The free exchange of ideas is central to the values of a liberal arts education: Colleges and universities should be places where ideas are contested and challenged, not suppressed or shut out.
At Kenyon, our faculty has endorsed this concept with a resolution on the value and importance of free expression, emphasizing that we must be open to hearing ideas that are inconsistent with shared institutional values.
But how do colleges resolve the tension between their institutional charge to promote freedom of speech and expression on the one hand, and to establish a site of civil discourse on the other?
There are two components to consider. One is that speech or expression may be permitted, but that does not mean that it comes without consequences. Freedom of speech is not freedom from rebuke. In fact, if one follows the “marketplace of ideas” concept of Oliver Wendell Holmes, the rebuke is essential, since it is in the public challenge and battle over speech that our cultural norms of civility get established.
The other component is that institutions can and must set ground rules to ensure that free speech occurs within some bounds of acceptable civil discourse. Do you have the right to protest on campus? Yes, but the institution has the right to set the rules to make sure that all voices can be heard.
Today’s political climate dictates that the tension between free speech and civil discourse will continue in national conversation, and undoubtedly college campuses will continue to be flash points in these discussions. If we think of society as a marketplace of ideas, college campuses are the sites of market disruption — where new ideas challenge (and at times overthrow) old ones, new paradigms get established, and the battles over defining civility get waged.
Yes, let’s be unafraid to exchange ideas freely on campus. But when speech or actions disrupt accepted notions of civility, let’s also be unafraid to call attention to that with clear rebuke or rejection. This tension between civility and free speech will lead the way to progress.
A: JAY CORRIGAN | PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS
Slices of the economic pie are more lopsided than ever before. According to recent data, the richest 10 percent of American households earn just more than half of all U.S. income. That’s the highest fraction since the federal government started keeping these sorts of records 100 years ago. And the U.S. isn’t the only place where the gap between rich and poor is growing. During the last 40 years, the richest 10 percent gained ground in Canada, Germany and Japan.
So what explains this increase in income inequality across rich countries? Economists most often point to technological changes that have made the most talented workers ever more productive. As an example, consider that the only way to listen to professional musicians at the turn of the 20th century was to go to a live performance. The most talented performers played in the largest venues and, therefore, made more money than their less-talented peers, but the difference would have been relatively modest.
Today, most of us listen to recorded music. And because an iTunes download costs the same whether it’s recorded by the top artist in a genre or by someone less popular, the most-talented performers now capture a much larger share of our entertainment dollars. Thousands of musicians still are scratching out a living, but technology has increased the gap between the most-talented and the slightly less-talented. Something similar has happened in most industries.
To understand what, if anything, can be done to reduce income inequality, it helps to look back to the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, when income inequality actually decreased. That's because the supply of highly skilled workers increased more rapidly than the demand for their services, keeping their incomes — and income inequality — in check. This increase in supply was due to an increase in college graduates and women entering the workforce. Unfortunately, both of those trends have leveled off since about 1980.
If there’s one area where there’s still low-hanging fruit, it’s immigration. Immigrants create about half of all successful startups, but we make it hard for highly skilled immigrants to live and work in the U.S. Increasing the cap on the number of visas issued to highly skilled immigrants each year — or removing the cap entirely — would increase the supply of top talent, reducing income inequality.