So last night on Twitter I was talking about the student movement, and someone said they were troubled that “this movement sometimes seems very leftist but not very liberal.” I asked them to say more about that, and they said this:
“I see an activist culture marked by adherence to a fairly rigid, totalizing ideology that does not fundamentally value opposing viewpoints, which I see as an essential liberal value. Although I largely agree with structural critiques of racism, I do not see them as providing the only legitimate framework for discussing the intersection of race and power; I do not like when structural definitions of racism are treated as the final, undeniable word on the subject. I think that the notion that airing noxious ideas can be considered as “violence” fundamentally clashes with liberal views on freedom of speech.”
There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s get at it.
I want to come back to the “rigid, totalizing ideology” bit, but let’s put that aside for a second and talk about the idea that today’s activists don’t “fundamentally value opposing viewpoints.” I’d take issue with that on a few grounds.
For starters, I’d say that the extent to which most people “value opposing viewpoints” is often ridiculously overstated. Most people, in and out of organizing, surround themselves with more or less like-minded individuals, and most of the time nobody finds that fact particularly troubling. It’s true that people vary in how much they value, or maybe “prioritize” is a better word, the expression of opposing viewpoints, but that’s not quite the same thing.
Do student activists today value diversity of opinion less than most people? I’m honestly not sure how to answer that. Usually when that question is asked the activists aren’t being compared to a typical person on the street, to start with — they’re being measured against an ideal, often an academic ideal, of freedom of expression. And in that context I think it’s worth noting two things. First, as I suggested in my Rolling Stone piece last week, it’s easy to value diversity of opinion as an abstract concept when you hold the reins of power in a particular institution. Tolerance for dissent and tolerance for democracy are two different things, and there’s quite a bit more of the former than the latter on the American campus today.
And frankly, there’s not as much of the former as I’d like. Another argument I made in the RS piece was that student activists are frequently attacked as enemies of freedom of expression when all they’re doing is speaking their minds, while restrictions on students’ speech often go unchallenged.
But let’s circle back to the question of whether today’s activists have a “rigid, totalizing ideology.” Certainly the campus movements of today have plenty of shibboleths and articles of faith — if you use the term “reverse racism” in an organizing meeting these days, you’re likely to catch hell. But that’s always been the case, in my experience as a historian and a former activist — movement politics tend to foster ideological conformity and ideological litmus tests. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is a whole other discussion, but it’s certainly a thing.
And I also think it’s easy to underestimate, from the outside, just how much intense debate goes on within activist environments. When I spend time with student organizers, I see no shortage of disagreement within their ranks. And it’s just my subjective impression, but my own sense is that student activists are better at disagreeing without rancor or enmity than they were ten or fifteen years ago. The current movement truly is an intersectional movement, which means that people are coming together from a wide variety of backgrounds, experiences, and ideological commitments, and coming together, typically, with an understanding that effective organizing means finding common ground.
I know that all sounds very abstract, so let me make it a bit more concrete. Most summers, I spend a week at the National Student Congress of the US Student Association, a student-led, student-run organization of activist undergrads. I do workshops, I advise on logistics, I help chair meetings. And what I see these days when I go to those meetings is a tremendous amount of mutual respect among people coming from very different perspectives within student organizing. And part of how they build that mutual respect is by agreeing to honor each others’ concerns. What to an outsider can look like “PC” — negotiated safe spaces, ground rules on personal pronouns, policies on how to applaud a speaker — is actually a form of diplomatic etiquette, designed to smooth the rough spots of social interaction so that the gathered students can do the hard work of crafting coalition without shattering into a million antagonistic factions.
Do students invest a lot of energy into those kinds of rules these days? Yep, they do. Can the rules be bewildering to the outsider? Sure. But they’re not arbitrary, and they’re not all that opaque if you take the time to understand them. And they allow people within an organizing environment to come together at great personal risk, to make themselves vulnerable in ways that participants in more narrowly-defined organizing spaces rarely have to do.
