Fareed Zakaria devoted a segment of his show today to the issue of conservative speakers on college campuses. After reviewing protests against Vice President Pence, Education Secretary DeVos and others, Zakaria said it was “strange” to see this happening on colleges that should be the bastions of openness to all idea.
“Freedom of speech and thought is not just for warm fuzzy ideas that we find comfortable, it’s for ideas that we find offensive,” Zakaria said. He added that while there was a strain of anti-intellectualism on the right, “there is also an anti-intellectualism on the left. An attitude of self-righteousness that says we are so pure, we are so morally superior; we cannot bear to hear an idea with which we disagree.”
“Liberals think they are tolerant but often they aren’t,” Zakaria said. He then cited a 2016 PEW survey which found 70% of Democrats said Republicans were close-minded as compared to 52% of Republicans who said the same of Democrats. “But each side scores about the same in terms of close-mindedness and hostility to hearing contrarian views,” Zakaria said. Here’s the segment from his show:
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