Peter Wood has written a wonderful piece on a recent speech by Macalester College president John Rosenberg. Why is a speech by the president of a liberal arts college in St. Paul of interest? Because Macalester has been under attack from a group of its alumni, drawn from across the political spectrum, who maintain that the school is overly politicized, with far too much ideological proselytizing and too little serious discussion of competing ideas. (Peter’s piece gives the chronology on this battle, including an article the Pope Center published by one of the founders of the “Mac Mods,” Roger Peterson.)

As Peter’s piece shows, under pressure Rosenberg says the right things about being open to different ideas, but in the next breath he snatches that away with disdainful references to those horrid town-hall meetings. True, there was some shouting at those meetings, but some people who spoke in opposition to the proposed changes in our health-care system made entirely sensible arguments. Rosenberg, however, treats the opposition much as the Democratic officeholders did, brushing it away as just annoying behavior by ignorant folks. Rosenberg’s speech illuminates the central problem with the academic Left, namely its absolute certainty that its views are intellectually unassailable.

What’s amusing about this is that we keep hearing from the Left that America has a terrible aversion to “The Other,” meaning people who are different from the mainstream of our society. That’s mostly baloney. Few Americans care about race or personal idiosyncracies these days. But the academic Left appears to have its own aversion: for it, “The Other” consists of people who do not share in the faith that increased governmental power is the solution to all socioeconomic problems. The believers shun us infidels and attack straw-man versions of our arguments. That’s bad enough in the world of politics, but shameful in the world of education.