New York University student (and son of a former French president) Louis Sarkozy writes for the Washington Examiner about the disappearance of a key element of public discourse.
As a student in a prestigious American university majoring in the social sciences, you would think I am well-versed in argumentative conversation. You might imagine that our classes and lectures stir up fact-heavy debate and the free flow of ideas, with our professors acting as sage and impartial referees, prioritizing learning rather than sectarianism.
Unfortunately, if this is your image of higher academia, you are drastically mistaken.
No longer can students vary on viewpoints and positions; there are no more multiple schools of thought, encompassing thousands of different combinations of arguments with countless different folds regarding millions of subjects. They have now been replaced with only two sides: The Good vs. the Bad.
Today, any opinion not included in the canon of tolerable opinions in the American classroom is classified as bad. Not wrong, not logically fallacious or uninformed, but morally repugnant. This strategy of demonization is quite an effective one. It brands anyone in disagreement with you on any topic hateful and bigoted and by doing so automatically grants you the moral high ground.
If Sarkozy lived in this state — rather than New York — he would serve as an excellent candidate for the North Carolina Leadership Forum.
