Opinion | Go Forth and Argue

People often note that the Chicago Principles have been adopted by scores of universities, and that’s great. But where Bob’s real legacy lies is in the academic leaders who are finally finding their nerve to stand up to the enemies of intellectual freedom. And, in doing so, he showed that a university president who was morally courageous and intellectually cogent would also attract the best students, inspirit the best faculty and regain the loyalty of doubting alumni — because leaders with courage are leaders with followers.

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In short, Bob created an institutional culture that, as Salman Rushdie once said, serves as a safe space for thought, not a safe space from thought. And my question to you, both in the audience and on this stage, is whether you will take inspiration from it in your own lives and careers.

I hope you do, whether you choose to lead a private or a public life. And I hope you do so by writing your own version of “The Joy of Argument” — which is like a similarly titled book from 50 years ago, updated for an era that has become curiously and depressingly afraid of both. The joy of argument is not about “owning” or “destroying” or otherwise trying to disparage, caricature or humiliate your opponent. On the contrary, it should be about opposition and mutuality, friction and delight, the loosening of inhibitions and the heightening of concentration, playfulness and seriousness, and, sometimes even, a truly generative act.

Yes, I am comparing great arguments to great sex. But the analogy bears a brief follow-through because, in the last analysis, the only way in which we are going to create institutions in which independent thought and free expression flourish isn’t through a declaration of principles, however well constructed it may be — at best, those principles can only lay the ground for what we are trying to achieve. Nor can it be on account of some worthy but abstract goal, like the health of democracy — which, again, is wonderful, but rarely motivates people to action.

We are going to succeed at the task only when we persuade others, and ourselves, that these things you’ve all been doing at the University of Chicago for the past few years — discussing and debating and interrogating and doubting and laughing and thinking harder and better than you ever did before — aren’t the antithesis of fun. They are the essence of it. They make up the uniquely joyful experience of being authentically and expressively and unashamedly yourself and, at the same time, having a form of honest and intimate contact with others who, in their own ways, are being authentically and expressively and unashamedly themselves.

Enough with the sex analogy. You are about to go out into the real world, as real adults, with a real hand in shaping the conditions of our common life. Many of you will soon join and eventually lead great institutions, and a few of you will create significant businesses, NGOs, schools and other institutions of your own. I’m guessing not many of you are thinking: “I want to make them just like the University of Chicago,” at least as far as subzero temperatures, midterms that begin the third week and the food at Valois are concerned.

But I hope you can at least say this: that, at Chicago, you learned that institutions become and remain great not because of the weight of their traditions or the perception of their prestige, but because they are places where the sharpest thinking is given the freest rein, and where strong arguments may meet stronger ones, and where “error of opinion may be tolerated” because “reason is left free to combat it” and where joy and delight are generally found at the point of contact — mental or otherwise.