George Will engages students on current events

Will visited campus as part of the Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture Series and spent an hour in the Whitley Auditorium beforehand to engage students who asked his views on the Iraq War, the 2008 presidential elections and professional baseball, of which Will is an avid enthusiast.

“My role is to clarify arguments, to find the nugget of principle at stake in arguments about contemporary things,” Will said in response to one question. “In every argument worth having, there is a nugget of principle.”

Will, 66, told the crowded auditorium that he has not picked a presidential candidate to support in the upcoming race for the White House. He has, however, ruled out one possibility.

“I will almost certainly vote for the Republican unless they nominate Fred Thompson, who strikes me as the silliest presidential candidate I’ve ever seen, and is evidence of a certain decadence in this nation,” Will said, describing the former U.S. senator and television actor as a “Bassett hound.”

These are some of the answers given to students:

In response to a question on a perceived liberal bias in media: “Journalism is, in some ways, a young person’s profession. And those attracted to it have to be young, idealistic and eager to change the world. Conservatism teaches that changing the world is more difficult than you think … Conservatives don’t share the kind of enthusiasm that sometimes send young people into journalism.”

Answering a question about the amount of cash spent on campaigns: “People this year are in an uproar that this may be the first billion dollar presidential campaign. Who cares? That’s approximately what we spend every year in the two months before Easter on candy. This country is swimming in money, and we spend a tiny amount on politics.”

Addressing a student concern about the lack of civility in today’s political discourse: “It may be in part because of new technologies. When you have cable television with its ravenous appetite for people to put on the air and fight with each other … you’re going to get to the bottom of the barrel of talent really fast.”

And Will’s observation on the record-breaking home run hit over the summer by San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds, an athlete at the center of debate over performance-enhancing drugs? The controversial record doesn’t matter because, “A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees) is going to blow past him in the record book anyway.” Will also said the home run ball that broke the record will eventually be worth what it took a worker in Costa Rica to make the actual equipment: $2.80.

Will, considered one of the nation’s foremost conservative voices,began writing a twice-weekly column for the Washington Post in 1974,and his syndicated work now appears in hundreds of newspapers acrossthe United States and Europe.  In 1976, he became a contributing editorfor Newsweek, where he continues to write a biweekly column for themagazine. Will won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1977 and alsoserves as a news analyst for ABC.

A recent nonprofit report found that Will reaches more than 21 millionreaders with a column printed on a regular basis in 328 daily Americannewspapers. That figure places him at the top of the list of the mostwidely read columnists in the nation.

An avid baseball fan, Will often talks about the sport in his columns,and he penned two books on the game: Men at Work: The Craft of Baseballand Bunts: Pete Rose, Curt Flood, Camden Yards and Other Reflections onBaseball.

Will has published many other works, including seven collections of hisnewspaper columns such as The Pursuit of Happiness and Other SoberingThoughts, The Pursuit of Virtue and Other Tory Notions, The MorningAfter: American Successes and Excesses 1981-1986 and With a Happy EyeBut … America and the World 1997-2002. Other works include Statecraftas Soulcraft: What Government Does, The New Season: A Spectator’s Guideto the 1988 Election and Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and theRecovery of Deliberative Democracy.

Will was born in Champaign, Illinois. He attended Trinity College,University of Oxford and Princeton University. Before becoming ajournalist, Will taught political philosophy at James Madison College,Michigan State University, and the University of Toronto. He has alsotaught at Harvard University.

The Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture Series, which brings some of thenation’s most accomplished writers and journalists to campus, isendowed by James Baird and his wife, Jane, of Burlington, N.C. ThePulitzer is the nation’s most prestigious award in journalism and theliberal arts.