So. That’s my reply to your first sentence. On to the second.
On the question of how we understand racism and antiracism, I agree that there are a variety of legitimate ways to approach the issue, but I will say — as I’ve said before — that whatever vocabulary we use, we need to grapple with underlying structural questions, and we shouldn’t use definitional quibbling as an excuse to avoid doing so.
I’d also say that it’s okay for movements to have unifying ideologies, even where those ideologies exclude potential allies. the bigger the tent, the more time you spend keeping the tent from collapsing, and it’s legitimate for organizers to say that unless you agree with their basic premises, it’s probably for the best if you don’t invite yourself to work with them.
Can that kind of cocooning of opinion go too far? Absolutely. But it’s also easy to get derailed and dispirited by trying to include everyone, to be all things to all people. It’s a hard question, and my impulse is generally to say that it’s legitimate to set your boundaries where you feel you need to set them.
Okay. Last sentence. Home stretch.
You write that “the notion that airing noxious ideas can be considered as ‘violence’ fundamentally clashes with liberal views on freedom of speech.”
Okay. Here’s my deal on that. Calling someone’s speech “violent” is itself a speech act. It’s a rhetorical device. It’s not an act of censorship, and it’s not a declaration of hostility to freedom of expression. It’s debate. Robust, aggressive debate.
I suspect that there are some unresolved inconsistencies in my position on this, by the way. I’m quick to criticize when someone calls student activist speech “illiberal” or “bullying” or “censoring,” because I believe that it’s improper to characterize legitimate speech acts as somehow beyond the pale. But are the people who use that language themselves illiberal? Are they themselves censors? By my own principles, they can’t be, because they’re just engaging in rhetorical combat of their own.
But having said that, I’ll say this: When a First Amendment scholar is told her speech is an act of “racial violence,” that’s free speech. When that scholar responds that to describe her speech that way is an act of “censorship,” that’s free speech too. But the second statement troubles me quite a bit more than the first.
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December 22, 2015 at 6:28 pm
Ilya Lozovsky
Great post. But I have to quibble a bit. You say that describing someone’s speech as “violent” is simply rhetoric. But isn’t the intent of such rhetoric to render the speech unacceptable, because violence is unacceptable?
When I say “Your speech is violent,” I’m not just saying “You’re wrong.” I’m saying “Your speech has no place in this debate.” It’s not a big stretch from that to “You shouldn’t be allowed to say that here.”
No?
December 22, 2015 at 6:51 pm
agrumer
But what’s the goal of describing certain language as violence?
It seems to me that actual violence — shooting, punching, stabbing, etc — is generally prohibited by law, and not protected by the First Amendment or other free speech laws. (Pretty much everywhere except a war zone or a boxing ring, and the boxing ring only allows punching.) Describing certain language as violent seems like the first step in getting it defined as something prohibitable.
December 22, 2015 at 6:55 pm
Angus Johnston
It’s a good question, Ilya.
Here’s what I’d say about that. Yes, “your speech is violent” is edging towards “your speech has no place in this debate.” And yes, “your speech has no place in this debate” is edging towards “you shouldn’t be allowed to say that here.” And yes, “you shouldn’t be allowed to say that here” is edging towards “you shouldn’t be allowed to say that.” And yes, saying “you shouldn’t be allowed to say that” is an embrace — at least a rhetorical embrace — of censorship.
But there’s a distinction to be drawn at each link in that chain, and I think each of those distinctions is important.
Sometimes when people say that a speech act is “violent” they mean that it should be outlawed. Other times they mean that it caused them pain, or put them in danger. And even speech that is entitled to legal protection can cause real harm, and expose people to real danger. Speech that encourages or normalizes violence can legitimately be called violent speech, even when that speech is protected by law.
When people endorse censorship, I’m happy to oppose them. But assertive, aggressive, hyperbolic speech is not censorship, and it’s wrong to claim that it is.
