![]() But the road to progress comes from winning the public debate - and if you want to win an argument, you have to allow the argument. This column will appall many of my regular readers, and I recognize that all of this is easy for me to say as a straight white man. ![]() We progressives should have the intellectual curiosity to grapple with disagreeable views. Liberals sometimes howl when this newspaper brings in a conservative columnist or publishes a sharply conservative Op-Ed. Debate him - that’s how to win the argument - rather than trying to squelch him. But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close.”įor those of us who believe that liberalism should model inclusivity and tolerance, even in intolerant times, even to the exclusive and the intolerant, it was disappointing to see Cambridge University this year rescind a fellowship for Jordan Peterson, the Canadian best-selling author who says he will not use people’s preferred pronouns. George Yancey, a black evangelical who is a sociology professor, once told me: “Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black. Too often, we liberals embrace people who don’t look like us, but only if they think like us. Yet while I admire campus activism for its commitment to social justice, I also worry that it sometimes becomes infused with a prickly intolerance, embracing every kind of diversity except one: ideological diversity. Don’t tell my daughter, but she has a point: The well-being of sexual assault victims is clearly a value to embrace, even as we weigh it against the right of a law professor to take on a despised client. It’s a difficult balance, requiring intellectual humility. The rise of President Trump has amplified this generational clash and raised the fundamental question of how to live liberal values in an illiberal age. ![]() Progressives of my era often revere the adage misattributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” For young progressives, the priority is more about standing up to perceived racism, misogyny, Islamophobia and bigotry. Our football face-off reflects a broader generation gap in America. As she saw it, any professor is welcome to represent any felon, but not while caring for undergraduates: How can a house leader support students traumatized by sexual assault when he is also defending someone accused of rape? To my daughter, of course a house dean should not defend a notorious alleged rapist. Of course no professor should be penalized for accepting an unpopular client. To me, as a progressive baby boomer, this was a violation of hard-won liberal values, a troubling example of a university monoculture nurturing liberal intolerance. He had been pushed out of his secondary job as head of Harvard College’s Winthrop House after he helped give Harvey Weinstein, accused of sexual assault, the legal representation every defendant is entitled to. We were discussing a Harvard law professor, Ronald Sullivan. My daughter and I were tossing a football back and forth while also flinging around arguments about free speech, sexual assault, youthful intolerance and paternal insensitivity.
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