Obama: All 'Points of View' Should Be Heard on Campuses

President Obama blasted political correctness on campus, saying the country's universities should create "a space where a lot of ideas are presented and collide," according to excerpts from a speech published by The New York Post.

"The way to do that is to create a space where a lot of ideas are presented and collide — where people are having arguments and people are testing each other’s theories, and over time people learn from each other because they’re getting out of their own narrow point of view and having a broader point of view," Obama said in comments at a town hall in Des Moines, Iowa on Monday.

Obama recalled his own college experience where he saw and listened to people who had a different view of the world that was "infuriating to me." But over time, with that ability to interact, Obama said he "started testing my own assumptions, and sometimes I changed my mind."

And that, he said, is what "college is all about."

"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 that person wouldn’t get funding — runs contrary to everything we believe about education," he said. "I mean, I guess that might work in the Soviet Union, but it doesn’t work here. That’s not who we are; that’s not what we’re about."

Obama slammed both liberal and conservative efforts to block books, ideas, speakers on campuses -- even the most controversial ones.

"I’ve heard of some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who, you know, 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," he said."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."