By now, most people who read this blog have seen the letter that the Dean of Students of the University of Chicago sent to incoming students this week:
The crucial paragraph of the letter was the third:
Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called “trigger warnings,” we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual “safe spaces” where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.
There’s a lot to say, and a lot that’s been said, about this passage—Jeet Heer wrote a short piece at the New Republic (using some of my tweets as a jumping-off point) arguing that it was an attack on academic freedom, for instance, while the former president of the U of C student government unleashed a devastating tweetstorm addressing the various ways in which the college’s administration had, during his time on campus, ducked its obligations to engage in open and constructive dialogue. (Link is to his Twitter feed. Scroll back.)
What I want to talk about today, though, is an essay by Jesse Singal of New York magazine, a writer whose views on campus issues I often share.
Singal is no huge fan of the letter’s framing, it’s important to note. Many of the criticisms I’ll be raising here are ones that he himself makes. But his core premise is that while the letter was perhaps over-aggressive and over-simplified, it was nonetheless a useful and justified intervention because it addressed a real problem on the contemporary campus—attacks on free speech.
Free speech is under threat on campus, he believes, and so, in taking a forthrightly pro-free-speech, pro-academic-freedom stand, the letter “could be a useful nudge to help get other, more timorous university administrators to stand up and do their jobs.”
Singal is right that there’s a real culture clash happening in American higher ed right now, but he’s wrong to portray it as a clash between supporters and opponents of free expression. To understand why, let’s examine the letter’s core positions one at a time.
“Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings…'”
The college has already had to walk this one back a bit, because of course one may support trigger warnings and also be committed to academic freedom. Indeed, as a college professor who uses trigger warnings in my own classes, I’d interpret a statement like this from administrators at my college as a denigration of my pedagogical choices, and perhaps even a not-too-subtle suggestion that I revise my syllabi.
A university truly committed to academic freedom will allow its professors to decide for themselves whether to use trigger warnings, and will foster open and unfettered discussion as to whether they should so. It will also recognize that students who choose to agitate for the adoption of such warnings are themselves engaging in acts of free speech and deserving of the protections afforded by the principles of academic freedom.
The letter, sadly, acknowledges none of this.
“…we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial…”
Here too the letter reduces a complex, multifaceted question to a fatuous soundbite. Are there many people really arguing that a university should “cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial”? Not in my experience, and I pay quite a bit of attention to this stuff. No, the letter is here misrepresenting the position it argues against, and in so doing it papers over the most interesting questions it raises.
Here are some of those more interesting questions:
Should a university invite speakers who are bigots? If so, under what circumstances? Who should decide who is invited to speak on campus, and who should determine how student money is allocated to bring such speakers? Does a student club have an obligation to go forward with an invitation it has extended if it later comes to regret it? What are the proper limits of dissent and protest and disruption when an obnoxious speaker appears?
These are all questions on which people committed to free speech can vigorously disagree. (They’re all questions on which I’d happily argue one of several contradictory positions, for starters, if you’re buying the beer.) But there’s no hint of that vitality and complexity here.
“…and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”
Again the letter elides the most interesting, and most important, issues at hand. Should a campus Atheist Club be required to accept a fundamentalist Christian as a vocal participant in its meetings, and vice versa? Must a Women’s Center open its discussion group for sexual assault survivors to men? Are all spaces on campus sites of perpetual intellectual combat, open to all comers, or might students reasonably choose to affiliate only with like-minded friends and allies on occasion? The letter presupposes one answer to each of those questions, and to any other that could be asked from similar premises. But there is a strong civil libertarian case to be made for the opposite stance on each.
In fact, on each of the topics mooted in the letter—trigger warnings, campus speakers, and safe spaces—it could be argued that the principles of free speech and academic freedom demand the opposite conclusion from the one the letter reaches. Both the professor guarding her freedom to use trigger warnings and her colleague who opposes them may be civil libertarians, as may the reviled speaker and the student protesting at their talk and the atheist who demands a voice and the Christian who asserts her right to converse with those she chooses.
