Category: Free Speech

Dialogue, Free Speech, Higher Education

Embracing Discomfort

ProvostMissy@WCSU

It is election eve and all the pollsters and news outlets are busy predicting outcomes. Well not really. The margins of error seem large this year, with predictions so hedged as to appear meaningless. Issues (or single issues) seem to have taken a backseat to strategy, power, and control. We wait with bated breath, uncertain about the future but certain that we want something to change.

What is that change we crave? Well, of course, most of us have a few specific issues about which we care deeply. We care about the future of our social programs, how we fund education, access to healthcare, and the state of the economy. There are concerns about energy and transportation infrastructure and the impact of international relations on how we live. Everyone cares about the supply chain, even if the complexity of it all eludes most of us. There are plenty of specific issues to attend to in this election. But, I don’t think that any of these are at the heart of the something we’d like to change. It’s a change in the discourse that we crave.

I see it in myself. Like all elections, as we near the finish, the coverage is “horse race” coverage. There is no new information, just a kind of gamblers’ commentary as we bet on winners and losers. I’m no gambler, so I switch to music instead of the morning news. But even before the final weeks of the campaign, I have been wanting to switch to music, because I could see no honest conversations taking place. Everyone has staked out their corner, ignoring all chance of finding common ground.

Honest conversations? Common ground? What on earth am I thinking? I know, I know. The politics of running for office is always about those corners. People are playing margins and stirring up discontentment on purpose. This is the only way that candidates seem to be able to differentiate themselves. This is how they win their seats. But this conforms with only one definition of politics “the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government.” It has nothing to do with the other definition of politics “the art and science of guiding or influencing government policy.” (Thank you Merriam Webster).

I admit that you need some of the control to have the influence. Nevertheless, I’d like to see the path to that control more concerned with the substance of what that influence would mean. I dream of conversations that are less focused on winning the margins and more on the lived experiences of our communities. I know from my own experiences, that those conversations are sometimes very strained as we try to listen to those with whom we disagree. But they can also be extremely rewarding, because we often find that we are far closer together than those strident yells to (from?) the margins would let on.

I was struck by this today as I read “What a 1960s Housewife Can Teach Us about Politics in Higher Ed” in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The article details the ongoing debates on the rights and responsibilities of faculty to speak freely about controversial issues. It is a timely story that helps me think about the “conversations” we are having about twitter posts that offend some sensibilities, potential and actual policies banning discussion of Critical Race Theory, and the complexities of discussing Roe v. Wade, or other cultural flashpoints in the classroom. I say “conversations” because the arguments about what to do are mostly happening in the same manner that our political “debates” are happening – at a yell, often decontextualized, and without nuance.

At the heart of the Chronicle story is the notion of “indoctrination.” This word is invoked whenever a teacher or professor, school or university brings forth ideas that contradict widely held beliefs. The adoption of evolution in the science curriculum was a moment when educators were faced with accusations of indoctrination. So are those moments when things get uncomfortable in our discussions about religion, economic structures other than capitalism, political structures other than democracy, civil rights in total, and examinations of power structures in total. Questioning the status quo is often politicized as indoctrination. But according to Merriam Webster, to indoctrinate is “to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion.” To my way of thinking, then, to not discuss alternatives to commonly held beliefs is indoctrination. To discuss them is what I’d like to call education.

But it isn’t that simple, because to do this well is to be able to navigate fairly a lot of discomfort. We are comfortable in our world views and we experience discomfort when they are questioned. This discomfort is one of hardest things we navigate in education. If one believes we are a Christian nation, then questioning that will cause discomfort. If we believe that capitalism is the right economic structure, then we will experience discomfort if alternatives to that structure are discussed. If we believe that “normal” families look a specific way, we will experience discomfort when discussing alternatives to that definition of normal.

Responses to that discomfort are often feelings of anger, shame, and a sense of being diminished in some way. Indeed, one definition of discomfort acknowledges the experience of grief or distress. I might describe this as a feeling of loss, and that sense of loss can be profound indeed. That sense of loss can drive people to the extremes of a subject, defending rather than listening. Discomfort is often what convinces people that rules against these conversations are reasonable. They are not.

