When Blue and Gray tour guides sell Georgetown to prospective students, one of the first tools in their arsenal is the long list of speakers it draws. From James Carville to Oliver North, the Georgetown Lecture Fund consistently draws big names with wide varieties of opinions, and student organizations add to this list. However, a frightening trend is emerging among Catholic colleges, one that flies in the face of the open dialogue so vital to academic discourse. Boston College, following in the footsteps of Notre Dame, recently adopted a new policy that increases administrative control over its choice of speakers; Georgetown says it does not plan to follow suit.
The University should continue with its current policy which supports diverse speakers that both interest and represent its student body, and deserves credit for allowing such a range of opinions to be represented, even when speakers do not agree with Georgetown’s official stance.
Boston College changed its speaker policy after an abortion panel last spring did not represent a pro-life opinion. Now, on issues relating to Catholicism, the BC administration will have the power to cancel speakers who do not also have a Catholic perspective to balance them out. Notre Dame made similar changes to its policy after its production of “The Vagina Monologues” last spring. These two colleges are influential within the sphere of Catholic higher education, and their actions will likely force other schools to reconsider their own practices.
This parochial policy will inevitably cripple the choice of speakers students will able to bring to campus in the future at BC and Notre Dame, but the principles motivating the change are even more disturbing than the effects it will bring. Spoon-feeding doctrine is infantilizing at best and brainwashing at worst.
Georgetown fortunately realizes that, throughout the year, the range of opinions will balance out organically, even if not at a single event. For instance, Michael Moore’s presentation in 2004 was countered by Bishop Gene Robinson’s.
While 50 percent of Hoyas are Catholic, that leaves half who are not. As a Jesuit institution, Georgetown values all opinions and gives students the ability to pick which speeches they choose to attend and what information to take away from these events. This process of weighing the merits of arguments is, in fact, the core of what higher education seeks to teach us.
Georgetown deserves credit for choosing to host controversial speakers when its peer Catholic universities have failed to remain as open minded, but this is not a privilege we can afford to take for granted any longer. As the oldest Jesuit university, a position which carries considerable influence, our administration should actively call for other Jesuit schools to abandon this growing practice of stifling free speech.
