To the Editor:
I suppose it falls within editorial prerogative to frame The Reveille’s coverage of Heather Mac Donald’s visit to campus to speak about the issue of race and policing under the headline, “Students disapprove of University’s guest speaker choice” [March 18, 2015]. But I would have thought that good journalistic practice would recommend speaking to the person who invited her if that were the chosen frame.
As I said when introducing Mac Donald’s lecture that afternoon in Hill Memorial Library, it is a privilege and a responsibility of a fine university to provide a forum outside the classroom for reasoned discussion of the leading issues of the day, including issues that elicit passionate response in the polity at large. I think her lecture and “conversation” helped initiate such discussion, giving students and community members with various opinions an opportunity to engage a leading conservative writer on the topic face-to-face. It is a discussion that I hope continues.
Inviting a speaker to campus is not an endorsement of his or her views, although it does reflect a judgment that such views are worth engaging. Even those with settled convictions on the opposite side from a speaker can gain by practice in formulating questions or objections, and others gain by hearing opinions and considering arguments on both sides. I think the University should be applauded for providing such a forum, not condemned because the opinions expressed are not universally shared.
James R. Stoner, Jr.
political science professor