John Tomasi
Deseret News
A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education describes the current trend on college campuses of starting “civil dialogue” programs. These programs are designed to help students engage with diverse ideas in more constructive ways. This effort is commendable but the question is: Will these programs work?
Even as campuses embrace civil dialogue, there is a danger that some university leaders are quietly redefining “open inquiry.” And they are doing so in a way that makes campus dialogue more narrow and less intellectually demanding than it ought to be.
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Violating the First Amendment will cost you. Universities and other public institutions are learning this lesson the hard way as the dust settles on a series of lawsuits brought by university faculty and staff who were punished for their comments about Charlie Kirk’s murder last September.
If Johns Hopkins University wanted to signal its seriousness about creating an alternative to the left-leaning orthodoxy that permeates higher education, it couldn’t have done better than the recent hire of economist Peter Arcidiacono.
House Republicans have now formally backed President Donald Trump in fulfilling his campaign promise to dismantle the Department of Education, voting Wednesday to advance 10 bills that would codify the White House’s efforts to disperse numerous education programs and offices to other federal agencies.