What I Said to My Students about the Election
There’s been a lot of discussion on social media today among professors about what they should say to their students about the election.
I taught today. This is what I said, more or less, to the 40 or so students in my contemporary moral problems course:
We had a big election last night. Some of you may be happy with the results, some of you may be unhappy with them. The only thing I’d say about it is that, when thinking about your own political views, try not to get swept up by the personalities and rhetoric of others. You should rely on your own judgment. But if you’re going to rely on your own judgment, you should make sure your judgment is worth relying on—that it’s good judgment. How do you do that? Well, that’s part of what being here in college is about. In this course, and in many of your other courses, the work you’re doing contributes to your judgment becoming more reliable. So let’s get to work and do some philosophy.
I share this in case it’s of use or of interest. Certainly there will be differing views over what kinds of things to say, or whether to mention the election at all. Discussion is welcome.
UPDATE (11/12/24): The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the matter.
Several of my students are Dreamers–students who were brought here from another country by their parents without documentation when they were infants. I’m not sure I can look them in the eye and ask them if they can trust their judgment about whether last night was a good or bad thing.
See also: LGBT students
OK, but that’s not at all what Justin’s statement said.
My point is that treating the election as an academic matter, a mere point of intellectual debate, can seem pretty tone deaf to a lot of my students. Their lives are going to be radically impacted by what happened this week. My class isn’t what prepares them to evaluate that impact or empowers them to judge that impact, they’ve been living their whole lives for that. And it seems a bit condescending to sweep their lived experiences under the rug and to try and replace it with ‘This is what you come to college for!’
I know Justin isn’t trying to be cruel or insensitive. And maybe his students will be more receptive to this kind of message than (I think) mine would. But I do think there are context-sensitive reasons to NOT treat the election like it’s some kind of thought experiment in civil disagreement.
I understand, but I do think you have to keep in mind your limitations as an instructor (likely only one of many) at a college. Of course it’s true that the election, and it’s likely consequences, are not a mere thought experiment. And of course it’s also true that your class on its own is not what prepares them to deal with it.
But you shouldn’t be thinking that what you say to a class the day after an election is likely to help them in any concrete or direct way with something like this. I don’t love Justin’s statement, because I think it’s probably something that should just be shown rather than told. But I agree with its sentiment. If a philosophy class is going to help, it’s probably going to help in this very indirect way — it improves your judgment just a little, makes you more capable of thinking for yourself just a little, makes you more capable of understanding people who disagree with you just a little, and we need all of this that we can get. We should be humble and straightforward about our goals.
You can worry, I guess, that this will sweep your students’ lived experiences under the rug, but you ought to worry too about being presumptuous — you don’t necessarily know what your students’ lived experiences are, or what they think about them, or what would help them process them in light of what’s happened. You’re not their therapist, or their political advisor. You’re their philosophy teacher.
(Of course, none of this necessarily applies if you’re talking one on one with a student you’ve gotten to know a bit better. Then you might have more of a friend or advisor role, and might know their lived experience in a way that would allow you to speak to it productively. I’m just talking about the pragmatics/ethics of making a statement publicly to a group.)
I like it.
I also like Kamala’s conceding speech where she said she will concede this campaign but she will not concede the underlying fight which her 100-ish day campaign is based on—the fight for equality in freedom, bodily autonomy, equal opportunity for prosperity and so on.
I also like Barack Obama’s statement (echoing Ms Harris’ statement) on peaceful transfer of power, and the part of Obama’s statement on listening and extending grace to even people—fellow citizens—whom we deeply disagree with.
Figure these two points fit in with this ethics theme on this blog posts.
Also further fair disclosure I’m Indonesian, not American, and am watching from abroad with imo pretty full awareness how this US election can and will affect the globe.
ok “listening and extending grace to even people—fellow citizens—whom we deeply disagree with” sounds great but the problem is that by *all* objective standards, trump is dangerous, unfit, and morally reprehensible. this is not “trump derangement syndrome,” it is fact. offering grace and listening to people who for whatever legitimate reason will proudly elect a person such as this requires engaging not with reasoned argument but with people who are assenting to deep moral corruption.
are we willing to listen to and extend grace to steve bannon and peter theil and stephen miller? to qanon and pizza gate believers? if this were 1963 would we extend grace to george wallace, his followers and members of the ku klux klan?
my view is this: i am willing to listen and give grace to almost anyone who doesn’t believe or endorse things or people i find morally repugnant. if your moral value system either doesn’t care about or excuses stirring up hatred against vulnerable people in favor of your economic self-interest, you have given up any moral authority that would justify my grace or ear.
and just to be clear, i grew up in rural territory in a state that has been red since the 1970s and will remain so for the foreseeable future. i am, by the standards of most humanists i know, a rotten centrist. i’ll take charles taylor or martha nussbaum over foucault or fanon every day of the week.
People are large; they contain multitudes. They do good things and bad, and trying to interpret someone’s actions, good or bad, as evidence of a systematic moral framework by which you can pass global judgement on them is just not a good way to engage with the vast majority of people.
I intend this as a moral point: but it also works as a strategic one. Which would you prefer: to remain morally pure by condemning and rejecting half the country, or to win the next election?
i deeply disagree with the glibness of this response. you seem like a rigorous thinker from your comments here. i ask you to follow your logic to its endpoint and apply it to specific historical situations. really ask yourself about george wallace in 1963 and the people who terrorized the little rock nine, for example. this is all too human but that does not mean that there is some moral equivocation to the actions and more importantly the judgments that led to the actions.
beginning from a truism to engage with a moral point already indicates a lack of seriousness in my view but i will try to rearticulate: when a person or group of people voluntarily give their consent and support to the morally reprehensible out of ignorance or otherwise, they have lost my ear on moral matters regardless of their individual suffering, fears, and love of family or country. this is a deeply easy moral calculus, one that we can apply to weimar germany, to the hamas attacks of october 7th, to the actions israel in the wake of october 7th and on and on. it is easy enough to understand *why* people do or support the reprehensible but when they do, and when it is clear what they are doing and when the facts are not in doubt and when they double down on it, we need to drop grace in favor of censure—and i do not mean shaming here—until such time as the immorality is admitted and remedies are attempted.
in terms of the pragmatic claim you make, i would side here with the thoreau of civil obedience and the king jr. of the letter from birmingham jail here.
thoreau:
Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions, in his chapter on the “Duty of Submission to Civil Government,” resolves all civil obligation into expediency; and he proceeds to say that “so long as the interest of the whole society requires it, that is, so long as the established government cannot be
resisted or changed without public inconveniency, it is the will of God… that the established government be obeyed- and no longer. This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of
the probability and expense of redressing it on the other.” Of this, he says, every man shall judge for himself. But Paley appears never to have contemplated those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what it may. If I
have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself. This, according to Paley, would be inconvenient. But he that would save his life, in such a case, shall lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.
king jr:
Was not Jesus an extremist in love? — “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice? — “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ? — “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist? — “Here I stand; I can do no other so help me God.” Was not John Bunyan an extremist? — “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a mockery of my conscience.” Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? — “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist? — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?
I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and with deep moral concern serve as the channel through which our just grievances could get to the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.
I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision becauseit is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother. In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sidelines and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, “Those are social issues which the gospel has nothing to do with”
Doesn’t the Christ quote that MLKJ favorably cites — ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you’ — support David Wallace’s attitude towards Trump voters?
Part of the point of what Christ says is precisely that the actions of these people we’re supposed to love ARE bad; that’s why the admonishment to love them is needed. So there’s no moral equivocation about the badness of their actions. As for the bad judgements that may have led to those actions, I agree with David Wallace that we can’t infer from someone’s having done even a very bad thing that their entire moral value system is corrupt. And insofar as the bad action did follow from truly corrupt judgments, shouldn’t we aim to help the actor remedy that? In which case the grace / listening / love route seems more likely to succeed (and to improve future political outcomes) than the despising-and-writing-off route. Which is really just another way of saying what DW said.
“…support David Wallace’s attitude towards Trump voters?”
I don’t see how, since the view that seems to be expressed is that political emotions – including loving your political enemies – are basically always counter to some ideal of neutrality.
I intervened twice on two different issues.
1) As a matter both of morality and political strategy, I agree with what Harris said in her concession speech. I think it’s good advice for me qua citizen.
2) Qua teacher, I don’t plan to advocate her advice – or anything else about politics – in my classroom.
Ah, I see. Totally fair. I was focusing on the expression of political emotions in the classroom (say, for distraught maga students). But i see I misread the top comment.
No. That’s about non-retaliation, not relinquishing all capacity for moral judgement.
So am I to assume that a bunch of philosophers vote for Trump and want us to wipe our minds clean so no moral assessment is posdible?
Christ’s view is a preferable way to live in my experience. You don’t ignore facts, or harms, you merely try to avoid compounding them by adopting the kinds of attitudes that avoid harming, and encourages you to benefit others.
This way, we prevent various cycles of mutual harm that can arise between people.
There’s nothing in this idea about ignoring harms or exempting people from responsibility for what they cause. –that wouldn’t make sense. You would not need forgiveness because people tried not to consider what you did almost immediately. , And Jesus says you do need forgiveness.
[Nome:] ‘There’s nothing in [Christ’s] idea about ignoring harms or exempting people from responsibility for what they cause. –that wouldn’t make sense. You would not need forgiveness because people tried not to consider what you did almost immediately. , And Jesus says you do need forgiveness.’
I agree with this, and it’s an important point about what Christ is and is not advocating. And I like the connection to what he says about forgiveness! But I don’t think that I or David Wallace suggested ignoring harms, exempting people from responsibility for what they cause, or relinquishing all capacity for moral judgment. In fact, in my reply to ikj I wrote:
“Part of the point of what Christ says is precisely that the actions of these people we’re supposed to love ARE bad; that’s why the admonishment to love them is needed. So there’s no moral equivocation about the badness of their actions.”
Maybe the disagreement between what (I think) DW and I are saying and what (I think) ikj is saying is not about how we should assess actions that we justifiably believe to be bad, but rather about how we should assess the people who have done those actions. We all seem to be in agreement that we should assess bad actions as bad, and try to prevent their happening, and try to ameliorate their bad effects, etc. But I took DW and I to be disagreeing with ikj about whether we should “reject and condemn” – or, in my words, “despise and write off” – people who have done things that we justifiably believe to be very bad, like voting for Trump. All those terms I just used – rejecting, condemning, despising, writing off – need more elaboration, and your comment gives me a chance to think more precisely about the kind of reaction to Trump voters that I read ikj and some others as advocating, and that I want to resist. As I see it, that reaction includes both an evaluative inference and a behavior:
(1) Inferring from a Trump voter’s having voted for Trump that their entire moral value system is corrupt.
(2) Refusing to engage with Trump voters in certain ways – e.g., refusing to listen to them or more generally to have conversations with them. This refusal is what I have in mind when I talk about the “writing off” response to Trump voters.
