To the Editor:

Wide expanses of American ideas and culture presented at Bowdoin public events immeasurably enrich this community, wider I think than Harvard’s did when I was a doctoral student. Stephen Sondheim, David Brooks and Angela Davis have all given Bowdoin public lectures (not all the same night).

It’s not surprising that someone who wants to be in the good stead of their political party has extra time to reach for political plums and goes to great lengths to shape a report from a conservative think tank that undermines Bowdoin as a bastion of liberal idolatry.

When a former government official looking to return to office endorses it — a conservative former U.S. secretary of education, no less — what’s to lose?

Here’s “what’s to lose” in making Bowdoin an example of education that distorts other views.

What is extreme, costly and too common in American public discourse is the report’s method. President Barry Mills characterized it as “meanspirited and personal.” The method is also called “throwing under the bus.”

Small-minded, intolerant methods are destructive of community, shared purpose and humanity. “Throwing under the bus” is common in public discourse among liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans.

Just read the messaging from both sides, from Congress and the Legislature, to hear it in action: exaggerated finger-pointing, broad mischaracterizations and questions that don’t support preferred conclusions unasked.

The method of response to the other is rarely more thoughtful or factual, but additional finger-pointing.

The truth is not a tactic. The method people use when they don’t have it on their side is.

Even the report’s financer said the method was provocative. Discourse that vets the truth publicly, not secretly, has always served this country.

Bowdoin’s cultural offerings hint at a worldview something like this: “The rest of the world may not look like yours. The time you live in shapes what you see. Things will not always be the way they are now.”

If liberal arts educations don’t teach that, how will public discourse that doesn’t undermine community shared purpose ever be our common goal?

Susan Cook
Bath