Better stated: the professors presented the seminal thinkers as having the Truth, and challenged the collegians to choose among the greats.
If the only thinking done today is how you feel about someone’s skin color or what you do in your bedroom, we are almost done as a society.
Well that is a false dichotomy, if they really did. One had to be a Kantian or an Aristotlean and defend one or the other etc... but that is artificial.