How prepared are you to engage with moral and political controversies in our democracy?
This month’s book exhibit Pluralism on Display: Examining Divergent Perspectives challenges you to read outside your comfort zone, by bringing together reputable and highly cited intellectual perspectives on two hot-button issues.
- Where: first floor of the library
- When: throughout March
1. Is the American criminal justice system biased against black Americans, and if so, to what extent? If you’ve read Michelle Alexander, Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Baldwin, or Angela Davis, have you read Patrick Sharkey, James Forman Jr., John Pfaff, or Thomas Chatterton Williams?
2. How do you understand the contrasting claims of Israelis and Palestinians? If you’ve read Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, Benedict Anderson, Avi Shlaim, or Homi Bhabha, have you read Bernard Lewis, Efraim Karsh, Daniel Gordis, Alan Dershowitz, or Einat Wilf?
This exhibit is inspired by the research paper, Closed Classrooms? An Analysis of College Syllabi on Contentious Issues, published as a working paper on July 10, 2025, and in abridged form in National Affairs in its Winter 2026 issue.
The researchers analyzed a database of course syllabi to explore the extent to which scholarly debates are taught in the classroom around the following three issues: racial bias in the American criminal-justice system, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the ethics of abortion. They asked the question of whether “students are exposed to a broad spectrum of the most reputable and informed thinkers,” and concluded that “professors generally insulate their students from the wider intellectual disagreements that shape important controversies.”