What is evident to me in all of this is that higher education is in the business of discomfort. Our job is to ask questions about what we do/know/believe, how we came to do/know/believe those things, and how they might be understood differently. It is also our job to try to navigate the discomfort these conversations inspire in ways that allow people to recover from feelings of anger, shame, or disempowerment they may cause. This is hard work, indeed, but it is imperative that we do so, because there is no other social structure designed to support these honest and difficult conversations.

As we approach election day, I see clearly that higher education must play a vital role in helping people move from discussing the horse race and the politics of power to discussing the paths to a better world and the politics of policy development. It is in our classrooms and our research that we can take the time to sort through the jolts to our worldviews and explore the potential for common ground. We will find ourselves deadlocked over some things, to be sure, but I think we’ll also find that those things are far rarer than we imagine. That discovery alone is worth the effort of cultivating difficult conversations in our classrooms.

Higher education must continue to cultivate these difficult and, one hopes, intriguing conversations. It is how we prepare people to become productive participants in the governance of their towns, schools, states, and the nation. It is our job to get folks used to engaging ideas that challenge their worldviews, and by extension, people who do the same. Those people are usually our neighbors, classmates, and colleagues with whom we must find a way to co-exist. Limiting the scope of our conversations will never achieve this.

Engaging dissent, disagreement, and differing worldviews is the most important job we do in higher education. It is the best way for us to support a productive democracy. It will never stop causing discomfort. But, perhaps, with practice, we can learn to embrace that discomfort in the service of finding more common ground.

Free Speech, Higher Education, Technology

Education as Sacred Space

ProvostMissy@WCSU

Well, here we are on what we hope is the brink of the end of the pandemic, and the impact of the last year has begun to emerge. Last week’s higher education news tells an interesting tale.

  • First, there was the Zoom story. As campuses jumped into digital platforms, many opting for (fighting for) Zoom, no one understood that they had usage clauses that allowed them to refuse to support potentially controversial campus events. We worried about Zoom Bombing, but not about censorship of us. As Zoom addresses this part of their contract (see Zoom Addresses Academic Freedom Concerns in Inside Higher Ed) because they want to continue to work with higher education, I find myself wondering how we are thinking about technology and censorship overall.
  • Second, Florida legislators have proposed legislation that allows students to record classes. They need permission to post their recordings, but the intention of this documentation is clear: The bill, which sailed through Florida’s House of Representatives and Senate, says that a student may record video or audio of class lectures not only for their own personal educational use but also “in connection with a complaint to the public institution of higher education where the recording was made, or as evidence in, or in preparation for, a criminal or civil proceeding.” (Lights, Camera, Teach)

Couple these with the countless instances of parent complaints that administrators and faculty have experienced over the last year because the parent happened to walk by and hear something they didn’t like when their student was “in” class, and it appears that these digital learning platforms are undermining the sacred spaces for learning we depend on in higher education.

Technologies are not just tools–they have power to fully re-define the organizations, communities, and cultures they inhabit. This is Media Ecology 101 (see Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman for primers). Leaping into these new environments without thinking them through can be a dangerous thing. The last year has been nothing but leaping in without the time to think things through. As we emerge from this pandemic and regroup about what universities will look like in the years to come, we must not neglect fundamental questions about the interaction between our technologies and our definitions of education.

Here are some things I’d like all of us to consider.

Exploration of controversial topics is a necessary component of higher education.

In K-12, we may introduce some of the tough things about our history, culture, and the nature of human existence, but we tread lightly because the students are young and potentially fragile. At universities we educate adults (beginner adults, perhaps, but adults nonetheless). As such, this is the time to stop mincing words and get to the heart of some of the most difficult conversations about “life, the universe, and everything” (thank you Douglas Adams). These conversations are a necessary part of education and we are all likely to be uncomfortable. Too bad. Controversial and/or ambiguous subjects are at the heart of learning, creating knowledge, and changing the world. Think Darwin, Wright, Arendt, de Beauvior.

