Liberal New York Times columnist Frank Bruni related a story Monday about a prestigious liberal arts college he visited that prided itself on diversity but was dumbfounded at the idea of on-campus groups representing Republicans.
During a discussion on Charlie Rose, Bruni, guest host Dan Senor and New York University Professor and author Jonathan Haidt delved into the left-wing mob at Middlebury College that closed down conservative author Charles Murray's scheduled appearance on March 2 and assaulted his interviewer, Professor Allison Stanger.
Reflecting on the ugly episode and its broader implications for chilling free speech on college campuses, Bruni said these types of elite schools with hostility to conservative views were producing graduates "who have little sense of the true ideological diversity of American life."
Bruni, purposefully omitting the school's name, related a story of a visit to a "very esteemed liberal arts college in the northeast" where he had dinner at the college president's house. Upwards of 20 faculty members bragged to him about the college's diversity as exemplified by its wide array of groups.
"They were all boasting about what a diverse environment they had, and I had one question. I said, 'Is there a group for Republican students?'" Bruni said. "And they looked at me like it had never occurred to them, and there was one student there, and she said, 'I think there is, but they maybe have one member."
Schools "trip over themselves" to have racial and give lip service to socioeconomic diversity on campuses, Bruni said, but fall short in this regard.
"But what about this whole other kind of diversity?" he asked. "How are we going to move forward as a country if many of our top schools are graduating kids who can't even begin to process how a human being could vote for Donald Trump? They need to understand who voted for Donald Trump and why and that they're not monsters."
Note: The headline has been changed to say "hypocritical" instead of "wrong."