Adam Szetela, Ph.D. student in the English department, published an op-ed in The Boston Globe about "The problem with liberal echo chambers on college campuses:"
"A college campus should be a place where students, liberal or conservative, refine their ability to listen and respond to people on the other side. When I was knocking on doors for the Sanders campaign in 2020, I remembered his volunteer principles to “treat everyone we encounter with care and respect, whether or not they agree with us” because “active listening allows us to find common ground that we can build upon.” In other words, changing minds entails engagement with people who have different perspectives — sometimes ones that we might even find abhorrent. To paraphrase CNN commentator Van Jones, a campus without differing viewpoints is like a weight room that doesn’t have any weights."
Read the full article here.
Adam Szetela is a writer who splits his time between Ithaca, New York, and Boston. Before coming to Cornell, Szetela was a visiting fellow in the history department at Harvard University and an affiliate of the Program on the Study of Capitalism. His work looks at capitalism, culture, and moral politics in the United States.