I think the inference (1) is not justified. But even when we are justified (based on further information) in saying that someone’s entire moral value system is corrupt – as I believe we might be justified in saying about some people, including some Trump voters – I think we have strong moral reasons to resist (2), and to instead try to engage those people in conversation, including by listening and trying to understand their reasons for holding the beliefs and doing the things that we find morally repugnant.
One important reason is instrumental: I think this approach gives us the best chance of improving the bad values and the bad actions they motivate. But another reason is non-instrumental: I think people generally are capable of profound moral development and improvement. (Maybe there are some exceptions to this, but I’m confident the number of exceptions is lower than the number of Trump voters.) I think part of what it is to treat each other, and ourselves, with respect is to treat each other, and ourselves, as though we are capable of this improvement. I think this attitude – call it “growth mindset” rather than “fixed mindset” about moral character, if you like – favors continuing to engage with and listen to those who do very bad things. When I have a conversation with someone about a morally high-stakes question on which we disagree, we are treating ourselves and each other as though we are capable of giving and responding to reasons about morally high-stakes questions, where “responding to reasons” might include changing our values and, accordingly, our actions. I think that’s a good way to treat people. Partly because it is a way of holding each other responsible for our moral values and actions – and I, like you, think we should hold each other responsible.
I agree wholeheartedly with that when it comes to students.
Students are simply figuring out the world. I infer nothing decisive about anyone of that age group—not their intellectual capacities, their moral potential, or how they will ultimately turn out.
Although rare in my students, I have seen a few students display a commitment to embracing things which are mildly to fully immoral and antisocial.
This is why I don’t think it’s good to stay neutral. This is a whole person we are interacting with. They may be unaware of all the good reasons to prefer the better to the worse.
It would be irresponsible of me not to at least throw out some of these reasons—in certain cases.
If I care about them as people, there are some things that I wouldn’t want to let them go forward in life without considering.
There’s A LOT they don’t know. Which is one of the reasons I find much of this thread absurd.
Where would I be if people hadn’t done this for me?
We’re supposed to let them think for themselves yet shield them from the whole story about some of the beliefs and values they may embrace as if these aren’t held by people and as if WE are not people who hold views?
It’s a caricature of liberals or leftists that they are so moralistic they are unable to see that a person is not the sum of their politics. And an illusion that centrists and conservatives present ‘neutral’ views in a ‘neutral’ way.
People of all political views are capable of attending to the full reality of the person before them, can and should consider their effect on them, try to benefit them, treat them with respect, and so on.
Like many professors, I love all the data my students bring me about what’s up in society—so I love having rightwing students, and I learn things from them as well.
Apologies for the typos. I find very odd things happen on this website if I ever go on it on my phone.
This remark, and the surrounding discussion, remind me of Brandom’s reading of Hegel’s notion of magnanimity, the attitude we owe and are owed as creatures of Spirit, or products of the institutions we set up and propagate through history. It also strikes me as something important about what Americans owe to each other today. Thanks for sharing.
So how do you suggest we act toward those students? How do you act? Do you kindly request they withdraw from your class? Do you shun them? Do you fail them? You say censure not shaming but I don’t know what this means in practice. Let’s be concrete if the stakes are so high.
In response ikj, I am reposting a comment an earlier Daily Nous thread ‘Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Social Philosophy Course’. This was a course on a fairly standard set for political thinkers, namely Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, Machiavelli, Kant and founding fathers such as Jefferson.
The exam is very interesting. It looks to me as if MLK deliberately set it up to give his students two strategic options :
1) To address the burning issues of the day via a critical dialogue (sometimes, one suspects, a ferociously critical dialogue) with a set of famous political thinkers of the past, all of them (at it happens) dead white males.
2) To discuss these thinkers in a relatively abstract, theoretical and historical way if they felt uncomfortable with option 1).
Why do I say this? Well students have to answer five out of seven questions only two of which (maybe only one of which) could not be answered competently by a student who studiously avoided any mention of contemporary issues.
Thus King was fostering the development of radical ideas and challenging his students to apply the political philosophy that they were learning and developing to the present whilst *at the same time* allowing them to pass the course with credit if they did not feel like taking up the challenge.
Why did he do it this way? I suspect a respect for the autonomy students. Did King have a political agenda? Of course he did. He was passionately committed to a wide range of radical causes. Was he out to attract recruits and supporters to the civil rights cause? Of course he was, especially as he was teaching at what was in those days was probably not just an Historically Black College but a Black College tout court. But he only wanted recruits and supporters who had come to the cause out of a reasoned conviction, not because they had been intellectually pressured, bamboozled or bedazzled by a charismatic professor. Thus the course seems to provide ‘spaces’ for those who might dissent from his agenda, either because they didn’t agree with him or because they were just not interested. His OBJECT was to help students to think for themselves about a range of political issues and to acquire a working knowledge of a range of political classics. His HOPE was that these autonomous critical thinkers would wind up agreeing with him and committing to the cause. But he did not want to compromise their autonomy in order to secure that agreement.
This has some relevance, I think, to the topic under discussion today.
Thanks. This is interesting and illuminating.
fwiw, i said nothing here about students—most of whom don’t vote. fwiw i don’t use my teaching as a bully pulpit. nor did i, in real life, say anything at all about the election to *my students* irl.
what i will not do, and again this is an easy moral calculus, is take seriously justifications for voting for trump *given what we know about him and political circle.* i acknowledge suffering and inequality but the majority of trump voters are not out of work appalachian coal miners whose lives are marked by opioid addiction.
most are middle class white people who are just darn mad that their grocer is price-gouging them or that they didn’t get the free child care they seem to think public school primarily is during covid lockdown. whether they choose not to understand what trump and his people have been saying they will do, or they are ignorant of what is being said, or they are seduced by a cult of personality, or they are in ideological agreement doesn’t matter. what matters is that they react to perceived sleights and internalized resentments by voting for people who have promised to actively immiserate some of the most vulnerable.
to paraphrase another thinker of note, douglass in the 4th of July speech, the arguments have been made and they are pretty clear about who trump is and what his political allies want. unless you think that single women should have only a fractional vote, or that mass immigration raids are a good idea, or that “the immigrants” really are coming to take your job, or that trans people are a social threat, or that abortion must be federally outlawed, in which case i have no truck with you, you are prioritizing what your own self-interest over avoiding widespread victimization. while we can’t predict the future, we can take people at their word.
what is not needed here is accommodation but rather as douglass would say “scorching irony.” the point of the king passage above is not christ’s “love thy enemies” but rather that quietism and namby-pamby refusal to actually deal with a moral issue in front of you is cowardice. that people will stand buy in the face of very bad things and use a given belief system as an excuse not to do or say anything.
finally, i don’t buy the idea that the only time we can repudiate is after the potential harm has been done. we don’t need to wait for the deaths of mothers and children under further reproductive health restrictions, we don’t need to wait until troops are unleashed on protests, we don’t need to wait until the bad thing happens to see where this could go. personally, i’d rather be wrong about being mad at what appears to be craven self-interest in voters than be wrong about how “everything will be fine” in trump’s america. but you do you.
What an odd thing to say!.
I know philosophers beleve they should say odd things but this would imply we can’t morally assess people.
We do it partly because we have to.
You do understand that your exact argument is being had by people who are Republicans and believe that you and your opinions are the ones that they must extend grave towards? They will also say somethimg along the lines of “by all objective standards” Harris and for example her defense of defund the police or queer theory are just as awful as you find Trump and just as detrimental to the country and the wellbeing of children …. Your way is not the only way to understand the world. It is quite presumptous and condescending to talk about witholding grace to people of differnet opinions because you presume they have lacking morals. You cannot really believe that 50% of the voters “have moral value systems which either do not care about or excuses stirring up hatred against vulnerable people in favor of their economic self-interest”? What makes you so sure they do not believe they are in the moral right which has nothing do with self interest? To be clear, I find Trump morally reprehensible as well, but there are reasons people voted for him and to minimize and belittle them is intellectually dishonest and arrogant.
“You do understand that your exact argument is being had by people who are Republicans…”
Peter, I’m afraid that they — the people who arrogantly assume that they have flawless access to the truth on all these matters and that their job is to shame or threaten others (including their students) into agreement — do not understand this, or if they do, they do not seem to think it’s relevant.
They have abandoned, often explicitly, the core principles of objectivity and fairness and the idea that the norms of discourse should be universally applied. They are also not interested in trying to charitably understand the motivations of the people who fundamentally disagree with them, let alone to try to see things from any other perspective.
Many of them have, somehow, been allowed to get to where they are in the profession without ever having imbibed the spirit of fair, reasoned inquiry on all matters that should be a main theme of any freshman philosophy course. What motivates them instead, it seems, is clambering for social status within their in-group and the thrill of self-congratulatory exhilaration that comes from holding themselves morally superior to everyone who disagrees with them (for which purpose it is helpful to them to portray their targets as ever-more-implausibly evil and backward, and they need have no fear that anyone in their in-group will bother to correct the error).
I have met intellectually honest progressives, conservatives, radicals, and moderates, and enjoyed good conversations with them all. But if people are so arrogant and presumptuous to abuse their roles as teachers of philosophy (or anything else) to dictate to their students what they must think, and then bring similar attitudes here, I have found that there is no way forward with them other than to give them a few years and hope they grow up someday. That’s not to say that such a day will ever come.
I reflexively want to agree with this, quite badly, but I think it’s a bit overstated. If we’re interested in being charitable to those with whom we disagree, then surely we must apply that principle to the people you’re talking about. And, doing so, I think it’s more plausible that all of us have certain moral lines which we’re unwilling to cross, and that their lines happen to coincide with what used to be considered acceptable to debate. Like, if slavery were reinstated, I’d like to think that I wouldn’t remain neutral on that issue, opposing it even in the classroom, and even to students who might support it instead. I can also acknowledge that, for some people, the line is not drawn at something so egregious as slavery, but rather at something which I’d consider more obviously up for discussion. That said, there are better and worse ways to take a stand in the classroom (a policy which, again, I understand without necessarily endorsing). And some of the examples I’ve seen, such as statements to students mentioned in this thread, seem wildly inappropriate, self-serving, and misguided. I can nevertheless understand the complexity of the issue in more… responsibly-approached cases.
If there were to be serious proposals about bringing back slavery, or genocide, or what have you, I would hope that we would present the excellent reasons for thinking that those things are bad. If we were instead to insist that the issue is beyond dispute, we would not manage to persuade anyone who disagrees with us.
For what it’s worth, California had a ballot initiative asking whether slavery should be outlawed in the state, and it lost. So I think it’s a little misleading to speak as if there are no serious proposals about bringing back slavery. That may be true, but only insofar as there are serious proposals for banning slavery which are not yet meeting with success, and that does not strike me as much better.
California’s constitution already outlaws slavery, as does the US constitution.