Again: There is no single pro-free-speech position on on any of these questions.
And so while Singal is right that there are major divisions on the contemporary American campus around issues of freedom of speech and academic freedom, he fails to recognize that those divisions are so deep and so contentious in large part because each side in each of those the debates can legitimately lay claim to the mantle of free expression.
The positions that the letter takes are not more civil libertarian than the ones that I, for instance—a supporter of trigger warnings and agitation against obnoxious speakers and safe spaces—take. In fact they are, I’d argue, in each case a less civil libertarian position.
And that is why we will never, despite what the University of Chicago might hope, and despite what Singal suggests, resolve these disputes via appeals to first principles.
Now maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my views on one or more of these questions is unsustainable from a civil libertarian perspective. But if so, we’ll figure that out not by fiat, but through robust, unfettered debate and by real-world experimentation. That debate is necessary, and it is not advanced be pre-emptive deployment of “we do not supports” and “we do not condones.” (Particularly when many members of the campus community emphatically do support and do condone precisely the positions that are repudiated by the dean’s letter.)
I stand with Singal in his advocacy for freedom of expression on campus, and I share some (though not all) of his concerns about contemporary campus climate. But the authors of the University of Chicago letter are not my allies in that fight, and I suspect that they’re mostly not Singal’s, either.
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August 26, 2016 at 4:07 pm
Cosmo Houck
“But if so, we’ll figure that out not by fiat, but through robust, unfettered debate and by real-world experimentation.” Many, many institutions have not taken the position Chicago is now. How is their position not an example of the “real-world experimentation” you suggest? There are many other institutions for students to attend other than Chicago! Why shouldn’t Chicago have a heterodox position on speech, so long as it is clearly communicated to incoming students?
August 26, 2016 at 4:14 pm
Angus Johnston
What position are you referring to? Opposition to trigger warnings? The university has clarified that it’s agnostic on that question. Opposition to protests against speakers? Surely they wouldn’t want to take that stance. Opposition to “safe spaces”? Oops, it’s too late for that one too—they have already established official “safe spaces” for LGBT students on campus, using that vocabulary.
The position taken in the letter is more incoherent than heterodox, in my view. And to the extent that it’s coherent, it’s anti-civil-libertarian. If Chicago wants to adopt it, they’re welcome to, as a private university. But they shouldn’t expect plaudits from supporters of free expression if they do.
August 26, 2016 at 4:31 pm
Cosmo Houck
I’ll agree with you when you say “we will never…resolve these disputes via appeals to first principles” and reject your civil-libertarian framing. To me, the question is the following: how do you build an academic culture conducive to students being exposed to and challenged by alternate viewpoints? I’ve had a number of students apologize before sheepishly admitting they lean republican, or are conservative on x issue. To think that that isn’t fueled by high profile dis-invitations (I 100% agree with you on trigger warnings being up to the professor), or the kinds of safe spaces many colleges promote and protect, strikes me as misguided.
But the important thing is that I don’t think there’s one right answer to the question I offered above; I certainly don’t think it’s decided by principle. I work at the UCs, which have chosen a different tone and path from Chicago — which is fine! But the desire to universalize one right answer — fueled by an appeal to civil-libertarian principles — strikes me as misguided, and you seem as guilty of it above as Chicago is.
August 26, 2016 at 4:40 pm
Angus Johnston
I absolutely agree that different institutions can take differing approaches to these questions, and I’m not sure what I’ve said that suggests otherwise. If you’d like to expand on that, let me know.
As for students being sheepish about admitting they’re conservatives, I’m not sure what the problem is, or what the solution might be. Freedom of speech does not require a social embrace of people who hold unpopular views, and the reality is that on a lot of campuses (though not by any means all) right now, liberal-left viewpoints are ascendant. So yeah, if a student holds a position that’s antithetical to those held by most of their peers, they’re likely to soft-pedal it, or be given the cold-shoulder by some of the people who disagree. That’s not something you can regulate, or something you should try to.
