Charlie Peters, editor of The Washington Monthly, said his college education was valuable because of the instructors who taught him to be "skeptical of conventional liberalism while remaining loyal to its basic belief in freedom, fair play and generosity to the down and out ... skepticism of conventional wisdom of all kinds ... the importance of trying to strip away the barriers of pride and pretense that keep us from really talking to one another, to be willing to acknowledge instead of concealing one's confusion and anxiety."

His education, he said, was a "journey from being lost to finding the guiding principle of my life: No matter how absurd and futile the effort might seem, I had to keep trying to tell the truth as I saw it."