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| https://thechoatenews.choate.edu/2017/02/03/unhidden-danger-intellectual-diversity/ |
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2319 - Intellectual Diversity vs. Indoctrination in Florida Higher Education
Oh Florida... why are you such a disappointment?
Most of us in higher education want to teach students TO THINK not WHAT TO THINK.
I have always tried to give voice to ideas I do not agree with out of fair play. But this showing of multiple perspectives does not mean that I am not critical of these perspectives.
And yet, there are limits. Would I tolerate someone promoting THE BIG LIE about ELECTION FRAUD, no. Would I allow truly outrageous conspiracy theories to be taken seriously, NO. Would I allow "safe space" for the racist backlash that is the current freak out about CRITICAL RACE THEORY, HELL NO!
I would believe in an open exchange of ideas, though I draw the line at hate and lies, so if that is what "intellectual diversity" means to Governor Cover Up, then never mind. Not for me.
The "value-neutral agenda" hardly sounds like indoctrination.
Good reading today.
Choate Rosemary Hall
The (Un)hidden Danger of Intellectual Diversity
Throughout the age of Twitter, our beliefs and allegiances have come to label us more more visibly than in any other time. Anyone with an internet connection and a political bent must wade through a bog of ideological identifiers and reductive hashtags to formulate a descriptive persona. Will you share that #BlackLivesMatter post? Will you “angry react” to that Breitbart.com article your uncle posted? The sum of these ostensibly insignificant decisions becomes a public record of one’s beliefs, a sort of political branding.
In such a culture, our differences seem stark and unavoidable; they create friction and preclude peaceful indifference. In last week’s issue of The Choate News, Joshua Gonzalez ’17 eloquently suggested that we ought to embrace intellectual diversity as a solution to our increasingly visible disparities of thought. Gonzalez lamented that the Choate community and minority communities have “[rejected] freedom of thought” by silencing conservative voices, like Gonzalez’s.
In several of my previous articles, I’ve articulated my disdain for the kinds of personal attacks Gonzalez mentions and my disbelief in the widespread repression some believe to occurring at Choate. However, I’d now like to extend my analysis of this phenomenon by arguing against the primacy some have placed on diversity of thought.
I reject the sanctification of so-called intellectual diversity on two grounds. First, I don’t believe that diversity of thought creates the “trust” and “unity” for which some hope. And, second, I think that diversity of thought can create deleterious effects in certain communities. Both of these critiques are rooted in the reality that many disadvantaged individuals experience differences of opinion as differences of power.
A community can only achieve unity when each of its members are equally enfranchised and empowered. Such a community would not be compromised if its constituents failed to reach consensus on whether the Iran deal sufficiently neutralized the Iranian nuclear program. However, such a community could not coexist with contention over whether black lives matter or over whether every woman should have full reproductive autonomy. In both of these circumstances, community members with differing beliefs would contend with ideas starkly opposed to their own. However, in the latter circumstance only, marginalized individuals would have to combat ideas that support systems and institutions designed to disadvantage them. This condition amounts to constantly justifying one’s existence and constantly grappling with one’s oppression. All of this is to say that the tolerance of every differing opinion can corrupt a community by disenfranchising some of its constituents.
Beyond its disuniting quality, diversity of opinion can be caustic and destructive in certain communities, particularly minority communities. This assertion clashes directly with those criticisms of the black and brown community for stifling conservative opinions. In his article, Gonzalez lauds people of color like Zoe Saldana and Thomas Sowell who, he asserts, are “brave enough to (step) out of the norm” by voicing conservative opinions. These opinions, however, hurt minorities by calling into question the basic principles around which marginalized people organized. Zoe Saldana, for example, once asserted that “there is no such thing as people of color.” This kind of heresy creates discord and undermines people of color who, unlike Saldana, spend their lives fighting for social justice. The predominant strategy of oppressors, from slave masters to segregators, has been to exploit divisions like these within the black and brown community to inhibit coalition building and organized resistance. Thomas Sowell, the other example offered last week, described the Glass Ceiling as “the fable of the emperor’s new clothes, but a fable for adults.” Similar to Saldana’s comment, this counterfactual argument, supported by perverted evidence, propagates the sexism that has divided the black and brown community in their efforts to achieve equity.
Without doubt, diversity of thought is an admirable ideal that often succeeds in practice. Somewhat ironically, writing this article is a small act of thanks for the diversity of opinion that allowed me to respond to Joshua Gonzalez’s article. However, not all opinions work to benefit the spaces in which they reverberate. Some opinions attack human dignity, disband united progress, or enable functioning systems of oppression. However, not everyone experiences these opinions the same way. As Yale lecturer Briallen Hopper asserts, “it is a privilege to be able to view all political issues in indistinguishable shades of gray.” Those who are blessed with this privilege ought not to demonize those who reject or seek protection from destructive, malignant beliefs. Rather, those who are fortunate enough not to experience politics as an exercise in survival disavow their fantasies of complete intellectual diversity and focus on dismantling opinions that exacerbate the world’s injustice.
