Around New England

Of 237 Speakers At Brown in 2017, 94.5 % Leaned Left

March 22, 2018

Members of a student group calling for more ideological diversity among speakers at Brown University analyzed past speakers “based on campaign contributions, social media statements and career histories,” according to a column by a sophomore Eugenie Boury.

Of the 237 people who spoke at the Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island, 94.5 percent were left of center, while 5.5 percent leaned right, she writes.

Boury is a member of the SPEAK coalition at Brown, which she said includes ” staunch liberals, lifelong conservatives, avowed libertarians, passionate socialists and everything in between” who want more diversity among campus speakers.

“Diversity of thought is crucial to academic and personal development, and is one of the main reasons we’re all here. How can we truly experience diversity of thought when most of our speakers come from the same perspective?” Boury writes in the student newspaper, The Brown Daily Herald.

She continues:

“We at SPEAK seek to hold the University to its promise of creating a more ideologically diverse environment for personal growth, self-reflection and discussion. To this end, Brown should invite intellectuals, journalists, policy practitioners and others from across the ideological spectrum who can articulate their worldviews and subject them to respectful campus scrutiny. This would not include spectacle speakers or professional agitators, who offer nothing of intellectual substance and attack marginalized groups on and off campus.”