Drawing the line

One of the things I've liked the most about my seven years writing here at Skeptophilia is that it's given me the opportunity to think, learn, and reconsider my own views.  The point of skepticism, it seems to me, is to be open to revising one's stance if presented with new information or better arguments, and thus refining one's own perceptions.

Yesterday's post, about a couple of incidents in colleges where speakers with unpopular views were harassed or threatened with being banned outright, elicited a couple of comments from loyal readers that got me thinking about what I'd written.  And while I won't say it's completely changed my mind, it has made me realize that the topic is far more of a minefield than I'd realized.

[Note: I am quoting them with their permission.]

The first wrote:

While a person who makes up part of a vulnerable demographic for whatever reason absolutely has the right to avoid going to an event where they might be exposed to hate speech, simultaneously, allowing others on a campus to hear opinions that confirm them in thinking that hate speech against other people is a thing that is acceptable in society today seems overly affirming to people that perhaps don't deserve any audience at all. 

Not every campus speaker speaks hatefully, or on hateful topics, and you're right that unless we are exposed to all sides of an argument, we cannot develop informed opinions on that argument.  It's also incredibly difficult to draw a line in the sand that says 'these words are hateful, these words are just provocative, and these words are fine' - and I'm not sure that we should. 

So how do we listen to all sides of an argument that involves hate speech without making the victims of the hate speech feel that we are supporting the existence of said hate speech against them?   

I'm not sure there's an answer to this out there, but figured I would see what you thought.

I responded:

It's a tough question. I agree that to the disempowered, even having speakers who hold those kinds of views feels like tacit acceptance.  But I still think that the way to combat that is to work toward empowering the disempowered -- the professors encouraging them and supporting them in speaking up, even helping them to formulate questions and criticisms, or showing up with them to a talk -- is much better than denying the speaker the right to speak.  Like in the case with Stanger [the professor at Middlebury College who was assaulted after inviting Charles Murray, a political scientist with controversial views about the genetics of race and intelligence, to speak at the college] -- she was up front that she disagreed with Murray, but wanted him to present as an opportunity for her students to engage in reasoned discussion (and, perhaps, refutation of Murray's arguments).  It didn't work out that way, and the violence that ensued proved nothing.

She wrote back:

But that assumes that the students who feel disempowered by the topic of the speech will be able and stable enough to attend, listen to a speech that denigrates and attacks them (politely), before being able to disagree or question someone with which they disagree...  [You] might liken it to sitting down to listen to an hour of your worst childhood bullies argue about why they should have bullied you, or even to sitting down to listen to an hour of explaining why you shouldn't exist as a person at all. 

Some people are strong enough to do that, but not all of them are, no matter how much empowerment their professors try to share with them, which is why they would be the ones that don't attend - but then we have no one to question and debate.

And it turns out that the views of Laura Kipnis, whose talk at Wellesley prompted a group of faculty to draft a letter suggesting that such speakers be barred from presenting on campus, are not as academic and dispassionate as she claimed.  In a recent essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Kipnis makes some statements that would strike many of us as ethically questionable -- that sexual relationships between professors and students are okay because when she was in college, "hooking up with professors was more or less part of the curriculum...  We partied together, drank and got high together, slept together."  She scoffs at the idea that such relationships could result in a more powerful individual victimizing a less powerful one, or using that power differential for their own gain.

And she doesn't hesitate to engage in low blows against people who disagree with her.  About a man whose attitudes about inappropriate humor and unwanted sexual advances Kipnis considered puritanical and overly delicate, she even went so far as to suggest that his nervous coin-jangling in response to her questions was masturbatory.  In an academic journal.  Kipnis writes:

I recalled a long-forgotten pop-psychology guide to body language that identified change-jangling as an unconscious masturbation substitute. If the leader of our sexual-harassment workshop was engaging in public masturbatory-like behavior, seizing his private pleasure in the midst of the very institutional mechanism designed to clamp such delinquent urges, what hope for the rest of us?

