The Courage to Talk: How Elon University Found Calm in a Year of Campus Chaos
In the years since Hamas’s October 7 attack, America’s universities have become moral barometers, and many have failed the test. At Columbia, encampments replaced classrooms. At Harvard, statements multiplied while courage evaporated. At Elon University, a small private college in North Carolina, something different happened: people talked.
A recent feature in The Forward praised Elon as one of the few campuses where Jewish students felt secure and respected after October 7. The Anti-Defamation League gave Elon an “A” in its inaugural campus antisemitism report card - one of only two institutions nationwide to earn that distinction. Yet Elon did not achieve that success through bureaucratic controls or ideological policing. It did so by cultivating a culture of conversation and trust rather than fear and compliance.
That culture was not inevitable. In the 1990s, Jewish students at Elon struggled for recognition and fought for funding to hold Shabbat dinners, while the school’s mascot—the “Fighting Christian”—symbolized a very different kind of campus identity. Its transformation into one of the nation’s most dialogical universities shows that institutional character can change with intention.
While elite institutions reached reflexively for bureaucracy, Elon leaned in on dialogue. Faculty organized open forums and teach-ins about Israel and Gaza. Administrators resisted the temptation to moralize or issue sweeping pronouncements. When controversy erupted over a Palestinian human-rights speaker, Elon refused to cancel; instead, it hosted dinner discussions and reflection sessions. Students protested, sometimes passionately, but within a framework that prized discourse over denunciation.
The university also made a crucial definitional choice. It adopted the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism—a narrower, speech-protective standard—rather than the more expansive IHRA definition that some universities use to restrict expression. The result was not moral relativism, but moral confidence: the conviction that open exchange, not administrative decree, is the best path toward understanding.
The outcome was notable. Elon avoided the chaos that engulfed peer institutions. Students with opposing convictions shared spaces and, even amid tension, kept talking.
President Connie Ledoux Book has been clear about what the university is trying to do: “You do want a dynamic campus where we’re being challenged with ideas,” she explained, “but when speech is at its worst, a community should reject it.” Vice President for Student Life Jon Dooleye was more succinct: “We really want to just keep our students talking with each other.”
It appears that the ethos of deliberation, not discipline, defines Elon’s approach. The university maintains a formal Speakers’ Corner—a designated area where students may protest or demonstrate without prior approval, provided they avoid hazards or disruption. Larger events can be registered quickly through a transparent process. These are guardrails, not gags: procedural fairness instead of ideological control.
Political friction at Elon is treated as a civic opportunity, not a crisis to be managed. In spring 2025, Students for Peace and Justice held a peaceful campus walk, while others gathered for reflection after conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death. Elon permitted both and kept order. No encampments, no barricades, no arrests—though some protested. The same principle extends beyond politics. Elon supports robust identity-based organizations from the Black Student Union to the Gender & LGBTQIA Center while ensuring they remain part of a shared civic fabric. The award-winning Elon News Network holds administrators accountable and models debate through reporting rather than disruption.
Elon’s success underscores what higher education must relearn: viewpoint diversity is not optional; it is foundational to the pursuit of truth. Universities exist to host the contest of ideas, not to curate ideological comfort. As I argued in “Seven Theses for Viewpoint Diversity,” intellectual pluralism rests on humility; the recognition that truth is refined through argument, not decree. Universities cannot insulate students from error; they must teach them to reason through it. That requires disagreement, not discipline.
Organizations like Heterodox Academy have built on these principles, promoting open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement. Their research shows that students exposed to divergent ideas develop empathy and civic resilience. Elon’s willingness to tolerate conflict while maintaining civility demonstrates that a university can be both safe and open if its leaders trust dialogue over regulation. By rejecting ideological litmus tests, hosting controversial speakers, and emphasizing structured conversation, Elon has modeled the restraint and trust that true pluralism requires.
Still, Elon’s success has limits. The university’s environment is unusually conducive to calm. It sits in Alamance County, North Carolina, not in Boston, New York, or Berkeley, where activism and media attention amplify every provocation. Its suburban setting insulates it from the external networks that drive many campus confrontations. Its demographics also help: Elon is 77 percent white and 1–2 percent international, reducing the global political frictions that more diverse campuses face. The school is primarily undergraduate, with about 7,100 undergrads and fewer than 900 graduate students, sparing it from the ideological hierarchies that dominate research universities.
Yet silence is not always evidence of concord. As Elon News Network observed in March 2024, “Speakers’ Corner is virtually always empty. The campus is too.” The article notes that visible student activism is rare, and many students prefer private advocacy over public demonstration. Elon’s designated forum for spontaneous debate often goes unused—suggesting that the absence of protest may reflect reticence more than unity.
The university also retains a “safety-risk” clause, allowing administrators to restrict protests deemed dangerous or disruptive. That discretion is understandable but not immune to abuse. The line between stewardship and control is fragile, and the true test of Elon’s model will come when moral controversy or outside pressure tempts leaders to overreact.
Even so, Elon’s modesty is a virtue. It lacks a massive endowment or research empire to protect. Its tuition-driven structure gives leaders a direct stake in preserving community trust. That vulnerability has become a strength: Elon understands that moral authority must be earned, not asserted.
Its model cannot be cloned, but its principles can—and should—be applied elsewhere. Campuses must invest in programs that teach disagreement and deliberation: forums, mediation initiatives, and civic workshops. Groups like the Constructive Dialogue Institute show that structured conversation can reduce polarization. Not every offensive remark requires investigation; bureaucratic interventions should be rare, rule-bound, and transparent. As Yuval Levin has declared, institutions thrive when leaders act as stewards rather than performers. Universities should also evaluate intellectual heterogeneity in hiring, curricula, and programming. The Harvard faculty statement on free expression was a welcome start, but implementation matters more than intent—and Harvard was filled with empty sentiments.
Above all, leadership must model courage. Presidents and deans must show that condemning antisemitism and defending free inquiry are not mutually exclusive. A university that fears its students cannot educate them; a university that fears controversy cannot serve democracy.
Elon’s experience offers a crucial lesson: the health of higher education—and of democracy itself—depends not on speech policing, but on civic trust. The goal is not to eliminate offense; it is to cultivate the resilience to withstand it. America’s campuses should be places where students argue passionately, even uncomfortably, without fearing institutional reprisal. Elon shows this remains possible when leaders resist the reflex to control and instead choose conversation.
Our universities do not need more codes or compliance offices. They need resolution, and they need humility. And they need the will to talk when silence feels safer.
The question is whether higher education leaders have the courage to live by that ideal.
