The Open Forum

It's kind of ironic. Our nations' students go from public schools
where speech is very much limited. No prayer in schools and
strict dress codes pervade high schools. From this innocuous
educational environment they get thrown into the fire. The
fire I will argue is our nation's colleges. There free speech runs
wild. People like this are allowed to speak at one of our nation's
universities that previously banned the ROTC from their campus
(well, I guess it is somewhat limited) and this guy was allowed to
teach at another institution of higher education for many years.
But wait a minute a former Secretary of Defense gets opposition at
Stanford. A quote from article:

The unofficial platform of the faculty opposition, an email sent by
English Prof. Robert Polhemus entitled “Ten reasons why the
appointment of Donald Rumsfeld to the Hoover Institution at
Stanford as a Senior Fellow is sad, ridiculous and contemptible,”
has widely circulated and garnered more than 40 responses from
like-minded faculty overnight, Polhemus said.

Some colleges appear to have it backwards on who should allowed to
speak and who shouldn't at their campus. Check this video:



It's no surprise that studies find that "72 percent of those teaching
at American universities and colleges are liberal." College is a time
to be inundated with new ideas. Well, perhaps, the idea the America
is a noble country and conservatives might have some valid points is
a bit too much for some professors. Book closed on that one. Isn't tolerance
a running theme throughout those English, history, political science, and
philosophy textbooks? How about tolerating people with conservative
view points?

College should be a place where students and their instructors should
be able throw around new ideas and information. The best part of the
learning process for me was getting to bouncing of thoughts of people
specializing in the same subject matter as me and having my opinions
scrutinized. However, isn't counterproductive the people doing the
instructing are like-minded. Is academia really an open forum?