I personally find it very dangerous to be encouraging belief in obviously false ideas about reality. Even something as banal as young earth creationism I see as leading to moral lassitude–why try to make the world a better place if a wizard is going to wave his magic wand and make everything perfect someday?

He didn’t say the Mormon Church but rather religion in general:

With but few exceptions, colleges and universities have become value-free places where attitudes toward religion are neutral at best. Some faculty and administrators are powerful contributors to the forces that are driving religion to the margins of American society. Students and other religious people who believe in the living reality of God and moral absolutes are being marginalized.

I don’t think he is right about “value free places” though. Universities are powerful advocates of all sorts of secular values, most of which there are an overwhelming consensus for, and some which are of course rather controversial.

Comment by an attendee of the talk — thanks for the comments.

Once upon a time universities were convinced that certain moral propositions were actually true. Generally speaking, that is no longer the case, or we wouldn’t use such insipid terms as “value” in the first place.

Either way the answer to the question of “whose values?” is those that academia can make a good case that they are not properly speaking “values” at all, but rather moral imperatives, at least when conditioned on certain widely held fundamental propositions (pain and suffering are bad, for example).

I don’t see how this can be squared with universities’ responsibility to serve pluralistic student bodies. What makes Oaks’ particular brand of morality so special? What about the moral views of liberal Christians or Jews or Muslims or Buddhists or unbelievers? I don’t see how Oaks can realistically or reasonably argue that universities owe allegiance to his particular brand of morality, especially when they serve such a diverse population.

I wonder how GAs handle these occasions when speaking to mostly non-LDS people. It seems to me that it would pose a particular problem where their claims on deference from their listeners due to ecclesiastical authority (and the particular brand of uncritical deference that LDS GAs are accustomed to) are not longer operative. I have no doubt that these are highly intelligent, accomplished and capable individuals, but it concerns me in situations like the one Elder Christofferson will be in that they are not in the custom of being seriously challenged by people who are not frightened and submissive to their title.