My Students Are Giving Each Other Furtive Looks. The State Needs to Step In

my latest for NYTOpinion
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The death of civilization has many facets. In his great 1836 painting "Destruction," the artist Thomas Cole depicted liberal college students protesting a conservative speake

"There was a time when academic freedom was the very air a generation of scholars, trained in the open and egalitarian university of the 1950s, lived and breathed. Since then, politics has come to the academy, bringing blue hair, complicated sandwiches, and twerking in its wake,

"I was stunned. Not just the furtive glances, but the depth of their furtivity shook me to my core. In the days afterward, I talked with my wife, my banker, and several members of the Little League team I coach. All agreed: I was right. The students should read more Russell Kirk.

“But there is hope. My students now sign a Viewpoint Diversity contract at the beginning of the course. It sets out the range of civil reactions they undertake to have to the ideas encountered in class, ranging from ‘I agree’ to ‘there’s value in that.’ Their parents countersign.