I’ve debated for a little while about whether or not to write about the ongoing cultural discussion on “free speech” and “safe space” protections on campuses. Of course, this seems a large and timely topic, given the presence of the University of Chicago letter. (I will come to the Chicago letter a bit late in the post, but that is partly because the goal here is to spend time carving up the intellectual territory.)
The putative dialectic
The contemporary discussion of academic culture is reported to be a sort of ideological debate between a libertarian/quasi-conservative/free-speech-oriented right and a liberal/student-centered/sympathy-motivated left. On the one hand, “the left” is supposed to argue that universities aspire to be ethically salient and self-aware environments where the interests and needs of their students (in particular, the interests of minority groups of students which aren’t treated respectfully in mainstream culture) are taken seriously as an ethical value. On the other hand, “the right “is supposed to argue that the value of free speech is central to academic life and must be respected, even when it may cause emotional distress or create hostility amongst students.
I won’t say that there aren’t plenty of folks arguing this way about the issue; certainly there are. Popular cultural discussion often consists largely of rehashing this dialectic. It is the cable news, consumer ready narrative; it comes in various strengths (e.g. those on the right might be fascists or merely insensitive cretins; those on the left might be coddled pseudo-intellectual babies or merely misguided dullards) and flavors.
Of course, it is not a very good articulation of the issue; there are a number of subordinate issues on which individual opinions vary. (e.g. Should professors warn their classes about material that might trigger post-traumatic stress responses in some students? Should universities provide platforms to those with ideas that are racist, sexist, homophobic, or transmisogynistic? How do the details of particular cases impact these considerations?)
Facts ought to matter
In ideologically motivated discussions, and this certainly qualifies, the facts of a given case often don’t matter to the various interlocutors. Many of those engaged in the putative dialectic I have outlined above don’t take into consideration the facts of particular cases. I’m of the radical view that someone unresponsive to facts on matters of policy isn’t of any serious interest beyond the mere social fact that they exist and are venting hot air.
The University of Chicago letter is a good illustration of a case where the facts matter. The letter includes the following passage:
“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.”
Does this mean that a professor teaching a course with material that includes explicit and graphic depictions of rape is precluded from warning her students of the material before its presented? Does this mean that a student organization (e.g. a support group for LGBT students) is unable to set policy that would exclude homophobic students from disrupting their meetings with chants of “Leviticus 18:22” or similar fare?
I suspect the answer is, “Of course not! We wouldn’t condone those sorts of things!” (I should say, I hope that is the answer.) To simply be a hardliner without respect to the conditions under which the safe spaces or trigger warnings are utilized is to take a position without any factual consideration of the thing your position is about. (But, then again, welcome to the cable news approach to dialectic-crafting.)
In much of the discussion, terms like “safe space,” “free speech,” “trigger warning,” etc. are used without respect for their reference; they’re just buzzwords to set off ideologically different folks even (and especially) when direct consideration of a given case might yield a much more productive conversation.
e.g. I’m fairly sympathetic to the use of trigger warnings in circumstances dealing with violence, mental illness, etc. but oppose the no platforming of people like Germaine Greer and Christina Hoff Sommers after they’ve been invited to speak. (Of course, I’m also of the view that neither of them has much of interest to say, and therefore there’s little warrant for inviting them in the first place, but that’s a separate issue altogether.)
The absence of self-criticism in both positions
One principle point of criticism coming from the right is that, in pursuit of a tolerant and pluralistic environment, those who advocate for safe spaces and the like restrict the views of those they consider inappropriate. This is, in some practical cases, a worthwhile consideration. Just because a given professor is a neo-fascist, racist, anti-semitic, intellectually bankrupt charlatan doesn’t mean that their view should be blocked out; though it does mean that I’m likely not to spend very much time listening to it, when I have more intellectually serious people worth engaging. The individual has a right to express their position among the plurality of available views.
I am, despite the obvious sarcasm, somewhat sympathetic to this criticism.
On the other hand, those advocating “free speech” and opposing “political correctness” often lament the characterization of their various views as (e.g.) neo-fascist, racist, anti-semitic, intellectually bankrupt, etc. The view is that individuals ought to be able to speak their views on a subject without fear of suppression, but some strong forms of criticism are coercive and suppress that speech. Again, this ideological position is totally incoherent.
Moderate views on these issues tend to have more nuanced approaches to understanding these criticisms, and avoid them by recognizing the inherent tension in the issue. But, again, those tend to be the radical folks concerned with facts.
The antagonist
One of the hallmarks of ideological arguments is to portray the protagonist as struggling against an institution. In both cases, the institution is “the University culture.” Those who advocate for safe spaces suggest that the University is actually still, as a matter of its structure, hostile to historically (and contemporarily) oppressed groups. Those who advocate for free speech suggest that the University is a bastion of liberal values and has blocked out conservative voices.