As I understand it, the defeated amendment in California would have prohibited involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime, which both the Californian and US constitutions currently permit, and which some people consider as a form of slavery (and so a loophole in these prohibitions).
Since even in California the electorate disagree with this prohibition, the example seems to make Justin Kalef’s point: even stipulating that penal servitude is wrong, it would be sensible to present the arguments for it rather than shut down discussion.
Yea, shame on those people who think they have flawless access to the true norms of morality and are no longer willing to presume that those with whom they disagree on those are acting in good faith.
They are not at all like us, who have flawless access to the true norms of discourse and are no longer willing to presume that those with whom we disagree on those are acting in good faith.
*Our* opponents, Justin, have after all given up on the core principles of objectivity and so all we can do is hope they go away quietly by themselves.
Or perhaps we can turn to the daily nous comments section to give moralizing lectures on how wrong it is to presume that one’s opponents have given up on the core principles of objectivity and express annoyance at their moralizing lectures in the daily nous comments section.
Julian, there’s a difference between ethical norms (which it is our business to discuss) and rock-bottom norms of inquiry (which it is our business to uphold).
A philosopher’s job is to fairly and rationally inquire into matters, taking pains to be unbiased and not to exclude unpopular views from the realm of what can be argued for. The job of a teacher of philosophy is to foster the practices of this sort of inquiry in students.
The best methods for conducting fair inquiries is in some respects a matter of reasonable dispute, but the basic idea that our job is to assess the matters we discuss only after allowing both sides to have a fair say is not. Those who are not prepared to do that, but who call themselves philosophers and accept a paycheck as members of our profession, are mere pseudophilosophers and damage the credibility and integrity of the profession, just as sure as young earth creationists are pseudoscientists and just as a jury in a lawcourt that uses horoscopes to determine whether a defendant is guilty is in violation of the basic principles of justice.
Yes, you have flawless access to what is “ours to uphold” and everybody else who thinks they know what is “ours to uphold” is objectively mistaken. I already agreed with that.
It doesn’t take a genius to apprehend the simple facts that scientists, philosophers, and members of a jury in a court of law need to carefully consider the best arguments on both sides of an issue before forming a judgment on it. In fact, only a fool would deny such things.
You may disagree if you like, naturally. Perhaps a number of people in the profession would like to follow different practices instead, and bully their way to their conclusions in research and in teaching (or ‘research’ and ‘teaching’). If so, I welcome such people to form their own institutions of learning where they can ply this trade, rather than smear the reputations of the rest of us by calling themselves something they are not while taking the public’s money.
There are professional norms for philosophy teachers just as there are for any other profession. You seem to be confusing those norms with the positions that people can attack or defend in the arena made possible by those norms. Or perhaps you’ve just run out of ideas, as it seems from your sophomoric resort to sarcasm — a favored weapon of those who have just run out of ideas but want to keep going.
I suppose you fancy yourself as having “carefully considered the arguments” of those of whom you say that they “have abandoned, often explicitly, the core principles of objectivity” and, only after such careful consideration, concluded that “there is no way forward with them other than to give them a few years and hope they grow up someday”.
But your main charge against them is that they themselves have concluded that there is no way forward with certain others other than to give them a few years and hope they grow up someday.
So I can’t see how you are anything but a hypocrite.
Again, Julian, the distinction I’m pointing to here is between moves within the norms of inquiry and a rejection of the basic norms of inquiry themselves.
To illustrate:
Consider the film Twelve Angry Men. At the start of the jury’s deliberations, eleven of the jurors feel quite confident that the defendant is guilty, but many of them have not thought things through very carefully, if at all. Juror 10, for instance, seems to have made up his mind on the basis of his ethnic bigotry he held against the defendant The main character, Juror 8, insists that they all take some time to carefully analyze the prosecution’s arguments, which greatly annoys Juror 10 and a number of others.
Imagine if these characters had the following exchange in some extra dialogue:
Juror 10: “Let’s wrap this up and get out of here. We know that the defendant is guilty. Anyone can see it. Trust me: I know these kinds of people: I saw the minute I laid eyes on him that he was guilty. The prosecution said some convincing things, too. As for the defense, I never even listened. I didn’t need to, just as I don’t need to listen to your quibbling now. I can make up my mind without hearing those arguments. I know from my gut instinct that he’s guilty, and.I could see it from the minute he entered the courtroom.”
Juror 8: “You can’t just decide those things on your gut: that’s irresponsible. This young man’s life hangs in the balance here: if we return a guilty verdict, he’s sent to the electric chair. We owe him our careful deliberation and fair consideration. Gut feelings and ethnic prejudice are not the way a reasonable and responsible juror should reach a verdict in a court of law.”
Juror 10: “Oh, look who’s prejudiced! For all your complaints against my ability to decide things by gut feelings, you’re as dogmatic as anyone else. Listen to yourself: dogmatically asserting that a jury has to deliberate by considering both sides of the matter carefully. That’s just as prejudiced as anything — only it’s prejudiced against us, your fellow jurors, simply because we don’t accept that we have to bother listening to the arguments against us! What you are, Juror 8, is a hypocrite. You insist that we listen to the case for the defense, and even to try to strengthen it ourselves if we can find a way to, but then you dismiss out of hand anyone’s claim that we can settle the matter by gut feelings or ethnic prejudice. It’s all the same.”
Would you accept this line of reasoning? Do you think that, if someone insists that the members of a jury deliberate carefully and painstakingly assess the lines of argument presented in court, that he’s a hypocrite because that very insistence fails to take into consideration the possibility that bigotry and gut feelings should be used to settle the issue?
That’s cute, except that the people of whom you say that they “have abandoned, often explicitly, the core principles of objectivity” *also* think of themselves as juror 8 in that story. Here’s their version:
Juror 10: bunch of racism, refusing to even consider the facts of the case
Juror 8: we owe the defendant due consideration and should not listen to racist dismissals of the actual facts
Juror Justin: by refusing to take juror 10’s racist dismissals into account, you have explicitly violated the core principles of objectivity. We have to listen to everyone and you don’t get to decide what should be dismissed out of hand and what must be seriously discussed, because it is I who gets to decide that.
Shameful to caricaturize your peers this way.
I hope you are right, Kav, that this is a mere caricature and that I have misunderstood what they have said.
But I have seen, over and over again, people in the profession saying that we have no obligation to discourse fairly with the other side (in this case, apparently, the majority of voters in this country) because the only explanation for their voting choices is that they are devoted to pure evil, etc.
How else should I interpret that? Or are you saying that nobody has in fact said this?
This problem has been brewing for a while. This short 2018 piece by Coleman Hughes, when he was still a philosophy undergrad at Columbia, is a good example of the phenomenon. https://heterodoxacademy.org/blog/a-tale-of-two-columbia-classes/
Toleration and fairness does not require a suspension of moral assessment.
Ordinarily, and across a wide range of major moral disagreements, I’d be inclined to think that this sort of reversed valence gambit is a useful heuristic. But there is nothing intellectually dishonest or illiberal about condemning threats of political violence and other intrinsically illiberal tendencies.
Agreed: it’s neither intellectually dishonest nor illiberal. But for most classes it’s off-topic, and injecting off-topic political views into a class (a) is a waste of valuable instructional time, (b) potentially takes unreasonable advantage of a captive audience, and (c) starts you down a slippery slope of value judgements (do you have to condemn rioters? Violent foreign governments- in which case, which ones? and let’s not get started on the much larger category of ‘illiberal tendencies’), since if you only condemn some bad acts, you’re implicitly condoning the ones you don’t condemn.
Now, if you’re actually teaching a class on modern politics or political violence or information warfare or something, then discussing and making those kind of value judgements is appropriate, and while I think a certain scholarly dispassion is usually sensible, I wouldn’t want to say that neutrality is required. But the substantial majority of classes, even in philosophy, don’t fit that description.
I’ve already said a bit about what I value as a teacher. I have an expansive view of the relevance of philosophy to ordinary life and it doesn’t take much imaginative effort to find pathways for valuable conversations that span the gamut of metaphysics (e.g. what is national identity), epistemology (e.g. echo chambers, online manipulation), and value theory not to mention expanses of continental philosophy many readers here are clueless about. So, excuse me but if devoting some portion of a class to facilitate discussion on a major world event that carries credible threats to many of my student’s safety is a “waste of valuable instructional time” according to *your* teaching priorities.
Regarding (b): The captive audience worry is easily remedied by skillful community building. And many of those I’ve spoken to who’ve shifted their lesson plans have offered alternatives to attending.
Regarding (c): “if you only condemn some bad acts, you’re implicitly condoning the ones you don’t condemn”.
Really, David? Why should anyone think that is even remotely plausible?
Speaking of wasting time, I should get to grading.
I don’t know whether I agree with David, but (c) seems entirely plausible even if it’s false. Here’s one reason in its favor:
Suppose you know that acts A and B are both bad, to roughly an equal degree, and you have time to condemn both, and so on. Suppose further that you only condemn A. By supposition, you didn’t fail to condemn B because it isn’t as bad, or because you didn’t know about it, or because you didn’t have time, or whatever. Doesn’t this suggest that you consider its badness unworthy of condemnation—that is, that you condone it?
Of course, the response is that, for many bad acts, some are worse than others, some take too long to condemn, and some have other features not stipulated against above. But surely David was not considering such acts, because that would make his claim “not even remotely plausible.” Obviously, there are all sorts of acts which one can legitimately overlook without implicitly condoning! But even setting all those aside, there would still seem to remain some bad acts, like B, which one implicitly condones when both failing to condemn it and condemning others (like A).
Maybe that’s a bad argument. But it doesn’t seem crazy (and, personally, I’ve sometimes asked myself in the course of teaching whether I should have focused on bad acts other than those I did focus on, or whether I should have just taken no stand at all—but maybe I’m crazy too).
Just a quick reply:
Yes, it’s a bad argument. Suppose all else equal not condemning is condoning. Then, if B isn’t legitimately overlooked, not condemning B is condoning B and this would remain true *regardless* of whether A is condemned. Maybe there’s a plausible pragmatic story to tell for a felt inference between condemning A and condoning B, but felt inferences offer scant normative work.
Set aside my point that, even if the argument is bad, it does not seem obviously so, and thus the rhetorical question “why should anyone think that is remotely plausible?” remains overstated.
Even so, I’m not sure I follow your objection. I do *not* grant—and my argument does not need to grant—that not condemning B is condoning B (whatever the case for A and given that B isn’t overlooked, etc.). The point is that, if someone *both* condemns A *and* does not condemn B—where A and B are similar in badness and B is not legitimately overlooked—then this conjunction implies an intention to condemn A but not B *despite* a recognition that they are similarly bad. It is this implied recognition—and not merely the condemnation of A—which is meant to suggest that B is condoned.
