Thursday: Wesleyan President Michael Roth to Discuss Campus "safe enough spaces" at RJ Julia Bookstore

Wesleyan RJ Julia Booksellers Presents

Michael S. Roth

Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatists Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, And Political Correctness on College Campuses

In Conversation with Roxanne J. Coady,

Founder, RJ Julia Booksellers

DATE & TIME: Thursday, September 26, 2019 at 7pm
LOCATION: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore, 413 Main Street, Middletown, CT 06457

From the president of Wesleyan University, a compassionate and provocative manifesto on the crises confronting higher education.

"A timely book on a fascinating topic. . . . Roth’s historical approach is useful and instructive."
—Sarah Carr, Washington Post

“In Safe Enough Spaces, Wesleyan President Michael Roth offers historical, sociological, and economic contexts for the free speech debates on campus. Pragmatism may be foolhardy in our hyperbolic time, but it is exactly what we need right now. Bravo!”
—Cathy N. Davidson, author of The New Education

In this bracing book, Michael S. Roth stakes out a pragmatist path through the thicket of issues facing colleges today to carry out the mission of higher education. With great empathy, candor, subtlety, and insight, Roth offers a sane approach to the noisy debates surrounding affirmative action, political correctness, and free speech, urging us to envision college as a space in which students are empowered to engage with criticism and with a variety of ideas.

Countering the increasing cynical dismissal—from both liberals and conservatives—of the traditional core values of higher education, this book champions the merits of different diversities, including intellectual diversity, with a timely call for universities to embrace boldness, rigor, and practical idealism.

Michael S. Roth is president of Wesleyan University and a historian, curator, and teacher. His previous books include Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters.

Located on Main Street in Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore is a place of inspiration, information, and excitement, and serves the Wesleyan University and Greater Middletown communities.

Managing partner RJ Julia Booksellers opened almost 30 years ago as an independent bookstore whose mission was, and is, to be a place where words matter, where writer meets reader, where the ambiance and selection and merchandising of books creates an atmosphere that is welcoming and presents the opportunity for discovery.  Having won several major awards nationally, statewide and locally, RJ Julia hosts over 300 events each year.