While unveiling a new college affordability plan in Des Moines, Iowa, on Monday, President Obama poked fun at Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson's comments about extreme liberal colleges and also said left-leaning students shouldn't be "coddled" from opposing views, reported Breitbart.
Over the summer, Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who has soared to second place in the presidential polls, suggested the Department of Education should monitor colleges and withhold funding if they are found to be engaging in extreme political bias.
"The other function I would give to the Department of Educations is monitoring our institutions of higher learning - colleges and universities - for extreme political bias," he said in June, reported The Des Moines Register. "If it exists, they get no federal funding."
Without mentioning Carson by name, a student at the town hall meeting asked the president's opinion about his comments.
"I didn't hear this candidate say that," Obama said. "I have no idea what that means, and I suspect he doesn't either."
"The idea that you'd have somebody in government making a decision about what you should think ahead of time, or what you should be taught, and if it's not the right thought or idea or perspective or philosophy that they wouldn't get funding runs contrary to everything we believe about education," he said, reported Buzzfeed.
"I guess that might work in the Soviet Union, but it doesn't work here," he added.
The point of college is to "widen your horizons" and engage different points of view, Obama said, recalling his college years when he would often become infuriated by people with opposing views, but nonetheless, kept an open mind.
But Obama noted that liberal colleges and students also have their own flaws that need addressing.
"It's not just sometimes folks who are mad that colleges are too liberal that have a problem. Sometimes there are folks on college campuses who are liberal and maybe even agree with me on a bunch of issues who sometimes aren't listening to the other side. And that's a problem, too," he said, reported The Daily Caller.
"I've heard of some college campuses where they don't want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative. Or they don't want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans, or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. I gotta tell you, I don't agree with that either. I don't agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view."
Some colleges have been criticized lately for including trigger warnings for course material, creating safe spaces on public campuses and for conducting boycotts of prospective campus speakers, such as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, The Hill notes.
"Anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with them. But you shouldn't silence them by saying, 'You can't come because I'm too sensitive to hear what you have to say.' That's not the way we learn either," Obama said.