December 22, 2015 at 7:02 pm
Angus Johnston
Avram, I mostly replied to your question in my reply to Ilya, but I’ll say one more thing.
In the post I linked in my final paragraph above, this same question came up. I noted in comments there that former Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau had recently referred to a critical letter from student activists as a “violent verbal attack” on him.
Now, I don’t think that Birgeneau was suggesting that the students who had criticized him should be censored, or that their speech was unlawful. He was expressing indignation, engaging in criticism, as is his right. If we’re going to defend his right to engage in such hyperbole — even as we may choose to criticize it, or mock it — we have to do the same for others.
And I think it’s important as well to note that Birgeneau’s “violent verbal attack” line was not widely seen as a call to censorship or as an illiberal act of hostility to the students’ rights of free expression. Why? Because Birgeneau is an old rich white guy, and a former university chancellor. He is presumptively a supporter of free speech — even when he’s ordering police to conduct mass arrests or beat up protesters.
I just want to extend people without Birgeneau’s power the same courtesy.
December 25, 2015 at 1:29 pm
wobblywheel
AJ, two points of disagreement with your post. One, you write, “it’s easy to value diversity of opinion as an abstract concept when you hold the reins of power in a particular institution.”
But, who holds the reins of power at the 21st century American university? My experience at multiple universities has been that it goes something like (in order from most to least powerful groups):
1) trustees, donors, and admins
2) revenue-generating undergrads
3) revenue-generating professors
4) non-revenue-generating professors
5) grad students + all other staff
Student-protesters are, by definition, in slot #2. Whereas, the group which is most consistently vocal about academic free speech tends to be academics in the humanities and humanistic social science disciplines — i.e. slot #4. I get the sense from your sentence which I’ve quoted that you must disagree with the power hierarchy I’ve presented. I’d be curious if in fact you do disagree with it, and if so why.
Two, you write: “Calling someone’s speech “violent” is itself a speech act. It’s a rhetorical device. It’s not an act of censorship, and it’s not a declaration of hostility to freedom of expression. It’s debate. Robust, aggressive debate.”
I don’t think you’re totally wrong, here. Just more than halfway wrong. The problem you’re overlooking is that the word “violence” is criminological in character. “Your speech-act was violent” = “being violent is a crime. You could get in trouble. You better back off if you don’t want to get in trouble.” This is not debate. This is bullying.
In the rhetoric of trigger warning advocates, the word “trauma” functions very similarly, because that word is medical in character. The word’s power stems from its association with a medical, and therefore legal, realm. “Your syllabus traumatized me” = “Trauma is a medical ailment. You or your institution could get sued. You better do what I say if you don’t want to get in trouble.” Again: not debate. It’s bullying.
It’s important students grasp this. Whenever rhetoric functions to convey something like “do what I say or you’ll get in trouble” that is bullying not debate, and it’s fair game to characterize such rhetoric as being anti-free speech.
December 25, 2015 at 9:36 pm
qwertbert
Then Robert Birgeneau was also trying to shut down debate with a cheap appeal to emotional reasoning too. Donor, trustee, admin, prof, student, cafeteria worker, I don’t care. Unless someone’s literally threatening sticks and stones, or making it pretty likely someone else will use sticks and stones (e.g. doxxing), or is inflicting emotional distress as the courts would see it, those words will never hurt them. If they’re an adult, the listener decides what’s painful in a classroom or a debate, period.
If this keeps up, “violent verbal attack” or its cousin “violent speech” that can’t be proven violent or as an intentional or even negligent infliction of emotional distress in a court of law (in the sense of civil torts) might well become the new Godwin – use it, and you lose the argument. Birgeneau set a terrible example trying to shut down an opposing group because their “violent verbal attack” busted his feels and not his skull. He’s not 8 years old, so in my book, he automatically lost the argument. Perhaps I should edit Urban Dictionary and list “Birgenauing” as another argumentative no-no.