“Free speech advocates” are right that Universities are more liberal than the mainstream social conversation.
“Safe space advocates” are right that Universities are still far from equitable with regard to representation and treatment of historical oppressed students.
Relative to broader social norms, Universities are liberal. Relative to aspirations of equality in treatment, Universities are oppressive. Neither group is wrong; both are talking past each other on this particular issue. And, in point of fact, neither group is combatting some entrenched and abstract institutional power so much as combatting agents in various positions of power inside and outside of higher education.
But everyone likes to feel like David, carrying some clever analogy as a slingshot, ready to knock down the Goliath they’ve imagined.
-Josh can be found on twitter at @thephilosotroll
Gordon Hawkes
September 22, 2016
Thanks for writing on this topic, Josh!
I do have two questions: First, who gets to decide what is “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic,” “transmisogynistic,” etc.? For instance, some argue that we need affirmative action for women to combat the results of institutional sexism. Others argue that affirmative action for women is itself sexist. (I know women on both sides.) This seems to be the heart of the free speech debate: who gets the power to decide who can speak and who is silenced?
Second, do you oppose the no-platforming of Germain Greer with the knowledge that she argues publicly that trans-women are not women?
Again, I appreciate your boldness in wading into these waters.
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philosotroll
September 29, 2016
Re 1: I take a fairly wide view of what ought to be permitted in academic environments, and generally maintaining charitable interpretation where one might ascribe racism or sexism. Is Hernstein and Murray’s “The Bell Curve” racist? I think so, but there are defenders of the book and I’m somewhat more inclined to be understanding. That’s a reasonable point of dispute, as is the academic credibility of the book. (Which I also think is overrated.) “The Bell Curve” seems like a hard case, or at least it was at the time of its publication.
I don’t think Milo Yiannopoulos’ chauvinism or David Duke’s racism (or Germaine Greer’s transphobia) is a borderline case.
Re 2: I’ll get into the Greer case a little bit more in responding to Clare’s comment below, because I think that she (Clare, not Greer) raises a number of important points about that particular instance of Greer’s lecture. I don’t know all of the details of the case around Greer; unlike Yiannopoulos or Duke, I genuinely think that Greer has sufficient academic value to justify (on positive grounds) speaking on a college campus, and given that the scope of her talk didn’t seem to include trans* issues, I’m not sympathetic to no-platforming her.
I regard the case as somewhat like my own experience as a Jewish person (though, obviously, being Jewish in America is a lot different, along a lot of axes, than being trans*) who has been at a University that openly invited a number of speakers (and hired and tenured professors and administrators) with fairly overtly anti-semitic views. But I must admit, that experience made me deeply uncomfortable… and I definitely see trans* people who are already encountering a lot more open disenfranchisement feeling this as an even more substantial offense.
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Clare Flourish
September 22, 2016
Specifically on Germaine Greer, if the student officer in Cardiff university had not sought to prevent her lecture on the grounds of her transphobia, she would not have been interviewed on BBC “Newsnight”, and she would not have said “I don’t believe a woman is a man without a cock” to a baying, cheering crowd, but stuck to the topic of her invited lecture. As a trans woman I take a pragmatic view of such exclusions. I did not think this one would do much good.
In the real world, it is a matter of the precise circumstances of individual cases; but taking the extreme Free Speech Always can shut down opponents even where safe space is appropriate; and if I am standing outside Dr. Greer’s lecture handing out leaflets showing why I object to her transmisogyny, real supporters of free speech would not want me to shut up- er, would they?
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philosotroll
September 29, 2016
I’m very sympathetic to the pragmatic concern in the Germaine Greer case; it is a concern that seems to have happened a few times. (Christina Hoff Sommers jumps to mind.)
Academic environments are regularly in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether to invite controversial views in the name of pluralism while recognizing that the University’s reputation lends legitimacy to those controversial views. (In the Greer case, where it seems that she likely wouldn’t have expressed those trans*misogynistic views, perhaps legitimizing her other ideas is perfectly fine, while recognizing that some other set of her views is illegitimate. In the case of Sommers, the content of her talk at Oberlin actually included much of the offending content. That seems like a salient difference.)
I do think that part of the latent hypocrisy of the “Free Speech Always” style arguments is that they tend to regard certain forms of overt criticism as “suppression of free speech,” which is rather silly. This is what I’m referring to in the second-to-last-section of the post above. One hopes that ideally coherent free speech folks would be quick to defend your right to protest and overtly criticize Greer, or the right of feminist critics of Sommers’ work to criticize her; my experience suggests that’s unlikely…
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