(My reliance on the conjunction was not very obvious, suggested only by my use of the phrase “suppose that you *only* condemn A.” Same goes for the “implied recognition,” suggested only vaguely by phrases like “doesn’t this suggest that you consider…”. My bad.)
That said, perhaps I have misunderstood your reply. It sounds like you’re granting that, when B isn’t overlooked, condemning and condoning it are contraries (irrespective of A). I can agree with that, but I don’t see how it addresses my argument.
Interesting. Thanks for this, I see the argument more clearly now. Still, I don’t quite see how the conjunction helps underwrite the inference. You state:
“…if someone both condemns A and does not condemn B…then this conjunction implied an intention to condemn A and not B despite a recognition that they are similarly bad.”
Okay, we seem to agree that I don’t condone B if I fail to speak up about B’s badness. On your view, that changes as soon as I decide to condemn A. Suddenly, I run the risk of condoning B because I recognize that B is just as bad as A. But then why not think that I’ve condoned B all along (after all, I’ve recognized all along how bad B is)?
I don’t deny that we routinely engage in similar inferences. But in ordinary life, the vast majority of what we fail to condemn is legitimately set aside simply given facts about the conversational context and what counts as relevant at any given point.
How is that relevant? People do horrible things all the time out of self-righteousness when they are dead wrong.
It doesn’t matter if they believe what they stand for is good. It simply isn’t good.
Justin’s comment is entirely innocuous and I don’t see any problem saying it to a class (especially given the topic of the class).
However, the fact that academics generally feel that they need to say *anything* to their students about the election is, in an admittedly tiny way, indicative of how we got into the situation we’re in.
I have a class tomorrow: I intend to spend all of it discussing quantum mechanics.
I’m sorry but this take is bogus. Maybe you’re being cheeky, can’t tell. But many academics feel the need to say *many things* in their classrooms about what’s going on outside the classroom.
Indeed they do; that’s my point. Save the world on your own time.
Oh, I thought your point was that there was some interesting (but let’s be careful! “admittedly small”) relationship between feeling the need to briefly preface the class with remarks about something many students are visibly/vocally shaken by and the present political predicament.
Who said anything about saving the world? I’m more interested in building a robust learning community in the classroom. Edit: the same impulse would apply after a major earthquake, terrorist attack, etc.
David Wallace Do you really think academics didn’t talk about politics in the classroom before the recent wave of polarization? I very much doubt it.
I see your point; on the other hand, earthquakes and terrorist attacks are by their nature unexpected. “One of the two major candidates in a 50/50 election won” is not exactly a surprise. (And perhaps I’m wrong, but I feel this would be a different conversation if the result had gone a different way.)
I fail to see what surprise has to do with it. I would’ve thought it’s the high stakes, expected harms, etc. Is the suggestion that the impulse to address the elephant in the room, rather than pretend that nothing’s changed, is justified only if it’s a surprising event?
Try reversing the political valence. There were several successes for the pro-choice movement this week in statewide referenda. Would it be appropriate for a professor to somberly address the class about the thousands of unborn babies who will die as a consequence, and the difficulties they may have engaging with their pro-choice neighbors and family members after they supported this?
(I’m personally delighted those referenda passed, incidentally; the hypothetical professor isn’t me.)
It’s not obvious to me that that response would be inappropriate if the professor’s position on abortion were true.
Isn’t an important foundational principle of (many conceptions of) liberalism that public norms shouldn’t depend on controversial substantive positions about religion, ethics, etc.? Perhaps this idea should be rejected–I’m certainly open to rejecting it–but doing to would require a pretty major rethinking of the norms governing our civic lives.
Again, I don’t see how reversing the valence is relevant to this particular thread. But in general I think it could sometimes be appropriate for a professor to address their students in this case – say, you’re teaching at a Catholic institution and you find that your students are deeply troubled or expressing profound grief about some abortion legislation. I’d rather focus on the distinctively pedagogical reasons to address these events. Those reasons, at least for me, have to do with cultivating resilience and community for my students, and addressing these emotions as they present either learning obstacles or opportunities. These reasons are largely independent of the prof’s background political commitments.
That said, although I value reasonable pluralism as a democratic value we should promote in higher ed, the interesting cases are not so easily dismissed by the reversed valence gambit, since these are cases where one side is threatening violence against the other.
“Save the world on your own time” is one of the worst takes I have ever seen on this blog. I won’t twiddle my thumbs while the country descends into ignorance, openly embraces white supremacism, overlooks Trump’s casual misogyny and criminality, etc. I’m going to speak against those things using any platform available to me.
I am not American, so what do I know, but this catastrophist rethoric is likely one of the things that made Trump popular in the first place.
I don’t know, Stan. It’s not catastrophizing to sound the alarm on the incredibly alarming things that Trump and his goons say they will do. Imagine if we prioritized the politics of composure in light of these statements. We could just as well say then that the fact that others offered disproportionately civil responses and extended every benefit of doubt is why he rose to prominence.
I don’t care if calling a spade a spade isn’t the optimal political strategy. I’m not a tool of the democratic party. I’m an ethicist with a conscience. So your glib ‘this is why he won’ comment is a non-sequiter, not to mention deeply confused.
If my pointing out that a candidate’s policies satisfy most known definitions of fascism increases the appeal of those policies to the electorate, then the moral and intellectual state of the public is in a very bad state indeed, and we should all do our part to expose these ideas as the follies they are, whenever we can.
The fraction of the public who have confidence in higher education has fallen eighteen percentage points in the last nine years and is currently 36%. There are lots of reasons, but one of them is the perception that classrooms are appropriate places to advocate partisan politics.
First of all, why should I care about the confidence of the public in higher education? And second of all, the supposed fall in confidence in higher education has everything to do with the fact that right-wing media outlets like Fox News have continually attacked the academy since 2020 by spreading a great number of false and deliberately misleading information about universities’ stances on Gaza, their DEI policies, and so on. The average Fox News voter thinks the university is a brainwashing camp because the Right cannot recognize the fact that when people are confronted with the facts, they see that their worldview withers under even the softest light.
“First of all, why should I care about the confidence of the public in higher education?”
High-mindedly: because high-trust institutions and a perception of impartial expertise from those institutions are important to the functioning of the country.
Pragmatically: because higher education relies financially on public and government support, and a situation where it is largely distrusted by the public is not one where it is likely to continue to thrive. (Or, if you already think it isn’t thriving: high public distrust is likely to make a bad financial situation worse.)
“And second of all, the supposed fall in confidence in higher education”
‘Supposed’? The data looks pretty robust, recurs in multiple polls, and applies to Republicans, Independents, and Democrats (albeit to different degrees). Here’s one source (there are many): https://news.gallup.com/poll/646880/confidence-higher-education-closely-divided.aspx
“has everything to do with the fact that right-wing media outlets like Fox News have continually attacked the academy since 2020 by spreading a great number of false and deliberately misleading information about universities’ stances on Gaza, their DEI policies, and so on.”
Of course a large part of that attack is disingenuous and weaponized. But at its core is the perception that University professors are overwhelmingly left-wing and are eager to use their classrooms to advocate their political position. As your own earlier statement demonstrates, this is at least sometimes true.
It strikes me as incredibly naive to think that if we professors began taking principled stands of neutrality in the classroom, then suddenly the right would stop attacking us for being leftist indoctrinators. I understand the impulse to not fuel the fire by proving them correct, but let’s be real: they are coming for us no matter what we do or say.
It’s much easier for the attacks to hit home if they are based on truth. There is a reason why the Trump campaign’s most effective attack ads seem to have been based on the things Harris actually did say in the 2019 primary, and not just on things they made up.
(Also, if we actually are leftist indoctrinators, wouldn’t it be a bit unreasonable to complain at being called that?)
I hear you. And I agree that there are good reasons for certain kinds of political neutrality in the classroom (I don’t think we should be leftist indoctrinators, nor be seen as such by our students). I’m only pushing back a little bit on your political analysis. I take your point that it doesn’t help when professors make themselves easy targets for these attacks. But I just don’t want us to overstate how much causal work this is doing in the grand scheme of things. The right is executing their own large scale political project with regard to higher ed; this is really what we should be focused on. I don’t think that professors being non-neutral in the classroom is what’s causing them to do this (though, again to your point, it may be some fuel on the fire), nor do I think that a re-commitment to neutrality is going to stop it.
Nobody mentioned neutrality. David Wallace said people should do their jobs. The point it not about what political entrepreneurs say but whether it resonates or not with students who have been in our classrooms. We can influence the extent of that resonance.
It strikes me as naive to think that if we professors began taking principled stands for neutrality in the classroom, then the right would stop accusing us of being leftist indoctrinators. I understand the impulse to not fuel the fire by proving them correct, but let’s be honest: they are coming for us no matter what we do (unless we start indoctrinating students into conservative, libertarian, or classical liberal ideology; then they’ll be happy).
Now, I still think that there are good reasons to adopt certain forms of political neutrality in the classroom*. I just don’t think that those reasons have much to do with trying to win a culture war (or an election).
*For example, I am a bit uncomfortable about Prof. A’s message below, though I do think that these decisions are highly contextual and ultimately we should trust each other to do what’s best for each particular group of students that we teach.
Oops–this was a repeat of some stuff above, but I can’t seem to delete it, sorry about that. (My browser or connection is having some issues).
There’s also the left/right campaign to get people to believe, against all the evidence, that a college degree doesn’t improve students’ earning power.
Are you taking the piss or is this honestly how you view the world and understand “facts”? I am not being glib, I would sincerely like to know.
“First of all, why should I care about the confidence of the public in higher education?”
Shirley, you’re joking…
Should pharmacists who believe abortion is wrong be required to dispense abortion pills?
If they are required to dispense abortion pills is it ok for them to use the platform available to them (a conversation with every patient) to explain to the patient why abortion is wrong?
Do you not realize that speaking against those things in the way you do in this comment had, let’s say, less than optimal results in this election?
Do you wish more to say all that you want to say about Trump than to win the next election?
But David, what if what you are paid to be talking about is (among other things) the political state of the world, whether it needs saving and what salvation might look like?
I teach courses in moral and political philosophy in which we discuss such topics as the advantages and disadvantages of capitalism, collective action problems (including climate change), allegiance to government and whether or when it is justified, whether ‘Great men’ are exempt from ordinary moral constraints, and whether, when and why Free Trade is a good idea (with special emphasis on Hume). I also teach a course on the Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories on which topic I think I can can claim to be a leading expert. What to say about the American election is not such a pressing concern for me, since
a) I live in New Zealand
and
b) our teaching term is over.
But had the election taken place during the teaching year , I think I would have needed to address the issue, if only for the benefit of my American students, of which I usually have some.