Classrooms must be seen as sacred spaces.

As educators, we like to say “there are no stupid questions.” In reality, there are lots of stupid questions. These are questions that reveal we weren’t listening carefully, didn’t read the assignment, didn’t read the syllabus, etc. Nevertheless, we want our students to trust us enough to go ahead and ask. Questions are the path to clarification, understanding, and sometimes great conversations about where misunderstandings come from. Students must feel free to speak without being humiliated, and so we cultivate that openness to every question, not just the good ones, in all that we do. Being recorded asking these questions is just not fair.

At the same time, in the flow of an explanation, faculty are likely to make statements that they would then like to re-phrase or clarify. They may be exploring a novel idea that they are thinking through out loud, or they may simply stumble in describing something and then step back to rephrase. They may also take on a delicate topic and bravely work through difficult ideas in collaboration with their students. Those conversations frequently lead to words and phrases that can look controversial if taken out of the context of the whole. Allowing students to record these conversations will fundamentally undermine a conversational and exploratory (Socratic) approach to education. Under the threat of recordings, faculty will be forced to read from notes and PowerPoint slides without engaging in anything but short answer questions.

University students must be treated as adults.

This is not just about the family members listening in to their student’s classes and intervening inappropriately. Those violations of the walls of the classroom are a curious outgrowth of the pandemic when online learners have been surrounded by their families. Post-pandemic, online learners might find a room of their own once again. That is as it should be.

But even before the pandemic I was being courted by technology vendors who wanted to help me take attendance via students’ phones. This was posed a solution to the vagaries of faculty attendance taking, and as an opportunity to intervene if we notice that students are missing too many classes. While attendance is, indeed, the number one barrier to student success at my university, I roundly refused this technological intervention. I do not want the power to track our students’ every moves. They should be able to move freely, outside of our view, because they are adults. Adults are responsible for their own attendance. To make it our job is to re-enforce adolescent behaviors and worse, keep the motivation for education externally located. This is a terrible idea for higher education.

Post-Pandemic, higher education will continue to use technologies to create educational opportunities and experiences. That can be to the good. We should explore pedagogies, imaginatively blend learning environments, and expand access to education wherever possible. But make no mistake, adopting new technologies will change what we mean when we say higher education. As we adopt them we should not lose sight of the critical experiences that are central to learning as (young) adults. Those experiences will include conversations that are informative, imaginative, controversial, and uncomfortable. These conversations should not be sacrificed as we adopt new technologies.

It is imperative that universities continue to create environments designed to support the development of our students’ abilities to think independently and critically as they navigate difficult and confusing ideas. Universities provide an opportunity to hone those skills in a community devoted to drawing out ideas rather than shutting them down. Those conversations will not take place in a censored or surveilled environment. They can only happen if we continue to create sacred spaces for learning.

Community, Critical Thinking, Dialogue, equity, Free Speech, Inclusion, Uncategorized

The Age of the Straw Man

ProvostMissy@WCSU

Two of the six core values that support Western Connecticut State University’s mission are:

  • Dialogue. We value the conversations that explore diverse perspectives and encourage shared understanding.
  • Respect. We value the right of all people to be treated with dignity and fairness and expect this in our policies, classrooms, and community.

These statements reveal a campus that has embraced the difficult and exciting discussions that follow when people of different social, political, and cultural backgrounds gather to address current and ancient societal debates.  This is who we are, and these values should be at the heart of any educational organization. But acceptance of the challenge of exploring differences in civil and thoughtful ways may need more support than just open minds and empathy.  Given the preponderance of fallacious arguments in the ether, it may be time to commit to some direct instruction in informal logic.

For the uninitiated, informal logic springs from the field of philosophy (also embraced in writing and communication curriculum), that provides a toolkit for examining arguments for structure and validity. Much like the old grammatical diagrams that were once used in the teaching of English (helping to break down nouns, verbs and connecting parts of speech), informal logic allows us to diagram arguments in terms of claims, support for those claims and conclusions. This diagramming is a great way to identify places where the supporting evidence or facts under discussion may have strayed from the initial claim or premise.

