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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > January > 21 > Entry
Guest column: WSU welcomes speakers across political spectrum
This commentary was written by Carol Herringer, chair of the Wright State University Department of History, and Carol Loranger, chair of the Department of English Language and Literatures.
As colleagues of Professor William Irvine, we were disappointed that he deliberately gave Dayton Daily News readers a fantastical vision of liberalism run amok at their local public university. Specifically, he charged that unnamed liberals are actively preventing conservative voices from speaking on campus.
Conservative speakers are, in fact, routinely invited to campus. For example, President George W. Bush — who as twice-elected Republican president of the United States embodies the gold standard of conservatism — spoke here in 2000.
Other speakers whose lives or messages embody the values of individual achievement and the role of the marketplace have also been welcomed, including African-American stockbroker Chris Gardner, “Freakonomics” co-author Stephen Dubner and extreme adventurer and motivational speaker Charlie Engle.
Irvine himself has been a frequent lecturer for the honors program, the university libraries, and the college of liberal arts.
Our colleague also disingenuously states that John McCain and Sarah Palin had to pay to speak at the Nutter Center, implying that WSU would not let them speak for free on campus. However, he neglects to mention that they were holding a campaign event.
The university is not permitted to support candidates by providing facilities for free. Only a month before the McCain/Palin event, then-candidate Barack Obama also paid for the privilege of campaigning at the Nutter Center.
Speakers from across the political spectrum have appeared at WSU to talk about political and social issues. But the preponderance of speakers, from the prestigious “Presidential Lecturers” to those writers and thinkers invited by individual departments and organizations, have not been clearly left or right politically.
They include Greg Mortensen, whose mission of building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan cannot be simply classified, and whose book, “Three Cups of Tea,” is widely read by military officers.
Likewise, Ishmael Beah, who spoke here in August about his experiences as a child soldier and who works to end abuse of children in war zones, defies easy classification.
On Jan. 31, Charlayne Hunter-Gault will speak on “From Jim Crow America to South Africa Apartheid and Beyond: A Journalist’s Journey.” She is a noted journalist whose balanced reporting exemplifies the search for truth that helps us to understand our world.
If the majority of speakers who are invited to our campus have anything in common, it is that they are committed to education and seek to inspire students and the community.
That speakers who come to WSU cannot always be categorized as either liberal or conservative shows that Irvine’s terminology is flawed.
His use of the terms “conservative” and “liberal” to shape his argument is startlingly unexamined and oversimplified. There are social liberals, political liberals and economic liberals, just as there are different types of conservatives.
Most of us hold some ideas that could be considered conservative and others that could be considered liberal. The job of educators is to teach our students to examine ideas, to judge them against facts, and to form a coherent argument that takes contradictory facts into account.
DDN readers need to know that campus groups and academic departments have small speaker budgets that are not funded by taxpayers, but by private donors who want to enrich the experience of WSU students beyond what can be offered by the state or through student tuition. Groups are answerable to their donors for their use of these funds.
The primary mission of a university is the production of knowledge and the development of critical consciousness, to make better citizens of us all. That work can only happen when those of every political and social philosophy are able to participate in the discussion of ideas and issues.
Wright State University encourages these discussions in classrooms as well as in even controversial public lectures.
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