So it seems like Kipnis is dancing pretty close to the line herself.

Another reader commented:

I'm generally with you on this topic, but I think we have to take off our privilege blinders.  Neither you or I would ever be compelled to take time from our schedules and prepare/engage in a "scholarly debate" with someone who says we are part of a genetically inferior race, or that our family members should be immediately locked up and deported. It's very easy for us straight white dudes to keep things civil when our humanity is never attacked.

Which is also spot-on.  My own attitudes about speakers being denied the right to speak based upon controversial viewpoints would probably be very different if I myself was a minority.  As the reader commented, being a white straight male makes it awfully easy for me to be on the side of free speech -- since that free speech is seldom used to harass or demean me.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So I'm left with the conclusion that this is a great deal harder than it seemed at first.  To fall back on the basic rule of banning only speech that promotes criminal acts or violence is to ignore the fact that free speech has been used many times in the past to incite hatred, discrimination, and marginalization.  And ignoring that fact is only one step away from tacit acceptance.

On the other hand, where to draw the line is problematic.  I still believe that colleges do students a terrible disservice by insulating them from controversy; prohibitions against hearing speakers or reading books or papers that voice dissenting opinions are, by and large, antithetical to the reason we have education in the first place.  But the complexity of this issue, and the spectrum of where those controversial views might fall, make it a far thornier decision than I had realized.

Many thanks to my readers who took the time to respond to yesterday's post -- especially the ones who challenged me on what I wrote.  After all, having written a piece about how important it is to be pushed into reconsidering your preconceived notions, it would be a little hypocritical of me not to be willing to engage in a bit of that myself.

The silencing of dissent

The word education comes from the Latin verb educare, meaning "to draw out of."

Too many people involved in the educational process forget this.  Education is not trying to see how many facts we can stuff into students' brains; it's seeing how we can foster their growth, challenge their preconceived notions, help them to see the universe in a new way.

Which is why what happened at Wellesley College this week is so completely antithetical to the spirit of education.

On Monday, a committee of Wellesley professors presented a letter to the community of the college.  I quote  part of the letter below, but the entire text is available at the link provided if you'd like to read it:

Over the past few years, several guest speakers with controversial and objectionable beliefs have presented their ideas at Wellesley...  There is no doubt that the speakers in question impose on the liberty of students, staff, and faculty at Wellesley.  We are especially concerned with the impact of speakers' presentations on Wellesley students, who often feel the injury most acutely and invest time and energy in rebutting the speakers' arguments.  Students object in order to affirm their humanity.  This work is not optional, students feel they would be unable to carry out their responsibilities as students without standing up for themselves.  Furthermore, we object to the notion that onlookers who are part of the faculty or administration are qualified to adjudicate the harm described by students, especially when so many students come forward.  When dozens of students tell us they are in distress as a result of a speaker's words, we must take those complaints at face value. 

What is especially disturbing about this pattern of harm is that in many cases, the damage could have been avoided.  The speakers who appeared on campus presented ideas that they had published, and those who hosted the speakers could certainly anticipate that these ideas would be painful to significant portions of the Wellesley community.

The letter was spurred by the appearance on campus of Laura Kipnis, writer and self-described feminist who has criticized Title IX implementation, and who has decried a "culture of sexual paranoia" on American college campuses.  Kipnis, for her part, was shocked by the faculty committee's response.  She wrote:

I find it absurd that six faculty members at Wellesley can call themselves defenders of free speech and also conflate my recent talk with bullying the disempowered.  What actually happened was that there was a lively back and forth after I spoke.  The students were smart and articulate, including those who disagreed with me. 

I’m going to go further and say — as someone who’s been teaching for a long time, and wants to see my students able to function in the world post-graduation — that protecting students from the ‘distress’ of someone’s ideas isn’t education, it’s a $67,000 babysitting bill.