I recall my first encounter with informal logic as an undergraduate at Hunter College in the 1980s.  Sitting in a room of over 100 students listening to Dr. James Freeman introduce the structure of argument I felt a light go on.  For years, I had felt like there were problems with the statements/beliefs/worldviews that I encountered, but I could not figure out what was wrong.  These diagrams of arguments were a first step to uncovering the weaknesses or other leaps not supported by the claims I regularly faced. That course changed my life.

Now the field of logic has many nuances that most of us will never really dig into or fully understand, but the basics should be accessible to us all.  Among the basic concepts is the idea of a fallacy.  Simply put, fallacies are irrelevant evidence for a claim.  They are included as evidence, with no real bearing on the debate. They are distractions, keeping us from examining the central claim.  Typical examples are ad hominem fallacies (attacking the speaker instead of the argument), false dichotomy (setting up an argument around two choices, when many others are possible), or appeals to authority (invoking opinions of famous people, who may or may not have a connection to the actual topic).  Learning to see these tricks is incredibly helpful as one tries to evaluate a substantive issue.

One particular fallacy that seems to be dominating our lives right now is the straw man. The straw man fallacy is a way of distorting the central claim of an argument and then arguing against the distortion, rather than the actual claim. This tactic usually relies on taking things out of context or exaggerating the initial claim.    Since any example I give at this point is likely to draw some kind of bias claim, I will relate a totally unintended version that happened in an interaction with a six-year-old, twenty years ago. The six- year-old (let’s call her Sally) came to play with my daughter some time in mid-December.  The two began to discuss holiday plans and decorations. At some point, Sally stated that “everyone” would be going to church on Christmas Eve.  Since our family would not be heading to church, I interjected, “You mean everyone who celebrates Christmas.”  Sally responded, “You mean you hate Jesus?”

Sally was not malicious.  Her words were the innocent observations of a child who had never encountered a non-Christian before. I will not say things were easy to clarify, she was young and I wanted to be gentle, but we sorted things out.  However, I think you can see that in malicious hands, this statement is an interpretation of my words that was not in any way accurate.  In adult hands, with intention, this can become very ugly indeed.

This is a strategy that is dominating political arguments from all directions (left, right, and everywhere in between).  You name the issue (environment, immigration, gun control, healthcare, equity, etc.) and you will find a plethora of straw man arguments designed to distract us from the central argument.  At their worst, they are baiting us into discussions that are entirely false or at best, beside the point.  This is not a good state of affairs.

So what of my university’s values?  Well, like all universities, we are engaged in conversations like the one I had with Sally. In nearly every course, we challenge our assumptions about how the world is, was, or should be organized. Whether studying chemistry, biology, criminology, marketing, or history, students and faculty will uncover long held ideas and assumptions that may need to be reconsidered. Our task, then, is to insure that the reconsideration does not go astray with straw man arguments, or any other kind of fallacy.

To put it more plainly, when we ask ourselves to grapple with ideas that contradict everything we have known to be true, we may feel discomfort. That discomfort should not drive us to tactics that distort the question.  We should not start casting complex debates as either/or, us/them, and allow them to be reduced to slogans. We cannot allow simplistic, straw man fallacies, to distract us from our commitment to reasoned discourse on all issues. If keeping this commitment means more instruction in logic for all of us, let’s do it!

 

Critical Thinking, Dialogue, Free Speech

Are you listening?

ProvostMissy@WCSU

On Friday evening, I attended the annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture where I  had the pleasure of hearing Nadine Strossen, professor of law at New York Law School and former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, discuss the subject of her most recent book, Hate: Why We Should Resist it with Free Speech, not Censorship.  Strossen is a dynamic speaker and as she wove her legal arguments into a general semantics context, I was struck by the tremendous responsibility educators have for the cultivation of rational discourse.