What is Intellectual Diversity, and Why Does it Matter?
“Fostering intellectual diversity means creating a pluralistic academic environment that encourages curiosity, open minds, and the free exchange of ideas.” – Dr. Emily Chamlee-Wright
According to Debra Mashek, executive director of Heterodox Academy, “Intellectual diversity exists when learners ask questions and approach problems from a range of perspectives.”
Institute for Humane Studies president Dr. Emily Chamlee-Wright speaks with Mashek and explores the role of intellectual diversity on campus in her latest Forbes column.
It’s important to note what intellectual diversity does not mean, Dr. Chamlee-Wright says. “Fostering intellectual diversity does not mean rationing out ‘equal time’ for progressive and conservative talking points, as if equal exposure to the two dominant political parties is the sine qua non of educational quality.”
Rather, she writes, “Fostering intellectual diversity means creating a pluralistic academic environment that encourages curiosity, open minds, and the free exchange of ideas.”
Why is intellectual diversity so crucial for higher education—particularly for liberal arts colleges? Dr. Chamlee-Wright looks at a Georgetown University study on the return on investment (ROI) from a liberal arts education. At the ten-year mark, the median liberal arts ROI is lower than the median for all schools; however, the forty-year liberal arts ROI is significantly higher. She writes:
Perhaps it’s because the best-performing liberal arts institutions are delivering on the promise of what a liberal education is supposed to be—an education that frees the mind to think beyond the immediately practical, to embrace the abstract, and to challenge accepted wisdom. To pursue a liberal education is to develop intellectual agency—a deep sense of confidence—that allows us to bear the responsibilities and enjoy the fruits of living in a free society.
– Dr. Emily Chamlee-Wright
Intellectual diversity is a fundamental part of this promise, Dr. Chamlee-Wright explains. Only when students are introduced to multiple points of view can they develop the capacity to interrogate their own knowledge and assumptions. She writes:
When we are introduced to multiple points of view, when we see the same information through a different lens, we become practiced at interrogating our own knowledge and assumptions. This, in turn, allows us to navigate uncharted intellectual territory and make genuine discoveries—creative, scientific, philosophical, and entrepreneurial discoveries that drive individual success and social progress.
– Dr. Emily Chamlee-Wright
If liberal arts colleges are becoming less and less intellectually diverse, that presents a serious problem—not just for those whose views aren’t represented by faculty, but for all students.
Read the full Forbes column. For additional pieces by Dr. Emily Chamlee-Wright, browse her Medium page.
From Unruly Hearts to Open Minds
Michael S. Roth examines campus intellectual
diversity in the age of polarization.
By
July 17, 2017
Commencement was over, and we had awarded diplomas to the more than 800 graduates in a timely way. I had made remarks, as I always do, connecting the education they had received with events in the world at large, especially the combination of corruption and inertia in Washington. While marching across the stage, a few dozen graduates managed to express their disappointment that the administration in general and the president (me) in particular weren’t as progressive as they would like on issues such as sexual assault, divestment from fossil fuels and support for underrepresented groups.
The commencement address at Wesleyan University this year was given by the MacArthur grant-winning poet Claudia Rankine. As president and master of ceremonies, I admit I was focused on the way she engaged the students -- no easy task. The address was political, as antiracism speeches must be, and it was smart, funny and moving by turns. She concluded by expressing, “Love to each of you and love to your bad behavior in the boardroom, on juries, in the office, on the street, at your dinner tables in all and every space that believes it can hold racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Muslim rhetoric and on and on. Love to you and your wild and unruly hearts imagining our world again.”
As families milled about after the ceremonies, taking pictures, sharing hugs and high fives, I was suddenly called out by an angry voice: “You annihilated my existence,” yelled a middle-aged man. Taken aback, I wasn’t sure I heard him right. “You annihilated my existence,” he repeated and went on to say that the ceremony had left him out and was an example of why people hate closed-minded universities today. Evidently, he did not feel included in the poet’s reference to unruly hearts.
I was surprised by this outburst, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been. I had recently encountered pushback from some on the other end of the political spectrum when I published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal calling for an affirmative action program for conservative ideas on campuses. Noting the tilt to the left in many humanities and social-science divisions at selective colleges, I argued that it was not enough to take a free-market approach to intellectual diversity. Being unruly at a Northeastern university these days should include making a special effort to enhance the study of conservative (religious and libertarian) traditions, broadly conceived. We should avoid the hate-filled provocateurs of the alt-right and instead encourage the serious study of ideas outside the progressive consensus.
Many students and colleagues who think of themselves as being on the left, as I do, worked themselves into a position of outrage, even victimization, after hearing about my short essay. A young alumna returning to campus for her reunion told me that I had made it more difficult for people like her to get an education because I was claiming that this education should contain ideas contrary to her own. She didn’t say I had “annihilated her existence” but seemed to feel that way.
