Only four weeks into Fall Quarter, Northwestern has already seen a remarkable number of big-name speakers this year and there are even more in the works. In less than a month, NU has hosted Gwen Ifill as the Minow Lecturer in Communications, Michael Oren co-sponsored by Hillel, the Crown Family Center for Jewish Studies and Tannenbaum Chabad House, Tariq Ramadan hosted by the Buffett Center, and Dan Savage, co-sponsored by Rainbow Alliance and College Feminists. Tonight, former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean and former Republican senator of Pennsylvania Rick Santorum will speak at a co-sposored College Democrats/College Republicans debate. And it looks like the trend of well-known speakers will continue after tonight – President Schapiro announced last Thursday that Henry Louis “Skip” Gates will speak on campus in mid-February.
We commend all of the groups that have played a role in bringing these well-known and influential figures to campus. Some of these names are more recognizable to students and draw bigger crowds than others but regardless, the presence of these individuals speaking on our campus is a testament to the influence and prestige of the students, faculty and staff of NU. We offer the speakers a fairly high-profile location to speak and a presumably intelligent and analytical audience to listen to what they have to say. So what should NU aim to get out of these speaking engagements? We believe that the reason speakers come to universities like NU is because they want something more than a passive audience and because they don’t want to just entertain, but to promote some kind of dialogue that will last after their one or two hour event here is over.
For this reason, we believe that the measure of a speaker’s success should not be how many fliers a sponsoring group puts up or how many people pack into an auditorium to see them, but whether or not an event fosters dialogue on campus. Tonight, Dean and Santorum to debate politics prior to the midterm election. These politicians are both very well-known and their names (as well as the controversy associated with each) will inevitably draw a crowd to Pick-Staiger. But it will take something more to make this event successful as something more than just entertainment.
Both of these politicians are – for better or worse – celebrities. Anticipation of their joint presence on campus has already generated a bit of buzz. The conversations already sparked about this event and the level of name recognition of the speakers suggest that this event could turn out to have an ideal balance of celebrity and substance. But we believe the speakers, the event organizers and the members of the audience all have an obligation to maximize the potential of this event.
Don’t let yourself walk out of Pick-Staiger only having confirmed your pre-existing opinions. We’re not expecting you to shift your party loyalty or become an ardent partisan if you were politically ambivalent before. But use this event as an opportunity to think critically about the political issues facing our country. To this end, The Daily would like to offer some suggestions of topics that we would like to see discussed at the debate. The event organizers, in a recent letter to the editor claimed that the event will be “both partisan and bipartisan.” Both of these politicians have contributed their share to the existing partisan divide in this country, especially through the seemingly personal attacks each has mounted against presidents of the opposite party. Santorum has contributed to the increasingly abundant anti-Obama sentiment in America right now and Dean did his part to generate anti-Bush sentiment based on the Bush the person and not exclusively on his policies. We would like Dean and Santorum to comment on why such drastic polarization exists in American politics right now. We would like them to address topics related to the political climate in America and future of the government that rather than focusing on their individual preferences or hot topic issues that will cause heated arguments rather than promote a necessary discussion about the debilitating political environment that in many ways they exacerbate. We want to see both of them do something more than push their party’s agenda to the students that already share their sentiment and infuriate those of the opposite party. That would be entertainment: something to get everyone excited that would then be quickly forgotten.
As a member of the NU community, make these events about something more than isolated entertainment and give us all something to talk about.