Strossen’s arguments were clear and persuasive.  Having looked at the impact of legislation designed to limit hate speech (e.g., EU, Canada, New Zealand), she observes that these limits have done nothing to stop hateful actions, which should be the goal.  The most recent assassination attempt at the Halle synagogue in Germany tells the tale.  Germany has some of the strongest restrictions on hate speech.  It is also seeing a rise in anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, and nationalistic attitudes, despite these restrictions.

Restrictions on (hate) speech are ineffective at best, and may be inadvertently supporting hateful acts at worst.  How? By sending those who spout hateful views underground.  Banning of hate groups from the Internet does not stop the hate group, it just moves them to a new site, frequently hidden from view.  Recent attempts to do just that after the Charlottesville incident were problematic at best. Strossen suggested that the best way to address hate is to surface it so that there is a chance for dialogue, understanding, or, at the very least, the ability to identify those who are spouting hateful views.

Members of the Institute of General Semantics present that evening largely accepted the proposition that limits on speech are problematic.  There were feelings of discomfort as we wrestled with the power of the language of bigotry.  As students of language, we know that our words do not just reflect our feelings, but also construct our worlds.  The very use of biased language can re-enforce racist, sexist, and homophobic attitudes.  It can also legitimize those attitudes, just in the speaking.  Yet, banning that speech will not stop it: it will only hide it. Hearing of these attitudes offers us all the opportunity to ask why they exist and how they might be changed.

There was also some consternation about people in power using hate speech.  This is particularly relevant when we consider our hyper-connected social media world.  Facebook recently announced that it was not in the censorship business and they would not stop political ads that have false statements in them.  While this may seem absurd, and perhaps plays into the hands of unscrupulous politicians, Strossen suggested that seeing those ads allows us to better judge the candidate.  Leaving them out in the open allows us to evaluate biases, faulty assumptions, and poorly supported arguments, and be better informed about who or what we are actually voting for/against.  She may have a point.

I embrace Strossen’s perspective but recognize some of the challenges that living with freedom of speech presents.  One of the critical components to having freedom of speech be a social good is our ability to decode and validate information.  The demand for this evaluative capacity has never been stronger than right now.  We have undermined the many structures that helped us sort information in the past (editors, community leaders, investigative reporting, even just plain old time) while at the same time providing easy access to communication platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Wikipedia and, well the Internet) with algorithms to lead the way.  This means all of our education structures K-12 through Ph.D. must continuously re-enforce the tools necessary for evaluating information.

Given the urgency of the situation, and it is urgent if we want an informed citizenry to guide policy of any kind,  those of us in higher education might want to re-group and more specifically address these analytical skills.  Strossen referenced the demands on her law students, noting that they didn’t just need to know one argument, but must present as many counter-arguments as possible. Maybe we need to do the same in all of our classes.  Perhaps it is time for debate across the curriculum, with a real emphasis on putting evidence in context.

But there is more to consider than the art of well-reasoned debate.  The potential for understanding that freedom of speech makes available, no matter how controversial, can only be realized if we are willing to listen. Sadly, we don’t seem to be particularly good at this part of the equation.  This morning, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on students burning books after the author’s presentation in Georgia, University of Wisconsin moving to crack down on disruptive protestors (shutting down speech), and a case of a dean being dismissed for some remarks on Twitter (or so it appears).  None of these examples reflect a willingness to listen to speech that challenges our values and assumptions.  This is not a good state of affairs.

The true value of that first amendment will not be realized by covering our ears, liking only posts that support our views, tuning in only to those channels that resonate with our values.  We have to resist this habit of cocooning ourselves in our favorite ideas and excluding those that offend.  This is vitally important in a university context, where students have the time and support to question assumptions from everywhere.

I agree with Strossen’s support of the first amendment.  We should hold onto that Constitutional right with all our might.  But just letting everyone speak isn’t enough. We also have to take some responsibility for the conversations that should ensue.  Let’s engage the difficult, probe our assumptions, and try our very best to understand those ideas that offend our sensibilities.  If we are willing to listen to the diversity of ideas that surround us, we just might find a place to begin sorting through our differences after all.

