Ever since 9/11, I’ve noticed that national or international issues that would be best handled by having formal debates so that everyone could hear the other side’s arguments are completely absent from college life these days. Maybe this is just true at my wife’s college, but from what I’ve gathered, it seems to be true elsewhere as well. The unstated idea seems to be that everyone who is sane, decent, and rational agrees with the progressives, so why have a debate?
Right now there is a little email war going on at my wife’s college about the Israelis and the Gazans. It started, naturally, with the progressives weighing in, though now a lone conservative has weighed in on the other side. But instead of having debates, discussion of these issues is mostly left to an email war or at best to a panel discussion in which the underlying idea is that colleges have experts so let’s give them a chance to talk. The possibility that the experts might not agree is beyond the realm of their understanding.
Right now there is a little email war going on at my wife’s college about the Israelis and the Gazans. It started, naturally, with the progressives weighing in, though now a lone conservative has weighed in on the other side. But instead of having debates, discussion of these issues is mostly left to an email war or at best to a panel discussion in which the underlying idea is that colleges have experts so let’s give them a chance to talk. The possibility that the experts might not agree is beyond the realm of their understanding.
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