President Barack Obama on Monday waded into the debate on political correctness saturating American colleges, forcefully rejecting the idea of tailoring curriculum or cutting funding based on the sensitivities of students.

During a town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, Obama described liberal college students—the kind of students who ban speakers from campus due to their political beliefs, at least—as “coddled.”

“I've heard of 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,” he said, according to The Hill.

“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 views.”

The culture of political correctness itself has generated a massive reaction, from liberal journalists, comedians, and researchers.

The debate is complicated, but, at the most basic level, those participating fall into two groups: critics who believe a rise in political correctness has a chilling effect on speech and/or minimizes the effectiveness of a college education in exposing students to wide range of challenging viewpoints, and proponents who argue that offensive, abusive, or “triggering” viewpoints add little value and heighten the risk of trauma for participants in conversations, debates, and classes. (In recent years, several colleges banned or withdrew invitations to speakers due to their political beliefs.)

Obama’s comments came after he was asked a question about whether the government should cut funding to schools with political biases—a notion Obama quickly rejected:

”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,” Obama said.

”The idea that you’d have somebody in government making a decision about what you should think ahead of time or what you should be taught, and if it’s not the right thought or idea or perspective or philosophy, that that person would be—that they wouldn’t get funding runs contrary to everything we believe about education,” he said.

”I mean, I guess that might work in the Soviet Union, but it doesn’t work here. That’s not who we are. That’s not what we’re about.”

Comedians have recently taken up the debate as well. “I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t go near colleges. They’re so PC,’” Jerry Seinfeld said. “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist’; ‘That’s sexist’; ‘That’s prejudiced.‘ They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.” Speaking with Vanity Fair at the Toronto International Film Festival, however, Sarah Silverman disagreed. “I think it’s a sign of being old if you’re put off by that,” she said. “You have to listen to the college-aged because they lead the revolution.”