As an undergraduate my friends and I went to hear Jerry Falwell, Noam Chomsky, Meir Kahane and many others. We didn’t go because we agreed with the speakers. We didn’t go to express contempt. We went to better understand the political forces acting in the world around us.
Our aim was to listen, learn, and test our rhetorical skills against those we disagreed with by debating them. Freshman year I provoked Michael Walzer into calling me a “budding demagogue.” But I won that prize by hearing him out and then challenging his ideas in Q and A.
It takes some self-discipline to sit through a speech you strongly disagree with and then express your views afterward in the form of a question to the speaker. That self-discipline is one of the most valuable skills that Princeton used to teach.
My proposal to the Daily @Princetonian: Come listen to the discussion. Challenge what you hear in questions to the speakers and then by publishing responses to our ideas—as I did when I was a student. This won’t get you the instant gratification you get by calling people names.
@princetonian But it will help make you into a serious and substantial person. Which is something all the name calling and expressions of comtempt will never do for you.