As you (David Wallace) note, it would be unusual for you to discuss the election, or politics at all, in a class on the philosophy of physics. If a professor did that, I’d likely think it inappropriate. But I don’t think it’s always inappropriate to discuss political issues in a class. For example, I teach employment and labour law in Australia, where I live. In Australian labour law, there are often important legal differences between “small” businesses and others. I’ve noted to my students several times that Peter Dutton, the leader of the conservatives here, has said that he wants to greatly increase the size of businesses that count as “small” ones, thereby greatly reducing proections for many workers. That seems completely relevant. But if we thought we shouldn’t discuss politics in a class at all, it would be wrong. That seems like a reductio to me. I am not sure if you agree with that or not, but if you do, then I wonder what the point of your comment was here, as it seems gratuitious if you agree.
Of course it’s appropriate to discuss a political issue in a class where it’s directly relevant to the topic. But as you’ll see from elsewhere in the thread, plenty of people have a more expansive view about where it’s appropriate, and that’s the position I’m criticizing.
Hear, hear.
I didn’t say one damn thing.
But the idea that my saying something ‘got us into this mess’ is laughable.
Since I already covered the basics of voter behavior in both of my classes, this was my outline for today’s classes:
1. Margins of error in polls and why it’s consistent with toss up polls that Trump got a landslide.
2. Why, despite that, the polls were probably wrong (i.e., why Republicans don’t answer polls).
3. Polls vs. information markets.
4. Political hobbits: non-voters and swing voters (including why most apparent moderates are really agnostics)
5. Political hooligans: partisan base voters
6. Why winning means getting the hooligan base to turn out and the hobbit swing voters to swing to you
7. Why it doesn’t matter what’s true, but instead what voters think is true.
8. Why did the hobbits choose Trump? Inflation, crime, etc.
9. Why the margin of victory suggests Harris couldn’t have won even if she campaigned differently.
Could you post something about this? Sounds very interesting
His book Against Democracy would be the starting place, I think.
I think he chiefly has ‘Democracy for realists’ by Achen and Bartels in mind. To anyone who has not read it: drop whatever it is you are doing and get a copy.
would be interested in your thoughts on 1-4,9 in case you feel like writing them out
Trump did not get a landslide. A landslide is LBJ 1964 or Nixon 1972 or perhaps Reagan 1980. The margins here were not like that. It’s true that Harris generally underperformed compared to Biden’s 2020 popular vote totals, but that doesn’t make Trump’s victory a landslide.
I asked my students today if they wanted to talk about it. Nobody did. Spent a bit of time on the Florida amendments.
3/4 of my 200 or so students are either immigrants or the children of immigrants – many non-citizens and undocumented.
A sizable number of these voted for Trump, and many of the non-citizens would have, if eligible.
I’m surprised that at least two commenters here know either the immigration status of some of their students or even of their students’ parents. I can’t really imagine a scenario in which I learn that kind of information about my students unless they were to volunteer it. And I can’t really imagine a scenario in which they volunteer it, either. So, just out of curiosity, I’d be interested to know how you (or anyone else in this thread) came to know your students’ immigration status. That is kind of shocking to me. Are people instead just kind of speculating about the immigration status of their students? That would seem really bizarre.
I’m surprised that at least two commenters here know either the immigration status of some of their students
I’ve known the immigration status of many of my students because they are on student visas. (This has been true in both the US and in Australia.)
I have known students in the US to be undocumented in a small number of cases, but that’s only because they noted it (not specifically to me, in these cases.) This would be much less common in Australia, where I live now, for straight-forward reasons.
For what it’s worth, I almost never ask anyone their immigration status, as I think it’s normally not any of my business, and I find it slightly annoying that people ask me my immigration status fairly regularly in Australia. I actually don’t mind mentioning it myself, but like asking me if I’m married or what my sexual orientation is, it’s something that seems to me best left for people to mention themselves rather than to ask them.
Matt
I interviewed for a job in the US, in the South, years ago, and while out for lunch with the graduate students, someone brazenly asked me what my religion was. This was a state university, not a college with a religious mission. I think norms around this sort of thing are quite different in the USA (I am not an American). When I taught at a college in the north east, near a big military base, students routinely reported they were in the military, had served in Iraq (and one even mentioned that he was a sniper).
My institution, Miami Dade College (a very large CC), tracks the overall student body. That info, in addition to obvious struggles with English (and very heavy accents) are enough to make the case. It’s just living in Miami.
Sometimes it comes up directly. For instance, I was the honor society advisor for many years (PTK). At a meeting, immigration issues came up, because one person volunteered their situation. Then the sharing began. Of the 10 people at the meeting (all women), 9 were undocumented.
In another case, as student made fun of my not knowing some cultural reference they all did (a Central American musician). I asked the class how they knew this person – they it was because of where they were from. I polled the class. 28 out of 30.
Students also tell me they can’t be in class for a week, because they have to go “home” to touch base from immigration purposes. Etc.
It’s both a great, and challenging, teaching environment.
I’m glad I’m not on social media to see philosophers pick each other apart over this. It’s so… unnecessary. But just in case there are other readers who also teach at universities with hundreds of undocumented students, let me share the email I sent to an ethics of technology class early this morning:
Dear All,
I went to bed at 10:30, when the first results from Pennsylvania made it clear (to me) that the election was over.
Since then, I’ve been thinking, recalibrating. Let me offer a few thoughts.
Hope in the Dark
For those who were hoping for a different outcome and are now feeling hopeless, I want to share these words of wisdom that Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark and many other works filled with insight, posted on her social media accounts last night:
“They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything, and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is.
“You can be heartbroken or furious or both at once; you can scream in your car or on a cliff; you can also get up tomorrow and water the flowerpots and call someone who’s upset and check your equipment for going onward. A lot of us are going to come under direct attack, and a lot of us are going to resist by building solidarity and sanctuary. Gather up your resources, the metaphysical ones that are heart and soul and care, as well as the practical ones.
“People kept the faith in the dictatorships of South America in the 1970s and 1980s, in the East Bloc countries and the USSR, women are protesting right now in Iran and people there are writing poetry. There is no alternative to persevering, and that does not require you to feel good. You can keep walking whether it’s sunny or raining. Take care of yourself and remember that taking care of something else is an important part of taking care of yourself, because you are interwoven with the ten trillion things in this single garment of destiny that has been stained and torn, but is still being woven and mended and washed.”
Sources of Power
Second, I want to say that this class — our class — is more important than ever. There are two lessons that I have gained from last night, and that I hope you have gained from the course: (1) the power of algorithms, and (2) the power of knowledge.
The power of algorithms can be seen in, for example, the fact that Elon Musk’s tweets received statistically anomalous algorithmic boosts (while other conservative accounts did not) after he decided to put his weight behind the Trump-Vance campaign. See, for example here: https://theconversation.com/tech-billionaire-elon-musks-social-media-posts-have-had-a-sudden-boost-since-july-new-research-reveals-242490
After Russia took out the Ukrainian communication system in 2023, Musk moved satellites to enable Ukraine to continue to defend themselves. He has also controlled Ukrainian military decisions by threatening to remove them at multiple points. Musk has power.
But you have power, too.
First, you can control your own algorithms. After this class ends, engage in algorithmic hygiene: make sure you have newsletters from The New York Times and the MIT Tech Review and WIRED — as well as Fox News — pushing news to your inbox, and click on the links every now and then. Confound the algorithms by taking time to search for, and click on, links that are as distasteful (to you) as possible. If you’re in favor of gun control, find YouTube videos about how to clean your antique tommy gun. If you’re a social conservative, find YouTube videos about queer dating. Etc. Don’t let yourself become a puppet of the algorithms.
Second, you can actively seek knowledge. Please don’t stop reading the news at the end of this course. Did you know, for example, that The Heritage Foundation (the architect of Project 2025) is not the only think tank competing for the attention of Republicans in the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court? There is also America First Action, which is arguably even more powerful than The Heritage Foundation. What is on the agenda for each of these groups? If you don’t already know, it’s time to find out.
Care for yourself, and for others
In light of the specific short-term goals of both The Heritage Foundation and America First Action, the main concerns I have at the moment are for Muslim Americans and undocumented Americans.
We need to remember that although the 2024 election was bad news for issues that some of us care about, we live in a blue state. Most of us are not the (short-term) targets of the Trump-Vance administration.
We need to remember that there are some who are truly terrified, for good reason:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/16/us/politics/trump-policy-list-2025.html
Please take the time this week to check in with each other.
If you are undocumented or want to stand in solidarity with undocumented students, please drop by [the name and location of the relevant office on campus].
If you are a Muslim student or simply want to stand in solidarity with Muslim students, please consider reaching out to [the name of the group].
If you are simply struggling, please consider reaching out to [the name of several other resources] — and watch for events to come.
Hang in there,
Prof Anonymous
What would you have said to your class if the election had gone the other way?
If the election had gone the other way, I would’ve looked at Joe Rogan’s responses, instead of Rebecca Solnit’s, and would’ve offered some words of wisdom from that source.
Harris didn’t have Elon Musk behind her and there was no evidence of algorithmic manipulation there, so the second section of the email wouldn’t have been written. (The students in this particular class are already familiar with some of the nuanced Section 230 debates over algorithmic manipulation.)
Harris’ plans didn’t include anything that explicitly threatens groups currently protected under federal discrimination laws: race, color, sex (including pregnancy, parenting status gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, age (40 or older), disability, and genetic information. A Harris-Walz administration also would not have aimed to deport undocumented students. (My university has made “safe haven” promises to undocumented students; I feel an obligation to protect these students as well.) In other words, the final section of the email also would not have been required.
If the election had gone the other way, far fewer people would be existentially threatened. Are you implying we need to be neutral on this?
Qua citizen, no. Qua teacher, yes. Classrooms aren’t a place for pushing your political views on students, and the perception that they are is not completely irrelevant to the current political situation.
Caring for students is not “pushing your political views” on them. And, in relation to Nicolas Delon’s comment below, caring and neutrality are compatible.
It’s true but I find your comment anything but neutral, even though it’s coming from a good place and genuinely caring.
Would you equally care for conservative students devastated if Harris won?
It’s not your job to ”care for” your students.
Independent of the first order issues, it’s interesting to note that we accept, if not expect, neutrality in most of our professional interactions. It seems appropriate for our doctors, nurses, plumbers, police officers, music instructors, handymen, car dealers, and most civil servants not to take a stance on political issues in the exercise of their professional role. Journalists and religious leaders seem to be exceptions.
Educators and researchers seem closer to the second camp. But just like a journalist can legitimately have a strong point of view but still is first and foremost responsible for discovering and telling the truth, so we have a responsibility to first and foremost teach our subject matter. We don’t need to do it in a neutral way if ‘neutral’ means ‘in the middle’ or ‘what both sides can agree on’ (accuracy isn’t the same as lukewarmness), but straying from the middle requires being humble about our ability to discover the truth – especially if our AOC is far from the political issues under discussion.
Remarkable.
I think this email is inappropriate in your role as a professor.
It is possibly appropriate if you are the professor emailing an expressly left leaning political club that you are advising. But it would make me feel uncomfortable expressing myself in your class in the future because I would fear that my ideas may be morally judged.
