Re: Weeks before planned Dartmouth visit, Kirk assasination reverberates around campus
I have interviewed applicants for 46 years. I also talk with students every year at holiday lunches. As always, like in my day, today’s Dartmouth students come from diverse backgrounds. Still, one thing they all share: they are very bright.
I worry when I see that 70% of surveyed students who told the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression that it is “at least rarely acceptable” to shout down a speaker, and most of the 50% who told FIRE it is acceptable to “block other students from attending a speech” would never actually do either of those things.
In light of Charlie Kirk’s shooting in Utah, even more disturbing was FIRE’s report that 20% of students said “there were times when violence is acceptable to prevent a speaker from speaking.”
Charlie Kirk was not on my radar until that tragic day. I have since researched him and his views. His beliefs made many angry. But he did not shy away from coming onto campuses and inviting those who disagreed to debate him. Many did. Kirk debated them, but he did not hate them.
I hope his tragic death will be a wake-up call at Dartmouth. Students of all points of view need to come together to reject shout-downs and violence as the answers. They NEVER are.
No wife or young child should ever again have to go through life without the love of their husband and father because someone was upset by his political views.
I hope the entire Dartmouth community will embrace and accept College President Sian Leah Beilock’s efforts to persuade Dartmouth students to talk and listen to those with whom they disagree — but then walk away accepting that their fellow student is neither immoral, evil nor hateful.
Michael Jeffrey Morris is a member of the Class of 1975. Letters to the Editor represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
