Dottie Lamm Quotes

One of the reasons I came to Berkeley was because I saw so many students of all different colors speaking so many different languages and ferociously presenting all these different views. I thought, this is the 21st century and I want to be here!

The goal of higher education should be to champion the airing of all honest viewpoints. Nothing less is acceptable.

We've known for a long time, and I think culturally we've accepted, that diversity is an important thing in the work of knowledge.

Because we are a democracy, there will be “winners” and “losers” on policy issues and curriculum decisions. But if the different perspectives have been given full and fair hearing and if every effort has been made to protect the conscience of all parents and students, then even those who may “lose” on a particular policy will most likely remain supporters of the public schools.

You want schools to teach reading and writing. But you also want schools to reflect who you are and your values.

If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers.

This is an increasingly diversifying society, and people are coming into much closer contact with each other than they ever did. I find that a problem for a university, because bumping up against people who disagree with you is fundamental to the creation of new knowledge. And so universities can't go silent. You can't have a place where it's not permitted to make a certain kind of argument. But you can have a place which forbids epithets to be thrown at people.

Brown’s core value of promoting the free and open exchange of ideas is bedrock to our capacity to fulfill our mission as a university. This value applies not only when ideas are agreeable and aligned with our own. Protecting the right to free expression and promoting open discourse is even more essential when ideas are divergent, abhorrent or even hurtful.

Of all forms of diversity that should be celebrated on university campuses, none is more important than supporting, nurturing, and promoting intellectual diversity.

I really respond to diversity, a broader landscape, with actors of different ages and races and backgrounds.

Hawaii is a special place because we have a very diverse population there, who are very respectful and tolerant of those who have differing opinions and different views.

Fortunately, human beings are remarkably diverse models to work from.

I grew up in Manhattan, and I've always had all kinds of people around me. I've always had a very 'live and let live' point of view.

In America our public schools are intended to be religiously neutral. Our teachers and schools are neither to endorse nor to inhibit religion. I believe this is a very good thing.

Let a hundred flowers bloom.

We cannot afford to exclude any vision - any way of looking at the world - that human beings have invented for ourselves.

Freedom and diversity of thought do not threaten society.

Nowhere is it more important — or more difficult — to address our growing ideological and religious diversity than in the public schools. Not only are our schools a key battleground in the culture wars, they are the principal institution charged with enabling Americans to live with our deepest differences. If we fail in our schools to teach and model the rights and responsibilities that flow from the 1st Amendment, then surely we endanger the future of our daring experiment in religious liberty.

I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive of religious belief, and I'm all for that! One of the things that in fact has driven me in my life, is the feeling that this is one of the great social functions of science--to free people from superstition. But I don't think that that attitude of mine should control the high school curriculum. My own personal motivation is irrelevant, just as the motivations of religious people should not affect high school curricula: Science should be taught not in order to support religion and not in order to destroy religion--science should be taught simply ignoring religion.

We are a people of many races, many faiths, creeds, and religions. I do not think that the men who made the Constitution forbade the establishment of a State church because they were opposed to religion. They knew that the introduction of religious differences into American life would undermine the democratic foundations of this country. What holds for adults holds even more for children, sensitive and conscious of differences. I certainly hope that the Board of Education will think very, very seriously before it introduces this division and antagonism in our public schools.

When the candidate must seek support from all levels of his community, his political creed will be tolerance, not hatred; equal protection for every minority, not discrimination.

Liberty resides in the rights of those people whose views we find most odious.

The students, faculty and administration are reminded of the pluralism of religious beliefs. Specifically, that which is important and meaningful to some, may be offensive and repugnant to others. Each person is reminded to be conscious of and respect the sensitivities of others.

In the Islamic Republic, the rights of the religious minorities are respected.

We shall take the Scopes case to the United States Supreme Court if necessary to establish that a teacher may tell the truth without being thrown in jail.