Conformity, Irrational Thought Pervasive on College Campuses

[From article]
Is it out of order to suggest that students excel in coursework and complete their required reading before reaching inflexible conclusions and demanding others adhere to them? Anything else would be utterly premature and superficial. Their thoughts haven’t had sufficient time to marinate and be subjected to vigorous cross-examination, which is one of the reasons the most vocal protesters are prone to trying to silence anyone who dares to challenge them. That’s what the insecure do. A person who is confident in his or her conclusions welcomes debate. The juvenile simply call out all their immature ego defense mechanisms.
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Pressure to conform is nothing new, but shockingly it all-too-often comes from the professors these days, which is indefensible given the vastly unequal power differential. (Why are these inequality-obsessed professors not concerned with that?) This is a form of educational malpractice and abuse: teaching students what to think instead of how to think. This undue pressure is a problem that should be addressed at the administrative level to maintain the integrity of the institution and its mode of academic inquiry, but we are seeing reluctance, impotence, and complicity on far too many campuses.
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Colleges are supposed to inculcate the ability to engage in reasoned free thought, not to harass the immature into submission to a preprogrammed ideological agenda.
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The highest level of thought is the Socratic dialectic, in which intelligent people of varying opinions engage in a civil sharing of ideas that leads everyone to a greater understanding of the full complexity of the issues involved.
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Today, we have actually reached the point where fed-up students at Brown University have resorted to forming a closed, secret group where they are able to speak freely and openly with one another. This is how far the Academy has devolved; students now must be protected from it in order to learn despite it.
[. . .]
College itself must remain a protected space where students and faculty are free to explore and ask questions and express ideas without threats or harassment. This ideological battle has already been fought and decisively won and the First Amendment is the result. Use it.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/intellectual_foreclosure_on_american_campuses.html

December 12, 2015
Intellectual Foreclosure on American Campuses
By Bonnie K. Snyder