 

 

 

Dialogue, equity, Free Speech, Inclusion

Reflection and Inclusion

ProvostMissy@WCSU

I confess.  I play Words with Friends and Puzzly Words.  If there is anyone left who does not know what these are, they are digital variations on Scrabble.  In the morning, I check my email, read Inside Higher Education and the daily Chronicle of Higher Education summary, and then play a few rounds of these games while I sip my coffee.  I have never been much for any board games other than Scrabble (well, I love Banagrams, too), so when these came along they fit my fun criteria nicely.  

 A few years ago, I noticed something while I was playing.  As we all moved from impersonal screen names to our Facebook photos, I could see images of the people I was playing.  As it turns out, these digital games had greatly added to the diversity of my game partners.  It gave me pause, not just because my own circle of friends is so homogeneous (a worry to be sure), but also because it unearthed a previously un-noticed assumption I had about Scrabble.  Invented in Connecticut, in my unconscious mind I saw Scrabble as a white game.  It was a startling realization.

I never knew I held that thought.  Indeed, it never surfaced until I had contradictory evidence. As I saw my word game partners broadening and becoming wonderfully diverse, this bias rose from my unconscious.  I took the time to acknowledge the thought, felt more than a little ashamed of it, and then embraced the change in my point of view.  I eagerly look forward to the seeing the diversity of my online partners and the sense of commonality it engenders. This change was relatively easy to make because it was virtual, I could acknowledge the error of my ways privately, and because I care to change the biased assumptions I find buried in my mind. 

It was a simple thing to surface this bias. Seeing images of my partners fostered the discovery.  As I played this morning I noticed the diversity once again, and it reminded me to ask my colleagues who are busily preparing for the start of the fall semester to look at their course materials.  Are they wonderfully diverse?  I know you are rushing and making final edits to your syllabi, but can you take a moment to look at your readings, slides, films, and examples and see if you have been inclusive?  This simple step could be the start of uncovering all sorts of unconscious biases.

I know I have written about the inclusivity of course materials before, and it does bear repeating, but I would like to acknowledge another piece of the inclusion puzzle today.  You see, this morning’s reading of Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle was not encouraging when it comes to our ability to create environments that support inclusion.  I won’t list all the recent articles, but here’s what is coming through loud and clear: In our efforts to be inclusive, we don’t seem to be successfully creating the space for the reflective process that I went through in the privacy of my home.  This missing piece appears to be fostering anger and defensiveness instead of reflection and inclusion.

Selecting course materials that reflect a breadth of cultural experiences and the contributions of the many is an excellent first step in creating an inclusive environment. It can encourage students and faculty to notice assumptions and, perhaps, reflect on biases they did not know they had.  This private reflection can be very productive.  We know from our attempts to use less gender-specific language (chair instead of chairman, firefighter instead of fireman) that the change in language can make our thinking more inclusive. Including diverse images and authors is likely to have a similar effect, so this is an effort worth making. However, once we start talking about it, well it is no longer a private process.  The conversation piece is much more threatening, particularly if the bias we discover is one that deeply offends our sense of self and/or the sensibilities of others in the room. 

Yet, the conversations are so important. We must figure out how to have them in ways that are not alienating.  We have to understand that while some of us have benefitted from “privilege,” we have not all benefitted equally.  Some of us have been so excluded that we don’t even know how to begin. And none of us is without bias. The variation in access to wealth and power and education means conversations about those privileges must be nuanced.  Entering discussions with all of this in mind is paramount to creating an environment in which conversations that address bias are about discovery, not accusation.

Now listen, I am not blind to the real structural racism that we are dealing with as a culture.  I understand the force with which we need to be seeking real change and asking for nuanced conversation is cold comfort for many.  However, as I scan the reports on higher education I am worried that we are skipping a step.  As educators, we need to create the space for reflection and the room to breathe as we all come to terms with each new hidden bias we discover.  

There will always be hidden biases.  Each new bias discovered opens the door to the next one, and that is a good thing.  It is, indeed, progress. But discovering them will always be uncomfortable. So we need to get better at this part, the part where we learn together without demeaning anyone. It is hard, but it is an effort worth making.