What’s going on?
Survey data released this week by the Pew Charitable Trusts have given me a better feel for the intensity of such reactions. It is clear that many national institutions with hitherto broad public support are now viewed very differently depending on one’s ideological position. Perhaps it is unsurprising that Republicans and right-leaning independents have a far more positive view of churches and a more negative view of labor unions than do Democrats and left-leaning independents. Although the media’s popularity among those tilting left has grown over the last year, that doesn’t offset the steep decline among Americans on the right who think the national media is having a positive impact on the country. Interestingly, one can’t find a majority who think favorably about banks and financial institutions, though Republicans are more positive (46 percent) than Democrats (only 33 percent positive).
The sharpest partisan divisions appear when people are asked whether colleges are “having a positive or negative impact on the way things are going in the country.” Fifty-eight percent of Republicans and their ideological friends now say that colleges are having a negative impact, while 72 percent of Democrats and their comrades see colleges as positive. This gap has widened significantly in recent years. In 2015, a majority of GOPers thought positively about higher education; in fact, the decline among those who lean to the right is close to 20 percent! The views of colleges of those who fall toward the left have been pretty stable.
Colleges and universities have long been the screens upon which groups project their own fears and anxieties. Older people wonder what the next generation is coming to, or worry that their children are having their lives distorted by a professoriate not part of their “real world.” In the past two years, the fantasy of political correctness on college campuses has been a catch-all for a range of people angry about the world, especially those concerned about their status in our age of rapidly growing inequality. The PC campus bogeyman has an important function -- it pumps up the myth that our biggest problems stem from a lack of tolerance for ideas friendly to the status quo. When fraternity brothers are disturbed by university restrictions on how they organize parties, they find a new rallying cry in bemoaning “political correctness.” When middle-aged veterans of college protests of yesteryear no longer see their own battles and slogans repeated by today’s students, they complain about PC culture undermining free speech. When men, even elected officials, are caught bragging about sexual assault, they punch back at political correctness.
As I noted in the run-up to the presidential election, there just isn’t any downside to attacking this imaginary monster of groupthink, and so people friendly to the status quo will continue to trumpet their own courage in “not being PC” as they attack society’s most vulnerable groups. Racism and xenophobia get a free pass when folded into an attack on PC elitism.
At the same time, those attacked as PC shouldn’t take the bait and content themselves with labeling anyone who attacks them as racist. Those who point out the dangers of big government, emphasize the needs of national security in an age of terrorism, extol the virtues of family and religion, or defend free speech deserve intellectual engagement -- not insult and irony. Those who support a progressive campus culture make a big mistake if they think they are protecting that culture by insulating it from ideas that come from conservative, libertarian and religious traditions.
Demonizing people because they have ideas different from your own has always been a temptation, and lately it has become a national contagion. College campuses are not at all immune from it, but this malady is fatal for liberal education. Many people are so accustomed to curated information -- be it from social media feeds or just from one’s choice of cable news -- that they have lost the ability to respond thoughtfully to points of view different from their own. When they are confronted with disagreement, they may feel their “existence is annihilated” or that the person with whom they disagree wants “to make it harder for people like themselves to get on in the world.”
So those on the left and on the right surveyed by the Pew Foundation may actually share the same picture of colleges but just evaluate it differently. Democratish survey respondents may be imagining campuses as places where they would find people who hold views like their own, and Republicanish respondents may be thinking that people like them would simply be called nasty names were they to speak out there. Both groups may be imagining colleges in blue states and red states as places where like-minded people go to become more alike.
This is a disastrous view of colleges and universities, one that we who work on campuses must do our best to dispel. We must highlight and enhance the ways that students and faculty members consider alternative perspectives on culture and society; we must promote vigorous debate that doesn’t degenerate into personal attack. This kind of consideration and debate is increasingly rare in the public sphere, and that’s why it is more important than ever to cultivate the terrain for it on our campuses. By this I don’t mean inviting provocative entertainers to the campus so as to get free speech points at the cost of providing a platform for idiocy and abuse. I mean enhancing conditions for the serious study of alternative visions of justice, freedom, individual rights and communal responsibilities. I mean not just sharing biases with students in acts of solidarity, but testing one’s biases by engaging with ideas that also challenge the campus consensus.
Even when colleges and universities are seen as places to engage with ideas and inquiry that break a consensus rather than support it, when students and faculty are seen as capable of trying out ideas without fear of reprisal, not everyone will say that colleges are having “a positive effect on the way things are going in the country.” If we are doing our jobs, some should always object to what happens on campus. But when we are getting objections (and support) from people who hold a variety of perspectives, then we can be more confident that we are fostering the intellectual diversity essential for higher education’s role in this country.
Bio
Michael S. Roth is president of Wesleyan University and author, most recently, of Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2106.24 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2183 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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