Bethune would’ve invited DeVos, too.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, at my invitation, will speak at Bethune-Cookman University’s spring commencement. I understand the concerns about her, and I genuinely appreciate those who voice those concerns in a constructive manner.
I am especially sensitive to balancing the notion of academic freedom with quelling potentially hateful and harmful rhetoric. The political and racial chasms in our county have deepened, and college presidents have struggled with these issues over the past few months. Some have rescinded invitations to potentially controversial speakers.
That is not my intention with DeVos. I am of the belief that it does not benefit our students to suppress voices that we disagree with, or to limit students to only those perspectives that are broadly sanctioned by a specific community.
One of the lasting hallmarks of higher education is its willingness to engage, explore and experience that which we deem as “other.” When we shelter our students and campus communities from views that are diametrically opposed to their own, we actually leave our students far less capable of combatting those ideas.
In addition, the sheer diversity of our human family requires us to listen to and understand one another. We cannot, and we will not, ever accomplish this if we continue to exist in ideological, social and racial silos.
As a private, nonpartisan institution, B-CU is not in the business of endorsing any specific political perspective; nor are we in the business of prohibiting political perspectives that may differ from those of some members of our community.
If our students are robbed of the opportunity to experience and interact with views that may be different from their own, then they will be tremendously less equipped for the demands of democratic citizenship.
No one understood this better than our venerable founder, Mary McLeod Bethune. She did all she could during the nascent stages of this institution to equip her students with the necessary skills to navigate the precarious waters of fundamental disagreement. She modeled this by interacting with and uniquely engaging those who had to be convinced of her mission to provide education to her people.
Bethune depended upon the support of people who were scattered all along the ideological and political spectrum — some she agreed with, and some she did not. She understood, however, the great value of education, and she understood the nuances of how to balance delicate and difficult relationships in order to achieve her ultimate goal of building an institution of higher learning, of which we are the beneficiaries today.
Bethune received tremendous support from Thomas White (White Sewing Machine Co.), John D. Rockefeller (oil baron), James Proctor (Proctor & Gamble), Henry Flagler (Standard Oil), and President Franklin D. and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, just to name a few.
These leaders represented diverse political and social views, and Bethune invited them all to visit and support her institution. It is in that same vein that I have invited DeVos to speak.
Perhaps DeVos, much like those early initial skeptics who came to our college, will be inspired by the profound work that occurs here with our students.
At the end of the day, it really is all about the success of our students, and if there are opportunities to possibly influence their success, then we must seize upon them.
DeVos presents such an opportunity.
I close with a history lesson relevant to today, and to our founder’s era.
In 1932, at the height of the U.S. presidential campaign, the University of Chicago, one of this nation’s leading institutions of higher learning, invited Communist Party presidential candidate William Z. Foster to lecture on its campus.
Faculty members, students, alums and various members of the community were outraged at the decision to have such a controversial figure speak.
Robert Hutchins, the University of Chicago’s president at the time, responded to the criticism with the following quote: “The cure for ideas that we may oppose lies through open discussion rather than through inhibition … free inquiry is indispensible to the good life, universities exist for the sake of such inquiry, and without free inquiry, they cease to be universities.”
I have gratitude for the past, and hope for the future. So I ask the courtesy of your consideration to hear what Betsy DeVos, the 11th U.S. secretary of education, tells us.
Remember that dialogue is a two-way street.