Are Conservatives More Tolerant than Liberals? September 29, 2010

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/08/09/Uncommon_Knowledge_Harvey_Mansfield

Is conservatism closer to the mission of the university than liberalism? Are conservatives more tolerant than liberals? Harvard government professor Harvey Mansfield defends his two assertions, arguing that while liberals expect conservatism to disappear, conservatives are "much more tolerant of people who disagree with them."

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Ivy League institutions as well as most colleges and universities in America today lean categorically to the left. Why? If academia cares so much about ethnic and gender diversity, why does it overlook intellectual diversity? Harvey Mansfield responds.

He also defends his position that conservatism is closer to the mission of the university than liberalism and asserts that conservatives are more tolerant than liberals. Finally, he describes why "sensitivity" on campus and in American culture is a type of soft despotism. - Hoover Institution

Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard. He is the author of translations and studies of political philosophers from Aristotle to Burke to Machiavelli to Tocqueville and more than a dozen books, including America's Constitutional Soul and the controversial Manliness.

Peter M. Robinson is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he writes about business and politics, edits Hoover's quarterly journal, the Hoover Digest, and hosts Hoover's television program, Uncommon Knowledge.