What Does Free Speech Really Mean?
“I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.”
I can’t blame you for not knowing that the above is the motto of Cornell University, where I went to college. I’m not particularly attached to my (first) alma mater, but this morning I realized it taught me far more than I had ever given it credit for.
It taught me to listen to diverse ideas without fear. Some of my professors were better than others, and since the Sixties were just dawning when I got there, some were more radical than others. But I knew that my “job” was to listen to them all, talk behind their backs in the dorm rooms and on the grass, and make up my own mind. But first to listen.
I remember many discussions on existentialism, and on the meaning of life. And many on the place of American democracy in history. A professor taught me to revere the American presidency (Clinton Rossiter), another taught me to love literature, and still another to smoke dope. Many famous people came to the campus with varying opinions. If someone made their way to Ithaca to speak to us, we listened.
And then we talked about them behind their backs in the dorms and in the grass. We gradually found our tribes.
