ANALYSIS: Professor, conservative students say open discourse is lacking on college campuses
Conservative college students expressed frustration about a lack of open discourse on controversial issues with their leftist peers when interviewed during the Republican National Convention, according to a recent report.
Several students told The Hechinger Report they struggle to find opportunities for “productive conversations with people who have different beliefs” on their campuses.
“I never have productive conversations with anybody. It’s hard to even have a Republican organization on our campus because we’re so silenced,” Alexandra Leung, a student at Saint Louis University, said.
Grace College student Aaron Carlson said other students’ unwillingness to discuss difficult issues surprised him at first.
“College was an eye-opener for me, having students who have different ideas but aren’t willing to be challenged on those ideas,” Carlson told The Hechinger Report.
Christopher Phillips, a student at the University of Chicago, said he has had some productive conversations with liberal peers, but more open discourse is needed.
“… we have a lot of shared principles, a lot of shared perspectives on things that have been happening in the 2020s. Things like corporate power, mainstream media censorship and the consolidation of media narratives,” Phillips told The Hechinger Report. “… People who are actually engaged in the political process on the left are more likely to subscribe to open discourse.”
Their concerns were echoed by the recent observations of Princeton University Professor Lauren Wright, who is conducting research on conservative college students.
“It’s too icky,” one pro-Palestinian socialist student told Wright when asked to talk about pro-Israel arguments, she wrote recently at The Atlantic.
She pointed to national surveys that show “conservative students are more open to speakers of any ideological bent than are liberal students.”
In her own research, Wright wrote:
Nearly all of the conservatives said that they’ve been challenged by professors or other students in classroom discussions, but just two of the liberals said the same. …
These divergent experiences produce a striking asymmetry in preparedness for policy discussions on many topics: abortion, affirmative action, environmental policy, economics, Israel-Palestine. Conservative students tend to know both sides of the issues cold. For example, though they are typically pro-Israel, I’ve found that they can easily cite critiques of the country’s strategy. “Israel’s military actions make it logistically tougher to get the hostages out,” one conservative student said. “Israel’s actions in Gaza breed more bad will toward Israel in the long run,” said another.
The pro-Palestine students I interviewed, by contrast, couldn’t describe pro-Israel arguments. They often didn’t even want to engage.
In Wright’s view, the liberal professors and administrators who fail to encourage critical thinking and diversity of thought are doing a disservice to the students who share their views. Meanwhile, she said conservative college students are “emerg[ing] more resilient.”
Conservative students told The Hechinger Report a big part of the problem is professors who advocate for their personal political views and teach students what to think instead of how to think.
“[It] contributes to narrow-mindedness,” Carlson said.
Phillips commented: “It’s OK for [professors] to share their political beliefs, but they better make darn well sure they’re giving students from all points of the spectrum equal opportunity to pursue intellectual curiosities.”
MORE: Legal group accuses pro-Palestinian professors of ‘compelling student speech’ with assignments
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