By Shruti Bhatt
In his presidential briefing at a University Senate meeting on Apr. 4, University President Wallace Loh said that throughout the month, there will be speakers visiting UMD who will “force people to think about their core, fundamental values” and “raise questions we often don’t like to discuss.”
Loh said leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and former President Barack Obama told people that this country is a welcoming place for all people to share ideas, regardless of things like race, religion or any controversial matters.
He noted that the debate scheduled at the university for April 5 between Nigel Farage, a Brexit supporter, and Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, sparked a lot of backlash; students asked the university to cancel the debate or bar one of the speakers from coming.
In response, Loh said, “This is a time for us to initiate freedom of speech and expression on campus.”
“The role of a university is not to make ideas safe for students,” he said, “but to make students feel safe to challenge diverging views.”
Sophomore computer engineering major Krupa Patel attended the Senate meeting and said she agrees with the president’s stance on the issue.
“Although some people may not like certain views, I think discussing both sides of an issue at least helps the opposite understand where the other is coming from,” she said. “This can lessen some of the extreme polarization that’s happening currently.”
Stevi Calandra, the supervising media producer for the Robert H. Smith School of Business, said the debate between Farage and Fox will create a space for thought-provoking conversation amongst people who usually may not talk to each other.
The debate was co-sponsored by the Steamboat Institute and the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at the School of Business– whose purpose, Calandra said, is to promote events in which students have to think critically on issues surrounding economics, civics and democracy.
“We’re not hoping for everyone’s minds to change, but we hope to spark curiosity where students have to dive deep and take into consideration all sides of the story,” she said.
Calandra said in the current political climate, having debates like these are even more important.
“If there is no willingness to converse, there is no room for improvement,” she said. “In an age of misinformation, choosing not to listen is allowing oneself to be restrained from information.”