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As I dig through mounds of emails left unread after traveling for much of the past two weeks, I come across an (subscription required) in the Chronicle of Higher Education regarding a teacher’s thoughts after the death of one of her students:

I could say that Chuck’s death reminded me that my work touches lives, but I suppose I always knew that. What I’d failed to remember was the reciprocity of teaching, that indeed my students can and should teach me something. As a writing teacher, I am expected to help students find and use their voices. But I am supposed to get something out of it, too, something more than a thanks or the satisfaction of a job well done. I am one of the beneficiaries of those voices, and they inform and contribute to my own.

As aggressive as ����ֱ�� may be in defending free speech, at the core of the philosophy of free speech is a very beautiful idea: humility. None of us is omniscient and we must at all times recognize that wisdom can arise from unexpected sources (this is a topic we expand on great detail in the opening of our Guide to Free Speech on Campus). Professors who remember that their students present a constant opportunity for them to learn and are not merely inductees to be reformed to a “correct” way of thinking better represent the true spirit of both liberty and education. If more professors, students, and administrators approached the views of others with humility and a willingness to learn through the process of debate and discussion we would see far fewer of the types of abuses ����ֱ�� fights every day.