Audience Member: How do you bridge the gap between family and civil discourse? I believe it all starts with your family life, and if you can’t bridge that gap with family, then how are you going to propose that children go out and be better citizens when there is no one to instruct them and say where the line is drawn in terms of civil discourse. The judge spoke about the law protecting your speech. How do you bridge the gap between the two?
Ms. Sondra Myers:
“What can Mount Aloysius College, or any other college or university do, not only to encourage civic discourse and the upholding of civility as a necessary component in a democratic society?” Sondra Myers
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I don’t know that it’s a gap. I sometimes boldly say that I don’t care about your family values; I care about how you treat others who aren’t your family or friends. When we’re talking about civil behavior, civil discourse, civility, civil society, we are not talking about family values. It doesn’t preclude or dismiss family values. But I think this is a conversation about how we get along as a society, about what kind of society we are, and what kind of society we aspire to be. And that is the realm where we deal with civil behavior rather than family behavior.
We’re getting close to our ending time, and I would like to ask one more question of the panel and ask you either to respond to it or have your own last word, whatever it may be. The question is this: what can higher education do? What can Mount Aloysius College, or any other college or university do, not only to encourage civic discourse and the upholding of civility as a necessary component in a democratic society, but also in awakening students and giving them the will as well as the skills to be citizens of the world and of their own communities when they leave here?
Mr. David Shribman:
I think that’s actually the easiest question of all. And the answer is—and I know you do this at this college—to examine the central questions that Dr. Murray spoke about. You are here not only to be trained, but to be educated. And to be educated means, as was said in the nineteenth century, to be exposed to the best that has been said and thought. And the best that has been said and thought almost always engages the central questions. What is freedom? What is an individual? As Dr. Murray said: Who am I? What is my purpose here? You should examine all those questions. And given that I have ten more years of college tuition to pay for my own children, I would also urge you to read a good newspaper every day.