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John Rose, associate director of the Arete Initiative at Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, joined us on our latest podcast to discuss his recent Wall Street Journal column about how he nurtures true civil discourse in his classroom and what he has learned from the experience. While helping to coordinate Arete’s programming, Rose teaches courses in happiness and human flourishing, Christian ethics, conservatism, and political polarization. He was interviewed by Lawrence Haas, a board member of Princetonians for Free Speech.
Rose revealed that he learned – from speaking with students privately in one-on-one settings – that many of them wanted to engage in honest debate, to explore all sides of complicated issues, but were afraid to do so. When he surveyed 110 students anonymously this spring, 68 percent of them revealed that they censor themselves on certain political topics, even with good friends. Nevertheless, Rose found a way to nurture honest debate in his classroom. After establishing rules that, among other things, allowed for the airing of differing opinions and assumed good will on all sides, he watched his students “flourish,” as he put it. They discussed such hot-button issues as critical race theory and abortion. But, as he acknowledges, whether other teachers, at Duke and on other campuses, try to follow his lead remains very much an open question.
Luke Grippo and Irene Kim
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: An hour after the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meeting on Monday, March 24, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 addressed the Princeton town community to address the state of higher education, the University endowment, and ways to maintain collaboration between the town and the University.
The Princeton Town Hall Meeting is an event held annually by members of the Princeton Council in collaboration with Eisgruber, with the goal of facilitating open communication between the University and the town.
Isaac Barsoum
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: At a time when autocracy is rising nationwide, Princeton should respond with democracy here. For too long, the disciplinary and policy-making procedures at Princeton have been opaque and anti-democratic. We ought to move toward the democratization of internal processes, thereby affirming the importance of disciplinary due process and true community input in policy formation.
Cynthia Torres
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: At the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meeting on Monday, Eisgruber was confronted with queries on the Trump administration and University governance from several students who had skirted the committee’s rules on submitting questions on advance.
The first question came from Vasanth Visweswaran ’28, who asked Eisgruber how he could use his position as chair of the Association of American Universities (AAU) to “defend all members of the University community from the recent Trump administration attacks on free speech, funding cuts and threats for deportations.”
