weren’t concerned at all about these
crazy ideas they mainly wanted to know
why are you calling home so often so it
goes my family in any event this little
glimpse into my freshman year is
important not because of my experience
is because it actually for what it says
about what happens when an institution
like Stanford took a serious look at the
presumptive value of Western
civilization Stanford the B Kollek
country club like campus known as the
farm found itself mocked for the role it
played in the culture wars raging across
college campuses and find herself
vilified for the role that was playing
contributing to the devaluation of
Western civilization and the
mis-education of a generation of
soft-headed pampered youth sound
familiar
now this freshman course that I took was
one in a series of dust-ups during my
Stanford career that taken together
asked really important questions about
values the what had value
who had value and what happened when the
very idea of asking questions about
value was raised in all of us I never
heard the phrase political correctness
but it’s quite clear to me that the kind
of energy and attention being paid to
these issues that we were doing the kind
of work that led to what would soon be
called political correctness and the
fact that is happening on a college
campus made complete sense
college campuses after all are and
should be dedicated to experimentation
just think about it new ideas are being
tried out every single day undergrads
are taking courses on topics they didn’t
know existed grad students are diving
deeper into the unknown with every
single day and faculty are pursuing
experiments in science and in the
archives and performance bases in
pedagogy that take them in to the
unknown as well universities are about
experimenting and finding new voices and
new ideas but of course they are also
charged with preserving very old ideas
and talking about what is valuable in
those ideas I mean think about it
National Archives government or posit
orys and universities are the three
entities if you will who are charged
with preserving our national patrimony
but how do you process this kind of
conflict an institution that is about
new ideas and preserving old ideas
adding a layer of complexity to all of
this is the fact that when I was in
college the demographic trend lines in
California became clear that within a
generation
a little less than a generation in fact
the state would become majority minority
and for those people who found this a
terrifying kind of idea they were pushed
over the edge when they realized that in
a generation
the states universities and college
campuses we’ve become majority minority
and since this minority did not have
white skin people were convinced that
they were looking at the death knell of
Western civilization and culture
now the anxieties in forming this logic
or this logic is deeply flawed because
Western civilization has never been
owned by one type of people or one hue
but since human beings since human
beings are deeply flawed we need to take
this anxiety seriously we need to look
at these debates about political
correctness and see in them what it says
about who we are today and what we will
become a few years after my slow
epiphany at Stanford I found myself at
Yale University for graduate school and
after that soon after that on the
faculty there and I looked at while I
looked at California always as a place
of deep anxiety for its commitment to
experimentation and disruptive thinking
it turns out that Yale was no stranger
to the same kinds of anxieties when new
ideas and new voices were being
articulated and these anxieties are
argue are the kinds of things are
wrapped up in claims on or about
political correctness one way to start
thinking about this is to talk about
this idea really a phenomenon at Yale
called the Yale way now when I first
heard this phrase uttered in a
university committee I actually almost
laughed out loud I was certain that the
person who said the phrase the Yale way
it is a real phrase was joking around
maybe being ironic now since I was new
to the university and definitely not
tenured at that point it’s a good thing
I was able to bite my tongue and not
laugh out loud he was being very serious
the Yale way as it turns out is a call
to tradition a call to preserving those
thing that had those things that have
made Yale great over such a long period
of time after a while on the faculty as
I climbed the rungs of the ladder and
then found myself in the administration
I came to
appreciate that one of the things that
made a deal great was its own reverence
for its past that it sawed off as a
keeper of the flame when it comes to
great traditions but then there was
something gnawing at me
and what was gnawing at me was the fact
that this refusal in a sense to open
oneself up to the latest new idea to new
ideas and new faces meant that Yale was
absolutely leaden footed it couldn’t
move when these new voices emerged and a
way to illuminate both aspects of the
Yale way the good and the bad of it is
to tell a story that shines light on how
we think about Education change over
time and the kind of political battles
of the culture wars that are made
manifest in political correctness about
four years ago when I was still at Yale
I was invited to give a guest lecture to
a class called directed studies known
locally as D s d s is a year-long
intensive course very much like a
traditional great books a year-long
examination of those great texts in
Western culture and civilization I was
invited to talk about the great African
American intellectual WTB Du Bois and
since I had just finished writing a new
introduction to his classic text the
souls of black folk I was ready to go
and was happy to be there at the end of
my lecture a young man raised his hand
right away and wanted to know what I
thought about a cannon that was
exclusive and that limonade it did not
engage racial minorities and didn’t
include women I found out at that moment
that this lecture the penultimate
lecture of the year on the souls of
black folk was the very first time in
DS’s 40-year history that a book by
black author was put on the syllabus I
also found out that the next week’s
reading which featured a woman author
was the first time that year that a
woman authored be featured the
penultimate and last weeks of the course
so the student asked the question what
did I think of a cannon that was racist
and sexist and my answer to him
surprised him said I supported the idea
of the cannon in fact every single book
they read was something I felt that
every Yale student should read however
there’s a big however I believe the
cannon should not be fixed in time the
importance for me of the cannon is that
a group of strangers coming from
radically different experiences and