Which is it exactly.  The goal of college -- hell, the goal of education in toto -- is not to insulate you from the trauma of ever hearing ideas you disagree with, it's to open your mind to consideration of other answers and other ways of thinking.  It's not supposed to be comfortable.  In fact, if you come out of college with your views completely unchanged from what they were on your first day as a freshman, the college has failed.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Note that I'm neither defending nor opposing Kipnis's views.  In fact, my opinion on Kipnis's views is entirely irrelevant.  But the idea that a college would block a speaker simply because his or her ideology runs counter to that of "dozens of students," and thus cause them to be "in distress," is ridiculous.

The bottom line: the only speakers who should be prevented from speaking on college campuses by decree are those who recommend criminal activity or violence.  Other than that, if you disagree with the views of a speaker, you have three options: (1) don't attend; (2) stage a non-violent protest; or [best of all] (3) show up and ask questions that push the speaker toward addressing whatever it is you disagree with.

Which is also why what happened at Middlebury College (Vermont) last week is so appalling.  Professor Allison Stanger, of the Department of International Politics and Economics, had invited Dr. Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute to give a talk.

The AEI is a pro-capitalism conservative think tank.  Murray rose to some notoriety with his 1994 book The Bell Curve, which proposed that intelligence was largely inherited, and was a better predictor of job success, likelihood of committing a crime, and financial status than is the socioeconomic status of the parents.  Murray was roundly condemned as a racist for writing about intellectual differences between different ethnic groups, and his book is still a subject of controversy today.

Murray never got to speak.  His appearance at the lectern was greeted by shouts of derision.  After it became clear that he was not going to have an opportunity to say anything, he and Dr. Stanger left -- but a screaming mob followed them, attacked Dr. Stanger's car, and resulted in her receiving a serious concussion and whiplash.

Stanger herself was astonishingly philosophical about the whole thing.  She writes:

It is obvious that some protesters made dangerous choices.  But with time to reflect, I have to say that I hear and understand the righteous anger of many of those who shouted us down.  I know that many students felt they were standing up to protect marginalized people who have been demeaned or even threatened under the guise of free speech. 

But for us to engage with one another as human beings -- even on issues where we passionately disagree -- we need reason, not just emotions.  Middlebury students could have learned from identifying flawed assumptions or logical shortcomings in Dr. Murray's arguments.  They could have challenged him in the Q. and A.  If the ways in which his misinterpreted ideas have been weaponized precluded hearing him out, students also had the options of protesting outside, walking out of the talk, or simply refusing to attend... 

More broadly, our constitutional democracy will depend on whether Americans can relearn how to engage civilly with one another, something that is admittedly hard to do with a bullying president as a role model.  But any other way forward would be antithetical to the very ideals of the university and of liberal democracy.

So the professors at Wellesley, and the students who rioted at Middlebury, are examples of exactly the opposite of what colleges should be about.  Once again, as long as you are not promoting violence or criminal activity, you should have the right to express your views.  Students learn more by being exposed to unpopular opinions, and learning to frame their arguments rationally and logically, than they will by belonging to an institution where unpopular opinions are suppressed.

And the professors and administrators should be unequivocal in their support of this.

The price of being cowed by the letter from the professors at Wellesley and the violence at Middlebury is the conversion of colleges into comfortable little bubbles of confirmation bias, where only the majority opinion is ever heard, understood, or argued with.  And if you need an example of where that can lead, you have to look no further than the echo chamber of our current administration, where yes men and women have insulated the president from the consequences of his own lies, and any dissent is labeled as fake news at best, and treason at worst.

Intellectual discomfort is not bad for you; in fact, you should seek out opposing opinions.  It keeps you honest about the soundness of your own views, and helps you to craft arguments against positions you disagree with based on the facts of what your opponents believe.  It hones your mind, improves your grasp of the real situation, and fosters dialogue and open communication.

Which should be the outcome of education in any case.