{"id":7424,"date":"2014-12-11T14:50:05","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T14:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7424"},"modified":"2014-12-11T14:50:05","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T14:50:05","slug":"university-students-should-listen-to-george-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7424","title":{"rendered":"University students should listen to George Will"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Here we go once again: Liberal educators, politicians and students don&#8217;t want to hear a voice from the other end of the political spectrum, so they&#8217;re launching an effort to ban that voice from their campus.<\/p>\n<p>Please. Stop this nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>Conservative columnist George Will has been invited to deliver the commencement speech at Michigan State University. Alumni, students and some administrators have decided Will&#8217;s world view isn&#8217;t welcome there. Specifically they object to his recent statements about sexual assault among female college students.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/10\/us-senator-denounces-michigan-states-decision-t\/201841<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll stipulate that I disagree with Will&#8217;s view that &#8220;victimhood&#8221; has become some sort of badge of honor. The threat of sexual assault is real and it needs to be dealt with in a serious manner.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, I generally disagree with just about everything Will says in his column or\u00a0in his role as\u00a0a Fox News &#8220;contributor.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There. I&#8217;ve declared my bias.<\/p>\n<p>But universities &#8212; institutions of <em>higher learning<\/em> &#8212; do themselves a terrible injustice when they prohibit all points of view from being heard on the issues of the day.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, an MSU alumna, has weighed in with her objections to Will&#8217;s appearance at her alma mater. She said Will&#8217;s\u00a0&#8220;statements on sexual assault are inaccurate, offensive, and don&#8217;t represent the values of our state or MSU.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So &#8230; what?<\/p>\n<p>Let the man speak and then challenge his assumptions. Debate them. In the open. Intelligently. Let&#8217;s have a full airing of competing ideas on sexual assault.<\/p>\n<p>Universities are supposed to be open to wide ranges of thought, ideology and philosophy. Isn&#8217;t there some inscription on some wall at the East Lansing campus that suggests that the university is a place where everyone&#8217;s views are welcome?<\/p>\n<p>How about fulfilling the university&#8217;s mission and letting a noted conservative commentator speak his mind to students who are able to draw their own conclusions about whether he is right &#8230; or wrong?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here we go once again: Liberal educators, politicians and students don&#8217;t want to hear a voice from the other end of the political spectrum, so they&#8217;re launching an effort to ban that voice from their campus. Please. Stop this nonsense. Conservative columnist George Will has been invited to deliver the commencement speech at Michigan State &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7424\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">University students should listen to George Will<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1298,1788,1903,3044,4235],"class_list":["post-7424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-debbie-stabenow","tag-fox-news","tag-george-will","tag-michigan-state-university","tag-sexual-assault"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}