Read What President Obama Thinks About Sensitivity and Free Speech on Campus

President Obama traveled to Iowa on Monday with his education secretary, Arne Duncan, to talk to high-school students about college access and affordability. During the question-and-answer session, a student asked the president about an unnamed Republican presidential contender’s proposal to defund “politically biased colleges.”

In his answer, Mr. Obama touched on issues of sensitivity and free speech on college campuses. Watch the video below, followed by an edited transcript of his remarks. The relevant portion starts at 1:22:33.

The purpose of college is not, just as I said before, to transmit skills. It’s also to widen your horizons, to make you a better citizen, to help you to evaluate information, to help you make your way through the world, to help you be more creative. The way to do that is to create a space where a lot of ideas are presented and collide, and 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.

When I went to college, suddenly there were some folks who didn’t think at all like me. And if I had an opinion about something they’d look at me and say, “Well, that’s stupid.” And then they’d describe how they saw the world. And they might have had a different sense of politics. Or they might have a different view about poverty. Or they might have a different perspective on race. And sometimes their views would be infuriating to me. But it was because there was this space where you could interact with people who didn’t agree with you, and had different backgrounds than you, that I then started testing my own assumptions. And sometimes I changed my mind. Sometimes I realized, you know what, maybe I’d been too narrow-minded. Maybe I didn’t take this into account. Maybe I should see this person’s perspective. So that’s what college, in part, is all about.

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. I was just talking to a friend of mine about this. I’ve heard 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’ve got to 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.

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.