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The things she knew, let her forget again—
The voices in the sky, the fear, the cold,
The gaping shepherds, and the queer old men
Piling their clumsy gifts of foreign gold.

Let her have laughter with her little one;
Teach her the needless, tuneless songs to sing;
Grant her her right to whisper to her son
The foolish names one dare not call a king.

Keep from her dreams the rumble of a crowd,
The smell of rough-cut wood, the trail of red,
The thick and chilly whiteness of the shroud
That wraps the strange new body of the dead.

Ah, let her go, kind Lord, where mothers go
And boast his pretty words and ways, and plan
The proud and happy years that they shall know
Together, when her son is grown a man.

—Dorothy Parker, 1928

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.

I have an essay in next week’s Chronicle of Higher Education exploring how the demographic and governance changes that have transformed the American campus over the last half century have set the stage for this semester’s student protests, and what history tells us about where the activists are likely to take it from here.

Unfortunately, the essay is behind the Chronicle paywall, at least for now, but here are the closing paragraphs, just to give you a taste:

Today’s students are also unlikely to be bought off with symbolic gestures or limp “diversity” initiatives. The origins of today’s student complaints are deep and in many cases intractable, and the more accustomed activists become to protesting, the more readily they will mobilize in response to new provocations. And while some of the recent demands have seemed haphazard and ill-conceived, in the past few weeks we’ve seen a growing sophistication in students’ messaging, with more and more protesters pushing for substantive changes in university policy — and increasingly for seats at the governance table. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for example, activists’ demands have included voting seats for students and faculty, staff, and community members on the Board of Governors. At Amherst College, where protesters were harshly criticized for stances seen as hostile to free expression, activists withdrew their early demands — and won pledges of reform to increase the staff for diversity training and campus mental-health programs, and to improve the recruitment of faculty of color.

It is, of course, possible that this fall’s campus unrest will simply burn itself out, though precedent suggests that’s unlikely to happen before summer. More likely there will be flare-ups and lulls over the next few years, with a new baseline that resembles this fall more closely than it does the autumn of, say, 2013.

And history tells us that as student movements mature, they become more ambitious and more aware of the dynamics of institutional power. The activists of the ’60s and ’70s, confronting universities that were hostile to their values and ideals, launched a movement that remade American higher education in their own image — not completely, and perhaps not permanently, but in significant, lasting ways. Today’s activists may yet articulate — and enact — a similarly far-reaching agenda.

If you’re a Chronicle subscriber you can read the whole thing here.

Three black students at Loyola University Chicago are facing possible suspension or other disciplinary action for holding a peaceful demonstration on campus last month.

The demonstration, held on November 12, was a rally in support of student protests at the University of Missouri. Some seven hundred students, faculty, and staff attended the event, and according to the organizers, attendance was boosted by a notice on the university’s website.

At the time, Loyola president John P. Pelissero praised the protest, saying that he was “proud of our community’s response” to the call to action, and that Loyola “celebrates the free exchange of ideas.” Yesterday, however, a campus spokesperson told the Chronicle of Higher Education that the students are being investigated because of “their decision to not register the demonstration, which is a violation of the university’s demonstration policy.”

That policy defines a demonstration as

“any event in which two or more people gather publicly in a coordinated and organized manner to display support or opposition for, or express a position or feeling toward a person, organization, or cause.”

Any student or group wishing to hold such a demonstration must submit a “Demonstration Proposal” form to the Dean of Students three business days in advance. Once such a proposal is submitted, the organizers must meet with the university to discuss “all elements of the planned demonstration … including any intended movements to other areas of campus.” Without written approval from the office of the dean, no such demonstration may be held. (One campus lawn is exempt from these regulations — there, students must merely reserve the space in advance with the Office of Campus Reservations.)

Let’s review.

Any time that two or more students decide to get together in any public area of the Loyola Chicago Campus to “express a position or feeling toward a person, organization, or cause,” they need to contact the Dean of Students three business days in advance, detail their plans to the administration, and receive written approval. If they don’t, they can be brought up on disciplinary charges.

Set aside the absurd overreach of the university’s definition of a “demonstration,” which would, as written, extend to any two people deciding to get together in a public space to “express … a feeling” about someone else — or even themselves. Set that aside.

The students who organized the November 12 protests are scheduled to be charged at 3:45 this afternoon, in a meeting that could easily go past the close of business this evening.

If it does, and students want to express public disapproval of whatever happens there, they won’t be able to do so until next Thursday. They won’t even be able to apply to do so until Monday.

And again, this isn’t just theoretical. Three students are facing charges for holding a protest that the university president approved of.

Imagine how he’d respond if he were the target.

Update | The university has dropped charges against the three students, and is reviewing its demonstration policy.

There’s lots of outrage online about Smith College students barring media from a sit-in yesterday. But digging deeper, it’s clear that this wasn’t a traditional “sit-in” — the event had an announced start and end time, presented no demands, and apparently proceeded with the blessing of the administration.

It was less a sit-in, in other words, than an informal conference or meet-up.

Given that, it’s not clear to me why anyone would think the organizers had an obligation to invite the media. (Whether it was bad PR to turn journalists away is another story.)

This is a real question I’m asking. Not rhetorical, not snarky: What principle says that the organizers of yesterday’s Smith College event had an obligation to allow media to attend, and what’s the nature of that obligation? (I’m assuming that nobody’s arguing they had a legal obligation, since — as the Smith administration pointed out — the college is a private institution.)

My own sense is that it’s generally a bad idea for large-scale student groups to shut media out of conventions where leaders are being chosen and platforms are being adopted. I remember recoiling, years ago, when I first read about SDS barring reporters from their last national convention in 1969, and I still have the same negative reaction today. An SDS convention was a public event of public interest, my gut tells me, and it should have been open to the public.

In other cases, I know that there are legal arguments to be made — some institutions and organizations are covered by open meetings laws which mandate that the public, including press, be allowed to attend certain parts of certain meetings.

But yesterday’s event at Smith wasn’t a business meeting of a charity or a governing board or a student association. It wasn’t a rally in a public space. It wasn’t a demonstration that closed down a street or a bridge. It was a group of students getting together to talk and hang out and connect with each other.

What’s the principle that says that those students had a responsibility to invite the press to join them?