I have read several pieces in the past few days I regarded as genuinely thoughtful. This makes me happy, since I see it so little. One of the traits of thoughtfulness is accepting your own limits–recognizing who you are, what you believe, and that other possibilities exist–and being willing to go outside them, to talk out loud for a while, and to settle down without a sound bite, or ideologically actionable verdict. Sometimes the straight path can only be found by rambling.
http://chronicle.com/article/How-Safe-Spaces-Stifle-Ideas/235634
I particularly liked this paragraph:
Our educated classes regard the university chiefly as an instrument of our collective purpose and an efficient engine for transmitting anxiety about ideas felt to be dangerous or out of bounds. Bizarre that a culture officially committed to diversity and openness should be essentially conformist, and that the hostility to the clash of incommensurable ideas and even to elementary difference should be promoted with the sort of clear conscience that can belong only to people who don’t know what they’re doing.