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As director of a Center dedicated to fostering intellectual diversity on campus, I constantly have to consider just what sort of diversity we are supposed to be fostering. The upcoming campus visit of Milo Yiannopoulos makes for an excellent example. We had the opportunity to be a co-sponsor, and thought about doing so, but it took about five seconds to realize this isn’t the sort of thing our Center is about. The problem is not that Yiannopoulos is offensive. There is, after all, a long and distinguished tradition of that sort of thing across the political spectrum. The problem is that causing offense is all he does, whereas our mission is to promote thoughtful and constructive dialogue, something that, so far as we could see, he never does.

This case is just one instance of a larger problem: where does one draw the line between opinions that are worth inviting into the conversation and opinions that are too extreme to be productive? There is no easy answer, and moreover the answer is one that must evolve over time, as views that once were quite mainstream get relegated to the extreme margins of society. One place we draw a line is at views that fly in the face of a clear consensus among scientists, historians, or economists.  But this rules out very few of the divisive social and political issues we face, and so in general when the Center convenes a debate or dialogue, the views represented cross the whole spectrum of American politics.

Who could object to such a policy? In fact I am constantly surprised by the resistance we get. Although one might have hoped that a university – particularly a public university – would be equally open to viewpoints from the left and the right, we have found time after time that when we invite a speaker from the left, such as Thomas Frank this past fall, no one bats an eye, but when we invite conservative speakers to campus, the objection goes up that this is a view too extreme to deserve a hearing. As a typical Boulder liberal myself, I am cheering for many of the same things my colleagues are. And it hasn’t been an easy few months for my team. But the way forward is not to segregate ourselves, or our students, from views we don’t like. A university needs dialogues, not monologues. -- Robert Pasnau, Professor of Philosophy; Director, Center for Western Civilization, Thought & Policy