A group of 15 Ivy League professors from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have published an open letter to incoming freshmen admonishing them to avoid “groupspeak,” and to think for themselves.
In today's world of college “safe spaces” and “microaggressions,” the news is borderline shocking. And from the hallowed halls of Ivy League academia, no less.
The letter, which was published on Tuesday, reads, in part:
We are scholars and teachers at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale who have some thoughts to share and advice to offer students who are headed off to colleges around the country. Our advice can be distilled to three words:
Think for yourself.
Now, that might sound easy. But you will find — as you may have discovered already in high school — that thinking for yourself can be a challenge. It always demands self-discipline and these days can require courage.
In today’s climate, it’s all-too-easy to allow your views and outlook to be shaped by dominant opinion on your campus or in the broader academic culture. The danger any student — or faculty member — faces today is falling into the vice of conformism, yielding to groupthink.
At many colleges and universities what John Stuart Mill called “the tyranny of public opinion” does more than merely discourage students from dissenting from prevailing views on moral, political, and other types of questions.
It leads them to suppose that dominant views are so obviously correct that only a bigot or a crank could question them. Since no one wants to be, or be thought of as, a bigot or a crank, the easy, lazy way to proceed is simply by falling into line with campus orthodoxies.
They then encouraged students to learn all sides of an issue before taking a position:
Thinking for yourself means questioning dominant ideas even when others insist on their being treated as unquestionable.
It means deciding what one believes not by conforming to fashionable opinions, but by taking the trouble to learn and honestly consider the strongest arguments to be advanced on both or all sides of questions [...]"
“Open-mindedness, critical thinking, and debate are essential to discovering the truth,” they advised. “Moreover, they are our best antidotes to bigotry.”
The advice is antithetical to the reality of many college campuses today, where safe spaces abound, and there exists an ever-growing list of “microaggressions,” and students protest — sometimes violently — in opposition to conservative speakers.
Nonetheless, the professors warned against the “tyranny of public opinion” and “echo chambers.”:
So don’t be tyrannized by public opinion. Don’t get trapped in an echo chamber. Whether you in the end reject or embrace a view, make sure you decide where you stand by critically assessing the arguments for the competing positions.
Conservative Princeton professor Robert George, one of the letter's signatories, stopped by “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to reiterate the advice.
“We’re telling our students not to fall into that groupthink,” he told Carlson. “You should be pursuing the truth. That’s what being in college is all about. It’s learning to pursue the truth and it’s learning to become a life-long truth seeker.”
George urged students not to allow themselves to be intimidated and bullied by those who attempt to shut down debate. “Don't put up with it,” he said.
Incidentally, as you've most likely surmised, George is a conservative.
You can watch the segment below.