"A Confession of Liberal Intolerance"

"To me, the conversation illuminated primarily liberal arrogance — the implication that conservatives don’t have anything significant to add to the discussion...When perspectives are unrepresented in discussions, when some kinds of thinkers aren’t at the table, classrooms become echo chambers rather than sounding boards — and we all lose...Some liberals think that right-wingers self-select away from academic paths in part because they are money-grubbers who prefer more lucrative professions. But that doesn’t explain why there are conservative math professors but not many right-wing anthropologists...It’s also liberal poppycock that there aren’t smart conservatives or evangelicals."

" 'Universities are unlike other institutions in that they absolutely require that people challenge each other so that the truth can emerge from limited, biased, flawed individuals,' he says. 'If they lose intellectual diversity, or if they develop norms of "safety" that trump challenge, they die. And this is what has been happening since the 1990s.' "

--by Nicholas Kristof, "A Confession of Liberal Intolerance"

(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html?_r=0)