War & Peace Quote by Alfred Whitney Griswold

Griswold, a university president speaking from inside the institution that most often gets tasked with “protecting” young minds, flips the premise: the real protection isn’t a locked gate, it’s an open arena. The line is built like a calm verdict, not a rallying cry. “In the long run of history” does quiet but heavy work, shifting the argument away from whatever scandal of the week is driving calls to ban, purge, or disinvite. He’s telling administrators, trustees, and nervous publics: even if censorship wins headlines, it loses the century.

Pairing “censor” with “inquisitor” is the sharpest move. It drags modern, procedural respectability (“content guidelines,” “standards,” “decency”) into the shadow of moral tribunals. The subtext is accusation: today’s gatekeepers may think they’re being responsible, but history remembers them as busybodies with power.

Then he tightens the screws with “only sure weapon.” Not “best,” not “most ethical” - “sure,” as in reliable. That’s a bet on pedagogy over policing: bad ideas don’t die because they’re suppressed; they metastasize, gain glamour, and return with grievance baked in. “Better ideas” implies labor: evidence, argument, teaching, patience. It’s also a rebuke to intellectual laziness. If the answer to a bad idea is removal, maybe you don’t trust your community to think, or you don’t trust your own case to hold up.

Context matters: mid-century American universities were navigating loyalty tests, Cold War paranoia, and the temptation to confuse social order with truth. Griswold’s intent is to defend institutional courage - and to remind educators that their job is not to eliminate conflict, but to out-argue it.