<p>Hi, I'm a college senior looking at selective small liberal arts colleges (mostly in the Northeast). I really enjoy attending lectures by distinguished guest speakers, but I've had a hard time quantifying the number of such speakers at any given school (looking at campus event calendars offers too small a sample size). Everywhere claims that they have lots of speakers, but are there really as many speakers at a rural college like Williams as there are at a place in Boston like Tufts? How should I go about finding data on this to compare?</p>
<p>No, there won’t be due to the simple fact that Tufts is so much larger. However, quantifying is the wrong way to go about it. I go to Pomona and having 10-15 guest lectures a week is overwhelming as is; going to a school with 40-50 won’t really do much in terms of how many I can actually attend.</p>
<p>Why not take a look at the weekly calendar of events for schools you’re considering? See if you like the look of what’s available. If one school “only” has 10 lectures a week but 5 of them sound interesting, that’s a better bet than a school with 40 lectures a week, none of which appeals to you. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that there are options outside of the school itself, e.g. in the Boston area there are a ton of speakers at the Harvard bookstore. Of course, there are a ton of speakers at a lot of different venues in the Boston area. </p>
<p>And yes, Tufts is a great choice in this regard. My older D is a junior at Tufts and has heard a lot of amazing speakers, some quite distinguished, others not as well known but excellent lecturers.</p>
<p>I don’t know the answer to the question, but my daughter wrote an article where she mentioned she felt she got an entire additional education at Brown because of the speakers she was able to see, like Obama and Hillary Clinton before they were running. (If they let the speakers actually speak anymore, lol to recent events)</p>
<p>I second looking at the events calendar albeit with the caveat that departmental sponsored guests may not appear there. This is less likely to be an issue at a LAC which tend not to have rigidly defined departments, but may be relevant at a school like Harvard or U Mass-Amherst. </p>
<p>Based on my experiences at a rural LAC that was connected to a suburban, prestigious university, I would assume that more rural schools, particularly smaller, more poorly endowed ones, tend to have a much harder time attracting prominent speakers. Of course this is a gross generalization (Williams likely has a much easier time getting well known policy makers than the large, suburban, easy to access, University of Oklahoma). </p>
<p>To the person who mentioned the huge number of speakers at Pomona, I think the Claremonts are somewhat atypical among LACs in the number of prominent speakers they bring in.</p>
<p>you can go to brown for lectures but the students will silence and shout down anyone who does not agree with them. so, at some schools fear of letting a different point of view be herad scares students.</p>
<p>Many schools get some excellent speakers. My D is at Lafayette College and last year they had Tony Blair, Jane Goodall, and Jimmy Carter speak on campus. In addition, professors and less famous speakers give talks on campus as well.</p>
<p>I’d suggest you pick out the schools that fit your needs and interests first and when you are doing more detailed research or are on campus visiting, you can ask about recent speakers.</p>
<p>Claremont McKenna has something called the Athaneum. Tons of incredible speakers, famous and not as famous.</p>
<p>The other thing to think about is access. I went to a small LAC and when Chelsea Clinton came to speak at my campus (partially because of her mother’s run for office), it was pretty easy to get in the room and I got to meet her and speak with her. Now I go to a large research univeristy, and of course the speakers it attracts are better - John McCain and Barack Obama shared a stage here in early 2008. But the students in the room were chosen by lottery; I was not chosen, and ended up sitting on the lawn with hundreds of students watching the event on a JumboTron. Still a lot of fun and enriching, but not the same as being there.</p>
<p>The difference is mostly departmental and school - in my school within the university I’ve got to meet and speak with some amazing people within my field (as a doctoral student) that wouldn’t go to my LAC, probably.</p>
<p>As for the Brown controversy, let’s be clear.</p>
<p>1) Speakers are usually paid for their appearances, so the Brown students were concerned because a speaker who had policies they believed were racist and harmful was getting paid out of their student fees.</p>
<p>2) Speaking at a school - especially one as prestigious as Brown - is an honor, and perhaps the Brown students involved did not want the speaker in question to have that honor.</p>
<p>3) The students were exercising their right to free speech. Was their choice correct or honorable or respectful? Some would say no; I have no opinion either way. But despite people’s misgivings about what the Brown students did, they WERE exercising their right to free speech, even if their free speech disrupted someone else’s free speech. Booing and heckling people whose policies one finds repugnant is a pretty time-honored way of expressing one’s opinions. The students did not want to dialogue with Kelly. They did not want to hear a “different point of view,” because they viewed that point of view to be against their values in a heinous way.</p>
<p>And, most importantly</p>
<p>4) One of the administrators explicitly said that he had never seen anything like this in the 15 years he had been at Brown. So it’s not like it’s something that students do all the time, zobroward; this was obviously a special/exceptional case.</p>
<p>juillet
brown students showed both a lack of maturity and reinforced the spoiled children persona that many see in them. those students had every right to not agree with the speaker and they could have listened and asked questions later or not attended at all. they had no right to shut him down, (the legality of what they did is not in question, you should not confuse freedoms and proper avenues of debate and learning)other then the fact they fear someone has a different perspective or an audience member may learn something from listening to the speaker.
the brown students childish behavior not only hurts their on personal reputations but, they embarrassed the entire school. and it saddens me that they so fear listening to someone they do not agree with … isn’t that what an liberal arts education is all about?</p>
<p>Just to throw a wrench into this conversation, sometimes colleges in rural areas spend more on speakers because there’s not much else to do and it helps their reputations, gives them publicity, and is a bonus for their students. My daughter’s college is in the middle of nowhere but is known for it’s quality of speakers overall and its’ graduation speakers in particular. Looking at their events calendar might help, but I wouldn’t choose a college based on that.</p>