I voted the way you voted. And I am horrified at the prospect of mass deportation and destroying the American economy with mass tariffs. If your email makes me pull back, imagine the effect on students who aren’t ideologically sympathetic to you?
The email, as with all communications, was sent in the context of a specific course at a specific university. This course explicitly discusses many, many current and contentious political issues. I openly and firmly support students on both sides of the spectrum by helping them develop and identify evidence to support their views.— even when it offends students who are on the opposing end.
So, nope, I’m really confident that the students who aren’t “ideologically sympathetic to me” are fine with it.
In fact, I’m really confident that you are incorrectly inferring what my personal ideological views are.
I trust you know your students and your class and what is appropriate and what is not but to anyone reading this thread, I don’t see how the e-mail comes across as anything other than partisan.
But the general worry that I could alienate even one student who has different views than I do would concern me.
It feels way too much like I am just assuming they all voted for Kamala.
I agree with Pete. It is mildly concerning that you are failing to see how nakedly partisan this sounds. If we’re reading it this way, many students are also likely to read it this way, regardless of the context of your class. Plus, that Solnit quote is extremely cringeworthy.
Again, I believe this is coming from a good place. You care for your students, that is a very laudable disposition to have. But it is patronizing to assume all of your students are going to be fine with it. I personally share a lot of your fears and yet I would not be happy to receive such an email. I don’t enjoy receiving unsolicited Solnit cringe and fake affirmations of power I don’t actually have.
Pete, Nicholas: The class in question met today. It is online, and the three students who are Trump supporters all had their videos on first. One — let’s call him PJ — had a “Keep America Great” hat on and an American flag in the background. PJ is a non-traditional (40-something-year-old) student, a veteran, and a father of two. He opened the class by thanking me for sending the email, before I even brought it up, with the other two Trump supporters nodding. The rest of the class pretty quickly chimed in. They all wanted to talk about the election. They all know that the class is a safe space for rational discussion of differences.
The center no longer exists in America. Your fairy tale of “neutrality” isn’t a virtue; it’s just a convenient excuse to stay comfortable and avoid facing complex issues. In ethics — and especially in the ethics of technology — the last thing we need is for philosophers to be silent bystanders nodding politely and attempting to be “professional” while systems manipulate power and people.
Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, John Kelly, has reported that Trump admires Hitler, wants “generals like Adolf Hitler had,” and often said that he “would love to be a dictator.” Retired Army General Mark Milley, who was Trump’s Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Bob Woodward that Trump is “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country. Retired General Jim Mattis, who worked as Secretary of Defense under Trump, agreed with Milley’s assessment.
At the late October rally that Trump held in Madison Square Garden, speakers called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and issued a stream of repugnant and racist comments about Latinx, Jewish, and Black Americans.
And yet you want to maintain a charade of neutrality?
As professors, our primary ethical commitment is to equip students with the tools to think critically, to understand the real stakes of technology, and yes, to understand the impacts of political decisions on people who are marginalized. If that makes some students uncomfortable, they’ll just have to rise to the occasion — comfort has never been the goal of education.
As for Solnit’s words being “cringeworthy,” I invite you to crawl outside the confines of your own skin for a couple of moments and consider what they represent to the students who truly feel powerless right now. There were “Homo Sex is Sin” and “Women are Property” signs on one Texas campus today; the images went viral within less than an hour. There is a gay student (at another university) who is in critical condition tonight after trying to commit suicide by drinking anti-freeze. Boys at more than one high school were yelling “your body, MY choice” at girls in the halls.
Sending students messages of hope isn’t “cringeworthy.” In fact, it might just save a life. And inviting them to resist despair and engage their own agency isn’t “patronizing” — it’s helping them refuse to become passive in the face of growing adversity. That’s not partisan; that’s empowering.
Prof A. (if only I knew who I was talking to), assuming the truthfulness of your account, kudos for having students who turn their cameras on and knowing exactly how of many of them are Trump supporters. You are still missing the point. You lecture us about the evils of Trump, of which we’re all painfully aware (and which I personally abhor), and keep ignoring David Wallace’s point that refraining from doing politics in the classroom doesn’t have implications about one’s attitudes and behavior outside of the classroom. As for neutrality, I personally don’t fancy the idea; Naomi brought it up and you implied that you were both caring and neutral. Setting this inconsistency aside (are you neutral or are you not?), this is again missing the point: no one is asking you to be neutral; there is nothing to be neutral about unless you’re talking about it, and David’s point is you shouldn’t talk about it unless it’s relevant. If it is, then go for it, neutral or not!
Since you gave us a very moving account of your class, let me return the favor. My students seemed very happy yesterday to talk about something else than the election. My two sections of 101 were about moral luck. The reason is simple: they already more than enough about it from many sources. They don’t need to hear a single thing about it from me, at least not in my teaching capacity. (We did talk about Trump in my philosophy, politics, and law seminar, but as an example, because we were talking about free speech and incitement; I swear I had not planned it this way. Students brought it up, and we kept it separate from this election, which seemed to be everybody’s preference.)
Finally, thanks for the recommendation but I am very comfortable in my own skin right now and have made myself uncomfortable enough in the last few years (check it out; I am not anonymous), in no small part by speaking publicly in my own name, I live in South Carolina, I am a white man, yes, but I am an immigrant and I don’t even have the right to vote. If I did, I would have voted Harris—not thrilled about it but not holding my nose either. I like to think I’ve empowered my fair share of students, but let a thousand flowers bloom—I don’t doubt you’re a very good teacher and I trust that your well-meaning approach is innocuous and maybe has helped a few students. Be well. In solidarity.
PS: Solnit is not my jam. Too much good literature and nonfiction to read. I’ve read a lot of James C Scott recently and find much more empowering.
Thanks for the lecture!
Why did you feel the need to tell me all of that?
I voted for Harris and I think Trump and the entire movement is reprehensible but I’m not going to moralize to my students about the dangers of Trump unless it comes in the context of a lesson in say a social and political philosophy class.
It also presumes they don’t know about those dangers on their own.
It’s not my job.
You presume there aren’t ways we can help marginalized students outside the context of the classroom.
Don’t you see that their Trump-supporting students were genuinely thankful for the email, and certainly didn’t feel pressured to express thanks to their overtly partisan teacher who implied that they’re water in the “tide of hate”? This is just like when all those speakers—and not at all just one unfunny roast comic—said with complete sincerity that Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage”! Just “equip your students with the tools to think critically” by providing them with your substantive moral views—who needs less partial things like “validity” and “fallacies”? Don’t you care about them?!
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I am in the wrong profession.
This is a crazy email to have sent students. If I had received such an email as an undergrad, I would have at a minimum raised a complaint about this to the chair of the department where the professor who sent the email was employed — even if I agreed with the content — just on principle.
I think David Wallace has the right idea. For MOST people teaching in philosophy departments in America, you should teach from your syllabus, and then, at the end of class you can welcome any students who want to talk about the election to join you AFTER class in the hall or a cafeteria to chat about it as equals. Otherwise you will be turning your own department into an extension of the Faculty of Ed (where a lot of deplorable behavior is happening).
Perfect, thank you. I was going to say nothing or maybe just make a non-partisan joke, but I might do some version of this if it comes up.
Most of this discussion, even though it is rightly very negative about what happened, appears, to me anyway, to be premised on some kind of (American?) optimism: that there will be a new election and then this period will be over, we’ve been there, we’ve survived etc etc. Well, there will be presumably a next election but on fair and equal terms? That I very much doubt. I don’t see Democrats winning anything for a long time – if Trump and fellow whatever they are (fascists?) do their job well. Hungary is a good example. Sure, Trump won’t be able to change the constitution like Orban did, but he can do a lot of things to change election results squarely in his (or the Republicans’) favour. There are ways. And this is what is going to happen, if these people have any sense. The number one rule of any autocrat, fascist, and their ink, is to use democracy to grab power and then either abolish or sufficiently tame democracy to stay on power. Americans don’t seem to understand the kind of ‘social experiment’ they’ve gotten themselves into and probably they don’t because they think that there is always a tomorrow, there is always a new chance. Well, sometimes there isn’t.
No idea what to tell your students, probably depends much on who those students are. I just thought that not even these comments here are bleak enough, not even these comments realize the (potential?) severity of the situation. (Which will then spread to the world, of course, since we in Europe are in no way immune to what happens in the US. Btw, yet another form of American exceptionalism: to think that the problem of what happened is an American problem. It is not. Just ask someone from Ukraine. The voters of yesterday most probably consigned an entire country to defeat. And why? Because their economy is not so good (not to mention correlation vs causation). It boggles the mind.)
Yeah I felt the need in 2016 and what I said came off as weird and unnecessary in hindsight because there were obviously students who voted for Trump. I said nothing this time because I don’t see the point. Why’s it my job to say anything to them?
I personally believe that the US just elected a president who is trending toward full fascism and a vice president (who is not unlikely to ascend to power) who is a full on, no qualifiers, fascist.
I understand why people feel the need to do *something*, and I am not putting my head in the sand about the implications of this political moment (I do not believe this is “just another election”).
However, I think the urge to “help your students” by issuing a remotely partisan statement from the platform of Professor/teacher to students in your class is… selfish. [The statement from the article is totally fine imo and not partisan in any way; this is a response to the many in the comments who feel it is their “responsibility” to go much further.] Almost everyone has deep personal reflections and emotions after an election, including your students, but most of these emails/statements to your class feel like an attempt to wrestle back some political power from a lost election by expressing your emotions on a captive audience.
The place for a lot of these reflections is in a public blog post, or another venue where the power imbalance isn’t so palpable and the audience isn’t captive.
This is exactly right. I almost wonder whether the partisan nature of these statements is beside the point. The real problem might be that, all too often, they come off as a self-indulgent projection of the professor’s insecurities or fantasies onto her students, rationalized after the fact by a (still somewhat paternalistic) concern for their vulnerability. That concern might be genuine, to be clear. I just have a hard time believing that it is the main factor in a lot of these cases. That said, many of them are also just (painfully) obviously partisan, so those who claim otherwise seem like they’re deluding themselves. Better just to claim–as many do–that they’re acting on a non-neutral stance for moral reasons.
Instead of taking political stands with a captive audience you have power over, why not take political stands through public philosophy? You can explain just what you think is wrong with Trump (or whatever you wish to talk about). I don’t tell students in class that it’s wrong to vote Trump, though I do try to get students of all persuasions to question their own beliefs. On the other hand, I’ve certainly criticized Trump in print.
Or join a union or a political party or run for office or join a campaign of someone running for office or… do actual politics that might make a positive difference. (The idea that these mournful/by implicature partisan emails don’t get forwarded to family members, entrenching their distrust of us, is charmingly naive. Not a criticism of the OP, which seems fine to me, but of some of the responses).
