Pepperdine School of Public Policy Senior Fellow Pete Peterson

America’s Universities: Hope for Free Speech on Campus?

Pete Peterson is the dean of Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy (SPP). He speaks and writes widely on the topic of “viewpoint diversity” in higher education, and has hosted a number of public panel discussions on the topic with conservative faculty across the country. SPP has become known nationally as one of America’s few graduate policy/politics programs to welcome speakers and faculty from both sides of the aisle, and he’ll argue for why this form of “diversity” is so important in the preparation of citizen leaders.

Peterson was the first executive director of the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement at the School. In 2008, he developed the organization’s annual Public Engagement Grant Program, which has provided over $400,000 in grants over the last several years to dozens of municipal governments across California. Peterson has co-created and currently co-facilitates the training seminar, “Public Engagement: The Vital Leadership Skill in Difficult Times”, a program that has been attended by over 1,000 municipal officials, and he also co-created and co-facilitates the seminar, “Gov 2.0: What Public Officials Need to Know.”

In this timely talk, Peterson will highlight the challenges conservative students and faculty face on many college campuses, but also the exciting new initiatives he’s seeing in “red” and even “purple” states like Florida, Tennessee, and North Carolina, to promote greater freedom of thought.