A College President's False Face

Peter Wood

Macalester College president Brian Rosenberg models the new face of political correctness in his convocation speech “What Am I Doing Here?” Peter Wood takes a close look at the speech in "'Collective Certainty' at Work," at NAS.org. He finds that not only does the president's false "openness to views that are different from one’s own" disserve Macalester, it also provides a glimpse into the spirit of campus political correctness:

It seems to us that President Rosenberg’s speech has value beyond Macalester College as an unusually vivid display of the arrogance and hypocrisy of the academic left in full flood. He knows the right things to say, and he says them. And then he reassures his audience that they really don’t matter. Diffidence about expressing political views, considerate attention to disfavored ideas, and wariness toward the tyranny of the majority are all nice—but we needn’t let them get in the way of our main agenda.
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