I find it particularly difficult to get modern students to talk about politics, and especially to express political disagreement. Studies show that students often don’t want to speak up for fear of the reaction, and many students have said the same to me in class. It further seems to me that being able to consider different views is an essential element in the public defending itself against the likes of Trump. Retreat to echo chambers is most helpful to the side most divorced from reality. This is one reason why I usually avoid saying things to the class that make my politics clear.
I’ve had some success getting students to talk about politics, and to express political disagreement: in my courses and out-of-class events that I co-ordinate, I have students attend who run the gamut across the political spectrum.
One of the things that seems to help a great deal in getting them to trust that they can explore and try to defend their actual views, whatever they are, is the (accurate) sense I project to them that I value the creation of a fair environment for honest discussions far more than I value the promotion of any particular political view. Also, in formal courses, I get across to them that I work hard to ensure that my estimation of their work, and the grade they receive, will not in any way be related to whether I agree with their political views.
I don’t know whether it would ruin things if I told them what my political views are (though in fact, I’m often unsure what to believe on political issues).
But it sure would ruin things if I were to treat certain views — including the views of half the country — as so far beyond the pale that they don’t need to be discussed, or if I were to give evidence that I think the unhappiness and fear felt by one side as a result of the election is so serious that such people deserve special consolation or room to grieve, but that I would not do that in the other direction if the situation were reversed. To do that would be to reveal that one is not an honest broker at all, and unworthy of their faith and engagement.
We should also remember that for many students, philosophy class is a safe haven from the chaos of the world where they can discuss questions that are important beyond the concerns in their everyday lives.
Philosophers should absolutely engage with contemporary affairs, but there are many philosophical questions that simply do not concern present political issues and we are not doing our students a favour by discussing those topics together.
I taught the morning after the election. I started by saying “Welcome back, everyone. It’s nice to see you all again. Today, we’re going to be continuing our discussion of organ black markets from Monday’s class.” (I teach bioethics.) And then we did just that.
Devoting valuable class time to discussing issues unrelated to the course is not part of my job description, nor is haranguing a captive audience about my own political beliefs as some here have advised.
I’m surprised at how many people in this discussion have admitted to openly avowing partisan political positions to their students, and presenting those positions as taken for granted. I wonder whether Prof A’s email to his or her students is representative of a broader trend over the last few weeks. That data is out there, and this seems like the kind of thing Trump’s Education Czar will likely look into, at least for federally funded schools.
At any rate, to the extent Daily Nous gives us a snapshot on the profession, the fact that there’s been so little pushback suggests that partisan activism of this sort is getting a pass. What I find most surprising is how this comports with the right’s critique of higher education in the U.S. today, which is apparently one among a batch of issues that over half of the voting population now sides with the right on. We are not as concerned about this as we ought to be, I think.
We need to reclaim our professional common spaces as bastions of apolitical inquiry and the uncoerced open exchange of ideas. If we did that, I suspect the Musks, Trumps, and Rogans of the world wouldn’t be such a worry. They might even become patrons of education, in the way capitalists in the United States often have been.
“At any rate, to the extent Daily Nous gives us a snapshot on the profession, the fact that there’s been so little pushback suggests that partisan activism of this sort is getting a pass.”
I am somewhat more optimistic (though it might depend what you have in mind by “getting a pass”). Look at the ‘likes’ on posts: in general there are vastly more for posts opposing activism.
While the ratio of anonymized “likes” is encouraging, it’s definitely not what I had in mind, given that there are evidently enough people who feel confident enough to do this in their courses that they don’t see a problem with openly admitting they’re doing it.
On the other hand, I would share your optimism if the discussion had been along the lines of “I raised the possibility with some of my colleagues and came to see that an email like that would have been inappropriately partisan, so I thought better of it and informed my students I’d be available for dicussion outside the classroom if they were interested”.
Point taken.
I feel like this thread has maybe 3 people arguing for explicit value-laden politics in the classroom, and everyone else is explaining the many reasons why that’s an awful idea (from a variety of different angles).
It seems a bit disingenuous to take this thread as evidence suggesting that philosophy is overrun by people advocating indoctrination.
I didn’t say “overrun”, and I tried to be measured in what I did say.
“We need to reclaim our professional common spaces as bastions of apolitical inquiry and the uncoerced open exchange of ideas. If we did that, I suspect the Musks, Trumps, and Rogans of the world wouldn’t be such a worry.”
This is so hopelessly naive that I have a hard time even presuming it could be sincere.
Fascinating.
Why is it implausible that one of the reasons they criticize us for partisanship is our partisanship?
Because the reasons they criticize us for our (alleged) partisanship, is that they are ideologically opposed to certain truths.
True, we perhaps make it easier for them to allege this when we openly talk politics in our professional capacities, but there is vanishingly little reason to think that the ideological opposition to certain truths would vanish if we stop doing this. There is equally little reason to think that the allegations would be in any way diminished.
But as you say, the allegations are made easier when they are (partially) true. As I think I said earlier, the Trump campaign focused extensively on (perhaps unfair, perhaps distorted) comments on things Harris actually said, not on things they just made up, and were often at pains to cite mainstream-media sources.
That we *may* make it easier doesn’t mean that Preston’s claim is any less preposterous.
We could all live like ascetics, never opining on anything related to day politics at all. But we’d still be accused of bias if we defend a truth that is ideologically contested.
Honestly, I wouldn’t sweat it. Basically any political speech could be so distorted. Like when a philosopher gives an extramural interview in which they share their political views, or does so on social media etc. All that is needed is a survey of the political views of academics so you can point at a big blue bar and say “see bias”.
So as to your point rather than Preston’s: I see it, but I really don’t think it makes a difference.
I don’t agree, but I think this is probably reaching diminishing returns (blog comment threads have their limitations). Thanks for engaging.
Some people in here seem to think that it would be both possible and politically shrewd to go about a scholar’s work in an entirely apolitical manner. But it is in fact neither, unless perhaps what one is teaching and researching is at the most general level of abstraction.
As soon as you are trying to say anything of the remotest social or practical relevance, you need to begin with a few basic facts: cruelty is wrong, the holocaust did happen, evolution is real, (some) diseases are caused by pathogens, the earth circles the sun, and all the other things without which you couldn’t even begin doing any kind of ethics, history, biology, medicine, physics, etc.
Of course, we can’t just stomp our feet and insist on these facts but must teach why they are true. In doing so, we can remain “nonpartisan” only for as long as such basic facts are not questioned by any major political movement. But at any point, there could there could arise a political movement that denies these facts and accuses anyone who teaches them of partisan bias (“teach the controversy”).
Thus, it is not possible to avoid any and all appearances of bias and partisanship while also being a scholar who remains committed to the truth and to teaching the truth. Universities will be accused of partisanship for as long as they tell truths that are politically inconvenient to some, but any truth could at any point be politically inconvenient.
Neither is it politically shrewd to commit to the avoidance of appearing biased or partisan. This only gives a weapon to those who would have us deny the truth, since all they need to do is manufacture a partisan controversy and accuse the truth-tellers of having taken a side.
The problem for would-be nonpartisans is that “political neutrality” supervenes on contingent politics, whereas truth does not. The attack on the education system is thus an attack on truth. It is just couched in the language of defending neutrality.
Thus, that it would be “strategic” to cease the telling of some truth to preserve “trust in the system” so it can tell more truths in the long run is just a fallacy. You cannot defend the truth by telling falsities.
Well, actually, the earth’s orbit is an ellipse, so there’s that.
Cruelty is a thick concept; typically, disagreements are not about whether cruelty is wrong but about what counts as cruel (the descriptive side of the concept). And so on.
Unfortunately, we may need some truisms to go on but some of the ones you offer are false, ill-defined or leave more room for reasonable disagreement than you seem to assume.
Can we run an ethics class without first commenting on the election? I bet we can. Surely that’s not what you dispute?
Well, actually, it’s the earth-moon system’s orbit that is an ellipse, so there’s that.
Can we run an ethics class without commenting on the election? Can we run an epidemiology class without commenting on Covid? Can we run a 20th century history class without making the nazis look bad? Can we run a biology class without offending the creationists?
Yes, of course, we _can_ do all of these. But do we want to? Should “nonpartisanship” compel us to do so?
“…the earth circles the sun, and all the other things without which you couldn’t even begin doing any kind of ethics, history, biology, medicine, physics, etc.”
I can think of very few questions in normative ethics, applied ethics, or metaethics that depend on the presumption that the earth circles the sun.
“Of course, we can’t just stomp our feet and insist on these facts but must teach why they are true. In doing so, we can remain “nonpartisan” only for as long as such basic facts are not questioned by any major political movement.“
The second claim in this passage does not follow from the first. We can teach our students to see that it is true that the Holocaust happened, that evolutionary theory is true, and that some diseases are caused by pathogens by providing them with the evidence and arguments and allowing them to see the truth for themselves. There is no need for us to shut down questioning or refuse to consider alternative views on their merits, especially in philosophy. A major political movement may take issue with any of these things, but that would not make it impossible for us to help our students reason things through for themselves by allowing them to consider the best arguments on both sides, and to question them freely.
Those who dishonestly insisted a few decades ago that schools “teach the controversy” about creationism vs. evolution misrepresented the state of the debate. Biologists, geologists, paleontologists and many other scientists were free to argue for whichever side they wanted on the creationism vs. evolution issue, but it became clear that creationists were just unable to create a viable scientific model or to respond to the objections raised by evolutionists, who developed a robust theoretical synthesis that did a far better job at predicting and explaining the phenomena.
I have met a number of former creationists who abandoned their views when they were shown the arguments and refutations that are well known to most scientists working in those fields. The reasoning is objectively compelling.
Contrast that with some of the reasons that seem to have led many people to vote for Trump rather than Harris. One popular theme seems to be concerns about the economy. Another one seems to be the unpopularity of ‘woke’ policies.
Neither of these things is comparable, in the way you need for your argument to work, to the creation/evolution issue or the geocentric/heliocentric issue. There is no consensus of economists behind the Democrats’ economic policies and against the Republicans’ economic policies. The ‘woke’ issues do not fare any better: take, for instance, the central ‘woke’ view (championed by Ibram X. Kendi) that the only solution to past discrimination is present discrimination, or the view that America is a white supremacist, patriarchal, etc. culture. There may be a consensus on those positions within, say, Gender Studies departments. But that consensus was not gained by unanswerable arguments fairly presented within an environment of free inquiry: it arises from the fact that people with doubts about those positions are made unwelcome in those departments, and their research (for instance, research that rejects the patriarchy theory) are not published in the journals of those academic areas.
That’s what leads to the big difference: in the cases you allude to here — the heliocentric theory, creationism, etc. — there are clear arguments that we can point anyone to who wants to see why nobody is found defending those positions in academia any longer. And to be able to show that, we need fair standards of inquiry. Once that’s gone, the authority of academia collapses.
“I can think of very few questions in normative ethics, applied ethics, or metaethics that depend on the presumption that the earth circles the sun.”
