The president of Drake University says the partisan battles played out in public are corrupting debate on college campuses.
Drake University president David Maxwell says "the lack of public models for civil debate" makes it harder for colleges to foster "respectful argument." Debate is encouraged in academia, but Maxwell says "more and more of our students replicate what they see" on t.v. — leading to "polarization" in battles over politics and religion.
Maxwell says he’s troubled by what he sees as a trend where people seek to substitute "assertion and beliefs" for "knowledge and facts." He says the result is that "scientifically-derived facts" are somehow twisted into being wrong when they’re actually right.
Maxwell made his comments this weekend at a Drake Law School forum.