December 29, 2015 at 4:06 pm
Lirael
@wobblywheel: I disagree with your hierarchy (though my placement at the bottom, as a grad student, is probably not far off). I agree with your #1. Your #2 doesn’t sound right to me at all. I’m guessing you’re getting it from the revenue aspect. I could see a case for “the parents of undergrads who pay full tuition” being pretty high up the list at a high-tuition school, but undergrads’ parents often don’t have the same political or other interests as undergrads, and the percentage of undergrads paying full tuition at a high-tuition school is probably not high. And at a research university I’d expect undergrad tuition to be a relatively small percentage of revenue (I saw the figures on this for my alma mater about 10 years ago, while still an undergrad, and I think it was 16%).
And even aside from revenue issues, profs have a lot of power over undergrads because profs function as gatekeepers. They control undergrads’ grades, which matters a lot in some fields (though little in others). They can kick you out of your major program even if you don’t meet the criteria for being kicked out of the university (or at least, that was true at my alma mater, don’t know if it’s true at my grad university). And they set the criteria that an undergrad to meet to remain in good standing, get good grades, etc.
I don’t much like the tendency to call speech violent, and try to avoid it myself, but I don’t agree with your analysis. Lots of violence isn’t criminal. Football and other contact sports, for instance. Or the foam-weapon swordfighting at the boffer LARP that I staff for. Or, in some cases at least, self-defense. Or war and military training. I interpret “Your speech is violent” as “Your speech is causing harm” which is NOT the same as saying it should be legally restricted or that people should get in trouble for it, but I would rather people just said that the speech is causing harm and way, because I do think labeling it violence can have unfortunate connotations.
For the moment, I’m not going to touch the trigger warning one, as I’ve had that argument a lot.
December 29, 2015 at 9:10 pm
wobblywheel
Professors inflate undergraduates’ grades systemically, because undergraduates have more power than professors. They write glowing rec letters regardless of their actual thoughts about their undergrads — again, they do this systematically; it’s part of their job, and yes a big chunk of the money that pays their salaries comes from the tuition stream.
This isn’t to say that undergraduates perceive themselves as CEOs and their profs as mere underlings. That’s not how power is actually experienced, especially in institutional settings. Nonetheless, when undergraduates collectively perceive their own power, they can get a lot done very quickly.
On “violence” — your examples (football, boffing, military combat) are all of physical violence. When the word is used to describe a non-physical act, the connotation shifts subtly to become an accusation; a warning to a person that he or she has violated some sort of norm and ought to fear punishment.
January 12, 2016 at 3:25 pm
SomeTextHere (@JlnFrancisco)
“Professors inflate undergraduates’ grades systemically, because undergraduates have more power than professors. ”
That’s flat bullshit.
“a warning to a person that he or she has violated some sort of norm and ought to fear punishment.”
Even more flat bullshit.
Should we refrain from describing abuse as abuse because it carries an accusatory tone? Should people be allowed to scream faggot in the face of a gay youth on his way to school because you think calling it violence is antithetical to free speech?
People like you are why bigotry gets a free pass.
January 16, 2016 at 8:14 pm
wobblywheel
SomeTextHere: Simply calling something you don’t agree with “bullshit” without explaining why you think so is not debate.
The bone of contention here is not whether screaming “faggot!” at someone on campus is protected academic speech. Nobody is claiming that it is, only a straw man in your own mind. The bone of contention is whether saying things like “yale university college students should wear whatever halloween costumes they want” is protected speech on campus.
I was also arguing that when the reaction to such a statement is to say “that’s speech-violence!” such a reaction is a bully tactic, designed to intimidate and highlight the possibility of punishment. It’s not debate.
Your last sentence is also not debate.
Please learn to engage in debate. I don’t want people inside the progressive movement incapable of engaging in debate.