A conservative student announces to the class that his experience during his first semester in Duke’s Visions of Freedom Focus program dispelled prior concerns that he would be ostracized by his fellow students and penalized by his professors on account of his political beliefs. Instead of condemnation, he encountered spirited debate within an intellectually diverse community of friends.

In 64 B.C., during a time of great political unrest in Rome, Marcus Tullius Cicero ran for consul, the highest office in the land. His campaign faced long odds. He was not from one of the aristocratic families that made up the political establishment; outsiders rarely attained the consulship.