Please suggest good colleges for robust political debate

[Zinhead]

Of course, political debate is getting nastier, probably because it is increasingly identity*-based, rather than policy-based. When politics is identity-based, fact and rigorous debate go out the window when people see the other side as a threat to their being, rather than just someone with a different idea that may be worth consideration.

Yep, that is pretty much what happens when society moves from an honor or dignity based culture to one based on victim-hood. This trends was discussed in the following Atlantic piece.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/

Our current campus based victimhood culture has lead to Oppression Olympics in which various compete to see which is the most aggrieved as illustrated at a “Students of Color” conference at UC Irvine.

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/30436/

The crux of the debate centered around the conference theme: “Fighting Anti-Blackness.” Apparently it was not communicated to students that the conference would have a particular theme this year. At the event, held at UC Irvine, students of different minority groups began arguing when it became known that the conference would focus almost exclusively on discrimination against the African American community.

In one of the larger workshops, one of the students raised a question about why the only issues being discussed were those involving anti-blackness, prompting an African-American student to respond that black students are the most oppressed, to which a Muslim student made a comment about her people being bombed in the Middle East, according to Alvarez.

“I am very unhappy about how this conference was ran. There needs to be accountability for the trauma some of the organizers made. And I didn’t appreciate my workshop being cancelled,” wrote UCLA student Robert Gardner. “… It was really hurtful to have other marginalized identities silenced because a small fringe of organizers decided that their oppressions are more important (talk about Oppression Olympics. And yes, I am black and the majority of black folkx disagreed with the notion that the rally was anti-black. So the organizers were in the minority and did not represent the views of most of us).”

In any case, if the OP wants a robust diversity political debate, one must look for a large institution that attracts a variety of students. Schools like Amherst or other northeastern LAC’s don’t offer that as they are effectively mono-cultures despite their claims to be diverse.