The coddling5/26/2023 It has many scratching their heads and wondering what is happening. Instead of challenging students and teaching them to think, many appear to have become extended cradles of comfort and conformity. From safe spaces and cry rooms to students shouting down professors and speakers they don’t agree with (or, more likely, don’t understand), universities have changed and almost overnight. It’s been over a decade and a half since I graduated, so I can’t speak from personal experience, the news seems to be filling with examples of colleges and universities where administrations and student bodies are more concerned about making students comfortable and less with exposing them to a variety of ideas. The word is that, at least on some campuses, things have changed. I think this exposure to ideas, discussion, and debate is a feature, not a flaw, of the university system. As someone who empathized with our second president (who, according to historian John Ellis, found that his “favorite form of conversation was an argument”), the debate and discussion and the milieu of ideas were all elements of the university that were incredibly stimulating to me.
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