Partisanship Extended, Partisanship Accepted, and Civility Practiced

                                  Partisanship Extended, Partisanship Accepted, and Civility Practiced

                                                                            Published in the Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 25, 2015

            In late September presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist, spoke at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA.  According to news reports, Sanders was treated with respect by students and received scattered if tepid applause throughout his address.

            For 4 years my family and I traveled back and forth to Lynchburg to see our daughter Wendy, a student at Liberty.  Each visit increased our appreciation for the university and the vision it stood for and aspired to.  Sanders’ invitation and kind reception are an indication that our daughter’s alma mater is still committed to letting all voices be heard.  If only this were so for all the tolerance-preaching universities across the country.

            Rutgers University, the bastion of tolerance that it is, disinvited former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  Brown University didn’t disinvite New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, so students fixed that by shouting him down.  At Liberty students who showed such disrespect for a guest speaker would get a good talking to.

            Most major universities in the country, public or private, are usually hostile to conservative speakers who oppose or veer from liberal orthodoxy.   At such schools students often revile the speakers they disagree with if the president or student government association hasn’t disinvited them first.

            Liberty, instead of protesting voices it disagrees with, invites them to speak.  Many a speaker has come to Liberty probably expecting to feel like a stranger in a strange land, only to find that common courtesy abounds.  This attitude has always been Liberty’s stance.  How odd that all universities don’t teach and expect the same thing.

            Liberty is a Christian university, not unlike Harvard, Princeton and Yale during their first century of existence.  It was founded by Jerry Falwell, the Lynchburg native and pastor who along with the nation’s most widely read columnist, Cal Thomas, launched the Moral Majority.  The largest Christian university in the world, Liberty houses 14,000 students and has over 100,000 online.

            Those surprised by Liberty’s hosting a leftist like Bernie Sanders are probably unaware of “the Liberty Way” which consistently urges students to respectfully engage the culture, not withdraw from it.  Critics probably don’t know that over two decades ago one of Liberty’s speakers – one who endeared himself to students personally, though not philosophically – was liberal lion, Senator Ted Kennedy.  Kennedy’s invitation emanated from his friendship with Falwell, Liberty’s then Chancellor.  Absolutely an odd couple, the two men were what today’s lingo would call “frenemies” or “best enemies.”

            It must have been a genuine friendship, for when the health of Kennedy matron Rose Kennedy took a turn for the worse at her Florida winter home, Ted Kennedy called Rev. Falwell to ask him to come and pray for his mother.  Falwell flew to Florida.

            A recent occurrence at Duke University illustrates the difference between Liberty and so many other universities.  Over the summer Duke assigned all incoming freshman a graphic novel titled “Fun Home: A Family Tragedy,” a coming-of-age story of a young lesbian. (“Graphic novel” nowadays doesn’t refer to content, but to type; they are actually pictorial, glorified comic books.)

            When an incoming Christian student objected, the Washington Post pounced and asked him to explain why.  He answered, “Without the sexual images or erotic language, I would have read it, but viewing pictures of sexual acts, regardless of the genders of the people involved, conflicts with the inherent sacredness of sex.”      

            Presumably, Duke was attempting to “broaden” its incoming freshmen, but the “broadening” amounted to indoctrination.  More than a few universities as well known as Duke charge a pretty $40,000 or more a year for their “broadening” efforts.  At Liberty, “broadening” takes place by sending their teacher candidates around the world to do their student teaching  (our Wendy landed in Kenya), and by training debate teams that were number one – yes, defeating Harvard and others – from 2005 to 2011.  Going beyond mere “tolerance,” Liberty gives differing viewpoints a microphone.

            “Tolerance,” which has become a religion in academia, isn’t tolerance at all.  It is agenda-driven nonsense, selective freedom of expression and partisanship gone wild.  There is no civility in shouting down speakers of any stripe on a college campus.  Nor is there any respect in having students read salacious material in the interest of “sensitivity training,” especially when the material is over the top and violates a student’s religious convictions.

            An ethic at a university that teaches “Be ye kind one to another” is far more likely to be open-minded about differences of opinion than one that feeds its students social drivel. I suspect Bernie Sanders would now agree.

Roger Hines

10/21/15