background came together focusing on a
single text and engaged in thoughtful
probably passionate heated conversations
about the messages of that text its
values in its resonances and just as
populations change over time
just as the look of Yale changed over
time so should a cannon now when people
hear the idea that a cannon should be
opened up that the reading list should
change it sets people’s teeth on edge
and they begin to think look there’s an
example of political correctness run
amok I just don’t see it that way I see
it as an education in education should
be challenging and difficult and filled
with vibrant new ideas even at the same
time that it’s calling people to think
in careful ways about very old ideas and
to sort out where their particular set
of values are articulated that’s an
education now I want to move forward a
little bit and turn my closing attention
to an examination of how political
correctness is articulated these days on
debates about safe spaces on college
campuses and for many of you you’ll
already know that talking about safe
spaces means that I’m talking about I’m
talking about home and bringing the
lecture this this talk to close by
talking about Northwestern University in
August of 2016
the University of Chicago sent a letter
to its first-year students and in that
letter it said the University of Chicago
values free speech over anything else it
is sacred
and that therefore they do not disinvite
speakers no matter how controversial
they may be and they do not believe in
safe spaces immediately people all
around the country and headlines talked
about University of Chicago coming to
the rescue
of Western civilization protecting all
that is sacred especially free speech
during this very complicated era some of
these same people looked back in their
files and then criticized Northwestern
University President Morty Shapiro who
seven months earlier in a Washington
Post editorial had talked about the
importance of safe spaces and why
they’re needed on college campuses to
those critics morty shapiro was seen as
somebody there’s another embodiment of
that that that college administrator who
was coddling the next generation of
students who simply couldn’t handle the
challenges of a modern world they read
past the fact that in in Shapiro’s
editorial he actually talks about the
classrooms being a place that should be
unsafe where disquieting ideas are
worked out and wrestled over but he said
shouldn’t isn’t it reasonable then that
there should be some places on campus
that are safe because do we really have
to be in that hyper engaged way 24 hours
a day it’s not healthy shouldn’t there
be a place for those people especially
who get the messages consistently that
they do not belong at Northwestern for
any set of reasons that they can is find
a place that they consider home when
people talk about safe spaces is
important to understand they’re not
talking about
well when I’m talking about safe spaces
it’s important to understand that I’m
not talking about a place that is a
shelter to stay away from difficult
ideas to stay away from the modern world
in all of its complexities no quite the
opposite when I think about so many
students who are here at Northwestern
and the challenges they had to surmount
the hurdles they had to cross in order
to get here it makes sense to me that a
safe space might be warranted after all
these are students who people who are
accused of being snowflakes who can’t
handle the heat
who
for their entire lives have been
surrounded by messages that say they
don’t matter as much their voice doesn’t
need to be heard you don’t have to make
as much money as the next person
you really don’t need access to the
corporate suite the executive suite and
corporations and you know you would be
hireable but there’s this lingering
concern about fit I think it’s fair to
say that these students already have a
pretty good idea what the real world is
saying and is waiting for them out there
one more thing to say about safe spaces
they aren’t new they just are now called
safe spaces the names they were used
before and these have been they have
been at universities for as long as
universities been around the names that
were used before were the chapel the
faculty club the department meeting and
let’s face it the fraternity and
sorority chapter so given the fact that
safe spaces aren’t new why the anger why
the vitriol why people so upset why is
this a claim that advocating for safe
spaces is about protecting a generation
of people who simply can’t handle the
truth I put it to you that these debates
about safe spaces in our 21st century
world are driven by the same kinds of
anxieties that inform those debates
about the culture wars in the late 80s
and 90s and they are driven by an
anxiety about change and in both cases
there was a concern that the face of the
university was changing when the the
face embodied the students was changing
and they’re right it is changing with
each new iteration of a new class of
students at Northwestern northwestern is
becoming more racially diverse
geographically diverse and
socioeconomically divorced diverse this
is really good and I’m really proud to
be part of that commitment to a North
so we need to ask ourselves some really
important questions if we are coming to
Northwestern for an education are we
coming here to be comfortable to be safe
in our world or homogeneous worlds is
safe from the challenge of course not to
be come here so we can only look back at
Northwestern with perfect nostalgia
about a great and easy time of course
not
we’ve come to Northwestern because we
know at some level we’ve come to a place
where we’re going to be challenged where
our ideas are going to be confronted
with someone else’s convictions and
we’ve got to find a way to work through
that it’s really hard and that’s really
difficult but we need to get to that
place we need all of us need to
participate in the hard work of looking
at the code words we use in society and
recognizing what’s really going on
behind the scenes when you look at the
code words that we use and find a way to
resist the temptation to use them we
need to open up our minds to the world
that is around us now I’m not saying we
need to change our minds we simply need
to open our ears open our minds so that
we can listen to what someone else has
to say because it may happen we may
learn something from them or it may
happen that by listening to these other
ideas we are more convicts vent of our
own idea in its correction and that fact
that it’s correct in the first place
that’s okay too
the fact is in education is really
difficult it’s really challenging it’s
deeply uncomfortable
it’s disquieting sometimes it’s
dangerous and it’s always unwieldy and
thank goodness for that thank you [Applause]
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