From Wesleyan, of all places?
I like this opinion piece, but I wish the President would instruct his Admissions staff to start selecting applicants with a wide range of views, politics, and backgrounds. As it is, Wesleyan is limiting the types of students that would even consider applying to those who are very far left/progressive. This limits the vibrancy of its discourse.
Keep `em coming, folks. 
— Micharl S. Roth, President of Wesleyan University
— Jeff Winger, from Community
Sometimes it is wiser to consider the millennia of minds who have gone before you- and realize that a lot of conventional wisdom comes from thousands of years of learning from history and mistakes. To reject conventional wisdom is to reject a millennia of learning.
The way of a fool is right in his own eyes,
But a wise man is he who listens to counsel.
Where there is no guidance the people fall,
But in abundance of counselors there is victory.
'“Truly speaking,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said about a century ago, “it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul.”"
Fascinating! I’ve always wondered what a dead man would say
Wesleyan, that bastion of viewpoint diversity 
Most colleges would like to be able to market themselves to students of demographics other than those typically attracted to the college. So some examples would be:
- Humanities majors at MIT.
- Non-pre-meds at JHU.
- Students of color at WLU.
- Non-Black students at most HBCUs.
I think where you see this diversity most strikingly at Roth’s school, Wesleyan, is in its range of graduating majors: contrary to so many schools (including SLACs) where CS, econ, and maybe psych or engineering make up 80% of each class, Wes has serious numbers across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Such diversity of interests and modes of thought is essential to any diversity of opinion or of understandings of one’s place–either on campus or in the world at large.
They actually are. For instance, I know Wes actively recruit veterans and students from top catholic schools. However, I understand your point - Wes should make this clearer at the ground level (for prospective conservative students and their parents). I also think that students that are right leaning are often advised by CC not to write an essay that takes a clear conservative position -which I think is a shame because I do believe those essays make the student stand out.
For anyone uncertain as to your meaning, Emerson said this close to two centuries (186 years) ago.
I read the article. I agree with the message–although it is an odd messenger to be delivering this message as Wesleyan University is not known for acceptance of opposing viewpoints.
I love & crave diversity in all respects. This is a primary reason why I prefer universities over LACs. In addition to size of student body, variety of majors, clubs, and other activities, I find that a balanced mix of graduate and undergraduate students adds to a healthy academic & social environment.
I often compute the ratio/percentages of undergraduate students to graduate students at the nation’s most elite universities as part of assessing a school’s environment (social & academic, etc.).
P.S. Placing oneself in an uncomfortable environment as part of an individual’s overall growth and development is often accomplished at LACs by engaging in study abroad for either a semester or a year.
Students today have enough problems without the president of Wesleyan sharing bad advice that he thinks is intriguing and I find basic.
I think there is an unfortunate conflation in that piece between feeling comfortable with the social environment, location, setting, and so on, and being academically and intellectually challenged.
Through my own observations and also hearing from others, I am aware of too many people who were profoundly unhappy at their college for non-academic reasons to think risking that is a good idea. All that stood in the way of them really doing well academically, and often they ended up transferring (or should have if they didn’t). I think going to a college which is a good bet for you to feel happy and comfortable in non-academic ways is thus your best bet to actually be able to appreciate and grow from academic and intellectual challenges.
Now, that doesn’t mean the environment has to be familiar. Some people are very much looking forward to change, new people, new activities, new adventures, and so on. But I don’t think everyone has to be like that, and if you are not enthusiastic about that prospect at the time you are picking a college, I think that is fine too.
Is this really true? Or would Wesleyan first have to magically become more conservative before more conservatives would apply?
Story time!
I knew in high school that I wanted to get a PhD and go into academia. I was passionate about learning, and I was happier in the library or with small groups of people than at parties. Unsurprisingly, I was interested in colleges like Swat and Chicago, and I was ecstatic when I got into the latter (my top choice).
I matriculated at Duke, however, mostly because the merit and financial aid package made it far more affordable than my other options. Duke is in some ways almost a polar opposite of Chicago, and I was apprehensive about my choice.
I wound up having a great time at Duke. The highly social environment challenged me and dragged me out of my shell, and I graduated as a much more well-rounded person while also getting into all of the PhD programs I applied to. Could I have done this at Chicago? Maybe, maybe not — but I think there’s something to be said for jumping into an environment in which you’re not immediately comfortable.
I don’t think there’s anything accidental or unfortunate about Roth’s assertion. He’s a native Brooklynite who attended a New England college just beginning to accept women on an equal basis as men. There was nothing academic about the social situation he found when he arrived. It was real. He was a Jew on a campus where less than a decade before, almost every fraternity (there were no sororities) had to break from its national in order for him to be eligible to rush.
So, yes. His mantra may not be for everybody. But neither is college.
Most people think “viewpoint diversity” just pertains to contemporary (American) politics, liberals vs. conservatives, etc. That’s an impoverished view of what true intellectual diversity is.
A fuller version of it is apparent at most universities. The departments themselves represent robust intellectual diversity. A biologist understands the world one way; a sociologist another; a historian another. What one learns about ordering society in Economics differs profoundly from what one learns in Religion, or Psychology.
So yes. For many commentators, the range of what they call intellectual diversity extends from around MSNBC to Fox News, from Democrats to Republicans. That’s a tiny sliver of intellectual life. On that scale, sure, a lot of these places cluster on the progressive end.
But ask a mathematician and an English major how to approach an intellectual problem. You’ll get differences in perspective far more interesting than those in packaged in our culture for consumers of partisan politics.
" I can’t tell you how many families have described driving many hours to a campus somewhere and having their daughter or son say something like: “We don’t need to get out. I can tell already this isn’t for me.”
That’s what my D said when she visited Wesleyan.
