A Quote by Bob Beckel

Liberal arts colleges have traditionally provided a forum for debating ideas. Avoiding controversy and 'playing it safe' by not inviting - or disinviting - speakers with 'controversial' views stifles debate.

Bob Beckel

Quote Topics

Arts Avoiding Colleges Controversial Controversy Debate Debating Forum Ideas Inviting Liberal Liberal Arts Liberal Arts College Playing Playing It Safe Provided Safe Speakers Views

Quote Author

Bob Beckel
American - Journalist
Born: November 15, 1948

Terms such as 'microaggression,' describing an inadvertent act of offense, have entered the college lexicon, empowering an atmosphere of prior restraint on speech. And many colleges are also disinviting speakers in fear of offending certain elements of their student communities.

John J. McLaughlin

If pluralism and academic freedom are to be used to defend liberal speakers and ideas, they ought to be equally valid for conservative views.

Bob Beckel

Community colleges are great bargains. They avoid the fancy amenities four-year liberal arts colleges need in order to lure the children of the middle class.

Robert Reich

Colleges have a twofold duty when it comes to dealing with censorship. First, there is the duty to not censor the free expression of ideas, especially important and newsworthy ones. Second, colleges have the duty to protect speakers from being silenced by others. Century has failed miserably on both counts.

Greg Lukianoff

It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available.

Thomas E. Mann

I don't think playing it safe constitutes a retreat, necessarily. In other words, I don't think if, by playing safe he means we are not going to delve into controversy, then if that's what he means he's quite right. I'm not going to delve into controversy. Somebody asked me the other day if this means that I'm going to be a meek conformist, and my answer is no. I'm just acting the role of a tired non-conformist.

Rod Serling

Different political views, even if they're all liberal, in the sense of supporting liberal constitutional democracy, undoubtedly have some notion of the common good in the form of the means provided to assure that people can make use of their liberties, and the like.

John Rawls

Conflicting views and contrasting ideas are the essence of all great debates throughout history, from the Greeks to the Oxford Union Debating Society. Today, we turn to television for the creative clash of ideas on matters that touch our lives.

John J. McLaughlin

In our discussions here at the forum there was no trace of the futile debate about what is better, capitalism or socialism...We should seek a synthesis of ideas and values that have proven their viability.

Mikhail Gorbachev

I think controversy is not always a bad thing. Jesus was controversial. It's through controversy that people often wake up and smell the coffee and say, 'What's going on here? Do we need to rethink something here?'

Kirk Cameron

I'm a liberal arts comedian and the definition of liberal arts is all spheres of human knowledge, coexisting, mixing and influencing each other.

Adam Conover

The liberal arts are the arts of communication and thinking. 'They are the arts indispensable to further learning, for they are the arts of reading, writing, speaking, listening, figuring.

Oliver DeMille

Immigration is by far the most controversial yet least understood issue in America. Frankly, given the way we're talking about immigration, given the emphasis, the overemphasis on border security, I would argue that we're not on the same page when we debate this issue. We're doing far too much debating and not enough conversing.

Jose Antonio Vargas

I spent my whole career playing it safe, being a gentleman, never doing anything controversial.

Robin Thicke

People who come out of the liberal arts don't have an understanding of science and technology, and the people in science and technology have very little experience with liberal arts and the traditions of a liberal democracy.