Would it be a good idea to encourage people to engage with folks who hold different perspectives? Up to a point, definitely. But in my experience, college students have MORE discussions across ideological lines than the rest of us, not fewer. And if an individual student decides that they aren’t interested in debating gay rights with someone who doesn’t share their views on the topic, or aren’t interested in maintaining a friendship with such a person, that’s pretty much their call, and none of my business.
Maybe I’m missing something, though. Can you restate your concern?
August 26, 2016 at 5:07 pm
Cosmo Houck
(1) I don’t mean to mischaracterize you, but you both (a) suggest that principle doesn’t resolve the question and (b) say that Chicago is not your ally in supporting freedom of expression. If the best approach is ambiguous, then condemning them for being hostile to free expression seems inconsistent with (a).
(2) I didn’t make any claims about “freedom of speech,” or what it might require, which I find generally only muddies the waters. Insofar as ideological diversity is an important component of a healthy culture of intellectual development (and I think it is), when students feel ashamed for holding mainstream views shared by half the country, I think that’s less than ideal. It’s less than ideal for at least two reasons: (a) because they will be less likely to speak out honestly and engage, which is bad for them, and (b) it means that other students are denied the real benefits of defending their own views against other students who disagree with them. Obviously you can’t regulate that outside the classroom in the interpersonal relationships between students, nor should we want to. But within the classroom there is plenty you can do to avoid alienating students, and within the university as a whole things like “not disinviting speakers because they hold positions that are insufficiently left” might communicate that ideological diversity is something the university values.
(3) I don’t mean to say that there aren’t, or should never be, lines. But the fact that you have to draw lines doesn’t mean that those lines should be drawn by student activists whose views are generally not representative of the student body as a whole (a point made by Singal, and confirmed by everyday experience on any college campus).
tl:dr: I’m someone with generally leftist views on a college campus, and I think the people who think that the ideological uniformity is suffocating have a point.
August 26, 2016 at 5:16 pm
Cosmo Houck
I’ll say too (1), I like your work (2) don’t mean to come off as hostile and (3) being fairly familiar with this work know that we’ll just disagree, so I’m sorry to have gotten bogged down in it. Cheers.
August 26, 2016 at 5:23 pm
Angus Johnston
I don’t consider the U of C administration civil libertarian because (1) I see the letter as anti-civil-libertarian, and (2) I am dismayed by their real-world treatment of student activists, among others.
And sure, in the classroom professors should strive to create an environment that’s conducive to an open exchange of views, and yes, that will generally involve standing up for students whose views are unpopular. I do that myself, and I think it’s important for other professors to do it.
As far as speaker invitations go, I think it’s a bad thing when the administration overrules a student group’s decision to bring a speaker to campus, whether that speaker is from the right or the left. I think Ben Shapiro is a bozo, but I think it was ridiculous and obnoxious for the DePaul administration to bar YAF from bringing him to campus.
That said, though, I think it’s entirely reasonable for—for instance—the students at a mostly-liberal campus to object to the administration booking a conservative commencement speaker (and vice versa). I think those objections are reasonable and healthy, and I don’t see them as any sort of threat to freedom of expression or ideological diversity on campus.
As for your final point, my view is that students of whatever ideological stripe generally have very little actual power on the typical American campus, and that I think it’d be a good thing, in general, for them to have more. I agree that ideological conformity can sometimes be suffocating, but I don’t believe that suppressing student activists—the go-to approach on many campuses today—is the right way to combat that.
August 26, 2016 at 5:23 pm
Angus Johnston
And to answer your second comment: Discussion is good, and my nose isn’t out of joint. I’m happy to have your thoughts.
August 27, 2016 at 7:17 pm
VanessaVaile
Reblogged this on As the Adjunctiverse Turns.
September 23, 2016 at 2:05 pm
Booooo! (@JlnFrancisco)
Another issue I have is that speakers are often allowed to set limits on what can be asked and by who. Certain feminist speakers refuse to take questions from trans students, for example. It feels hypocritical in the extreme to permit that while insisting you’re defending “free speech.”