Brown University’s president is concerned about the homogeneity of opinion on campus. Inside Higher Ed reports:

Amid a national debate on whether colleges are open to all viewspoints, Brown University’s president gave a surprising talk to students Tuesday to welcome them back for the spring semester.

Ruth Simmons, the president, told them she was concerned about reports she hears from students, parents and alumni about “the lack of diversity of opinion on campus.” Students have told her of a “chilling effect caused by the dominance of certain voices on the spectrum of moral and political thought,” according to an account of the speech in The Brown Daily Herald….

According to The Brown Daily Herald, Simmons urged students to avoid just talking to and taking courses from people with whom they agree. “Familiar and appetizing offerings can certainly be a pleasing dimension of learning, but too much repetition of what we desire to hear can become intellectually debilitating,” she said.

Simmons also told students to engage in civil, open debate on every issue possible, and said people at Brown need to ask why the university has a reputation for “limiting debate” and “fostering hostility to particular ideas and different perspectives.”

To help bring diverse views to the campus, Simmons said she was creating a new fund to bring a wider variety of speakers to the university.

She’s vague about what voices are being suppressed. If she’s referring to the need for greater tolerance of conservatives, good for her.

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