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What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

OBAMA: The civil-rights movement happened because there was civil disobedience, because people were willing to get to go to jail, because there were events like Bloody Sunday. But it was also because the leadership of the movement consistently stayed open to the possibility of reconciliation and sought to understand the views, even views that were appalling to them of the other side.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Because there does seem to be a strain on some of these campuses of a kind of militant political correctness where you shut down the other side.

OBAMA: And I disagree with that. And, it's interesting. You know, I've now got, you know, daughters who — one is about to go to college — the other one's — you know, going to be on her way in a few years. And then we talk about this at the dinner table.

And I say to them, "Listen, if you hear somebody using a racial epithet, if you hear somebody who's anti-Semitic, if you see an injustice, I want you to speak out. And I want you to be firm and clear and I want you to protect people who may not have voices themselves. I want you to be somebody who's strong and sees themselves as somebody who's looking out for the vulnerable."

But I tell 'em — "I want you also to be able to listen. I don't want you to think that a display of your strength is simply shutting other people up. And that part of your ability to bring about change is going to be by engagement and understanding the viewpoints and the arguments of the other side." And so when I hear, for example, you know, folks on college campuses saying, "We're not going to allow somebody to speak on our campus because we disagree with their ideas or we feel threatened by their ideas —" you know, I think that's a recipe for dogmatism. And I think you're not going to be as effective. And so, but I want to be clear here 'cause, and it's a tough issue because, you know, there are two values that I care about.

I care about civil rights and I care about kids not being discriminated against or having swastikas painted on their doors or nooses hung — thinking it's a joke. I think it's entirely appropriate for — any institution, including universities, to say, "Don't walk around in blackface. It offends people. Don't wear a headdress and beat your chest if Native American students have said, you know, 'This hurts us. This bothers us." There's nothing wrong with that.

But we also have these values of free speech. And it's not free speech in the abstract. The purpose of that kind of free speech is to make sure that we are forced to use argument and reason and words in making our democracy work. And you know, then you don't have to be fearful of somebody spouting bad ideas. Just out-argue 'em, beat 'em.

Make the case as to why they're wrong. Win over adherents. That's how — that's how things work in — in a democracy. And I do worry if young people start getting trained to think that if somebody says something I don't like, if somebody says something that hurts my feelings that my only recourse is to shut them up, avoid them, push them away, call on a higher power to protect me from that. You know, and yes, does that put more of a burden on minority students or gay students or Jewish students or others in a majority that may be blind to history and blind to their hurt? It may put a slightly higher burden on them.

But you're not going to make the kinds of deep changes in society — that those students want, without taking it on, in a full and clear and courageous way. And you know, I tell you I trust Malia in an argument. If a knucklehead on a college campus starts talking about her, I guarantee you she will give as good as she gets.