Well – as the saying goes – even a broken clock gets it right twice a day. So whaddya know? Michael “Nanny” Bloomberg, former Democrat mayor of NYC, has actually called for academia to become more open-minded; Bloomberg Defends Conservatives Against Ivy League ‘McCarthyism’ in Harvard Speech ~
In a speech titled on Bloomberg’s website “Don’t Major in Intolerance,” Bloomberg elaborated on the topics expected of the big government advocate: the elimination of gun rights, a scolding of the 2010 criticism of opening a Muslim center near Ground Zero, and acceptance of natural selection in schools. The bulk of his speech, however, focused on telling academia to its face that it is intolerant of conservative beliefs and that it is up to the graduates present to work to turn the tides of liberal intolerance.
“Today, on many campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species,” he told the crowd, adding that “the forces of repression [at universities] appear to be stronger now than they have been since the 1950s.”
Bloomberg is old enough – and apparently honest enough (on this issue anyway) – to remember when a liberal arts education didn’t mean Leftist indoctrination. Liberalism, in the classic sense, was never the polar opposite of conservatism. It was more a broadminded approach to academics, tolerant of the opinions of others. A liberal approach meant being willing to debate – not demonize.
The former mayor is a settled-science guy when it comes to climate change, so unfortunately he rather undermined his own appeal for tolerance toward the end of his speech (because of course everyone knows “skeptics” are flat-earthers). But we do have to give him credit for even addressing the issue. Perhaps he actually got a few Harvard grads to re-think “liberal.”
“… a university cannot be great if its faculty is politically homogenous.”
Michael Bloomberg
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Related:
Campus Thought Conformity
Of college students, camels and transcendent Truth
“The pomposity and arrogance of these children (of the corn?) is just amazing” ~ Sadly, some of these young radical robots are just too far gone.