Amazing how I can list all these fields, you quote me listing all these fields, and somehow you still think my point is confined to ethics.
“There is no need for us to shut down questioning or refuse to consider alternative views on their merits, especially in philosophy.”
I did not advocate for “shutting down questioning or refusing to consider alternative views”.
To teach the truth of anything includes teaching teach why the salient alternatives are false. Indeed, if Mill is right, the best thing to do is to consider the arguments advanced by the most forceful proponents of the alternative view and refute them.
Unfortunately, some people will consider it “partisan”, if, say, a professor cites the speech of some of the most policially salient racists and refutes them in front of class. They will then use the accusation of “partisanship” to try to prohibit the refutation of their position, with people like you loudly backing them up.
In the rest of your post, you seem to assert an asymmetry between how creationists were actually treated vs. how “anti-woke” views are actually treated. To wit:
“Biologists, geologists, paleontologists and many other scientists were free to argue for whichever side they wanted on the creationism vs. evolution issue, but it became clear that creationists were just unable to create a viable scientific model or to respond to the objections raised by evolutionists, who developed a robust theoretical synthesis that did a far better job at predicting and explaining the phenomena.”
vs.
“people with doubts about those [“woke”] positions are made unwelcome in those departments, and their research (for instance, research that rejects the patriarchy theory) are not published in the journals of those academic areas.”
I see no evidence of the asymmetry. Creationists were not welcomed at biology departments, were not invited to give talks at biology departments, and were not published in good biology journals. Conversely, “anti-woke” people are free to try to create a viable sociological model all they want.
In short, I see no evidence that the truth-directed standards of academia have given way to some illiberal conspiracy.
But I see a lot of evidence that some people think that if some view is just held by a sufficient share of the electorate, it *ought* to be treated as a viable alternative for the academic pursuit of truth. But that is a fallacy, as truth does not supervene on politics or mass opinions.
“I did not advocate for “shutting down questioning or refusing to consider alternative views”.
To teach the truth of anything includes teaching teach why the salient alternatives are false. Indeed, if Mill is right, the best thing to do is to consider the arguments advanced by the most forceful proponents of the alternative view and refute them.”
Excellent. Then it seems we agree on that important point — almost. What this misses is that one should not just consider the arguments advanced by the most forceful opponents in order to refute them: it might turn out that we are wrong and that the opponents are right, and we need to remain open to that possibility. If you agree with that also, then well and good.
“Unfortunately, some people will consider it “partisan”, if, say, a professor cites the speech of some of the most policially salient racists and refutes them in front of class. They will then use the accusation of “partisanship” to try to prohibit the refutation of their position, with people like you loudly backing them up.”
I don’t understand where you got this bizarre caricature of what I think. I have never prohibited anyone, or wanted to prohibit anyone, from refuting anything. So long as everyone gets a fair chance to see whether the refutation is fairly made, attempts at refuting things are in fact central to philosophical practice. I also don’t know who these ‘politically salient racists’ you’re talking about are, incidentally. But the point stands regardless.
“I see no evidence of the asymmetry. Creationists were not welcomed at biology departments, were not invited to give talks at biology departments, and were not published in good biology journals. Conversely, “anti-woke” people are free to try to create a viable sociological model all they want.”
As I explained already: the creationists were unable to produce any empirical or theoretical scientific work that could respond to the clear objections to the creationist ‘research’ that was produced. Failing to find a way to defend a refuted or patently pseudoscientific theory or claim is not the same as being subjected to illicit pressure or politicized exclusion.
If you think that anti-‘woke’ people are “free to try to create a viable sociological model all they want” within academia, then I daresay you haven’t been paying much attention to the countless campaigns by academics to, among other things, have journal articles retracted after they have already passed peer review, for reasons unrelated to their academic merits. Here’s a good place to start:
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/mdgp7
“But I see a lot of evidence that some people think that if some view is just held by a sufficient share of the electorate, it *ought* to be treated as a viable alternative for the academic pursuit of truth.”
That is a preposterous straw man. Of course the mere opinions of the general public are not a viable alternative to the academic pursuit of truth. That is not the claim you need to address. The claim we are actually making is that the academic pursuit of truth is impossible if a broad range of views on relevant matters cannot safely be given a fair hearing within academia. If some view that is popular among the electorate is indeed demonstrably false, then the best thing would be for it to be refuted fairly within academia — with, as you say, ample room for the advocates of that view to give it the best possible support. In no way whatsoever are the merely popular views to be substituted in for the academic pursuit of truth. Instead, the point is that there is no academic pursuit of truth without this fair process. We must work to ensure that the process is both fair and seen to be fair.
“Failing to find a way to defend a refuted or patently pseudoscientific theory or claim is not the same as being subjected to illicit pressure or politicized exclusion.”
“I daresay you haven’t been paying much attention”
I have, unfortunately, been paying much more attention than anyone ever should and the evidence for “illicit pressure or politicized exclusion” strikes me as scarce and anecdotal. The preponderance of the evidence suggests that peer review works and people get needlessly worked up when it doesn’t.
Compared to a few iffy (and likely unnecessary — who really cares about one more bad paper on the record?) retractions, I see *much* more evidence of efforts to defend views not on their merit, but by dismissing any attempted refutation as “against free speech / academic freedom”.
This evidence is the increasing preponderance of concerted attempts to establish the false appearance of a “controversy” on academically dead hypotheses through the creation of ideological but scientific-sounding institutions like the “Discovery Institute”, “College of American Pediatricians”, “NARTH”, “SEGM”, etc.
These efforts to cast academic disputes as ideological battles are *much* more dangerous to our pursuit of truth and are directly causally responsible for the lost trust in our work. The damage done by a few iffy retractions pales in comparison.
“That is a preposterous straw man.”
Well, Preston up there seems to believe that if we would stop arguing against racism in our classes, the racists won’t think of us as biased.
“The claim we are actually making is that the academic pursuit of truth is impossible if a broad range of views on relevant matters cannot safely be given a fair hearing within academia.”
Everybody agrees with that!
Look, Justin, here’s our problem. Nigh everybody, including the people who you think have “abandoned objectivity” believe something like “every reasoned alternative deserves fair consideration”. (I thought about it and concluded that you certainly wouldn’t want to delete the word “reasoned” here, given your Twelve Angry Men example where the racist’s bias is not deserving of consideration.)
The problem is that “reasoned alternative” is an essentially contested concept, but you (hilariously) seem to think you possess its true meaning. Thus, everybody who construes the “broad range of views” with a narrower boundary than you has, per your judgment, given up on the norms of discourse.
You seem to refuse to see even the possibility of reasoned disagreement on the breadth of the “broad range”, which (as I tried to point out to you yesterday) makes you no less dogmatic than your perceived enemies.
I, for one, think that for opposition to certain very settled matters, the requirement for being re-raised as a “reasoned alternative” is quite high. So if people who push such opposition find little appreciation among their peers, that is just the system working.
For instance, a paper a la “A Defence of Moral Slavery” should not just merely raise a new and at least prima facie not absurd argument (whatever that might look like) but also make a case for *why it is worth re-considering this matter in the first place* (whatever that might look like).
I take it that you disagree. But it would make you ideologically more consistent if you were to remain open to the possibility that you might be wrong about what’s in that “broad range” in your view on the norms of discourse.
“[T]he evidence for “illicit pressure or politicized exclusion” strikes me as scarce and anecdotal. The preponderance of the evidence suggests that peer review works and people get needlessly worked up when it doesn’t.”
Have you not seen any of the petitions — often garnering hundreds or thousands of academics’ signatures — causing editors of academic journals to buckle and retract papers that have already passed peer review, even though no factual errors are mentioned in the petitions? These are not hidden behind closed doors.
“This evidence is the increasing preponderance of concerted attempts to establish the false appearance of a “controversy” on academically dead hypotheses through the creation of ideological but scientific-sounding institutions like the “Discovery Institute”, “College of American Pediatricians”, “NARTH”, “SEGM”, etc.
These efforts to cast academic disputes as ideological battles are *much* more dangerous to our pursuit of truth and are directly causally responsible for the lost trust in our work.”
Neither the Discovery Institute, nor the College of American Pediatriticans, nor NARTH, nor SEGM is affiliated with a university. I don’t know what you’re recommending: that private organizations should be prevented from operating when what they write disagrees with the academic consensus? Is that how you hope to make the general public regain its trust in academic institutions? Or, if you are recommending something else, what is it, and why is this relevant to what we are discussing here?
If a privately-funded non-profit organization publishes views that have been fairly refuted by academics, then it seems to me that the best response is for these academics to present to the general public the arguments and evidence that refute those views. And the universities should demonstrate to everyone that those views receive a fair trial within academia before being dismissed. Certainly, if anyone in academia tries to put pressure on peers to not promote a certain view, or calls for a journal to withdraw an article that has already passed peer review and is not in clear violation of the COPE guidelines, then it is those pressures that provide grounds for doubt about academic objectivity far more than NARTH, SEGM, etc.
We should all therefore stop our fellow academics from doing this sort of thing, or from doing anything else that might lend credence to the view that we are not providing a fair environment for the open assessment of ideas. That’s exactly why some of us are being critical of blatant signs of political affiliation in our classrooms: it supports the anti-academic message that we are too biased to do our jobs properly.
“The problem is that “reasoned alternative” is an essentially contested concept, but you (hilariously) seem to think you possess its true meaning. Thus, everybody who construes the “broad range of views” with a narrower boundary than you has, per your judgment, given up on the norms of discourse.”
Once again, you are conflating an environment in which any *position* may be argued for (which is what I’m advocating) with an environment in which academics are free to decide for themselves whether fair *principles of reasoning*, applying equally to all inquirers regardless of the positions they may seek to support (and I’m against that: I’m saying that the fair and objective rules of inquiry must be binding on all of us in academia). This idea of fair inquiry is the cornerstone of what the university what it is. If we abandon that, then we are no better than the Discovery Institute.
“For instance, a paper a la “A Defence of Moral Slavery” should not just merely raise a new and at least prima facie not absurd argument (whatever that might look like) but also make a case for *why it is worth re-considering this matter in the first place* (whatever that might look like). I take it that you disagree…”
If someone wishes to defend the surprising claim that slavery is not morally bad after all, then, yes, that article should present some at least prima facie plausible reasons why it might not be bad despite the fact that the practice seems to violate a great many moral principles we generally see as fundamental.
If someone were to discover such a prima facie plausible argument (and not, say, a silly argument like “The moon is made of green cheese, therefore slavery is morally justified”), then it would be useful for ethicists to figure out where the argument is going wrong, or how our moral principles might need to be refined or restated, or (in the very unlikely case that nobody could find any flaws with the reasoning) why slavery might not be morally bad in some cases. Figuring out what allows the argument for such a counterintuitive conclusion to be prima facie plausible would already seem to be an important way for our ethical understanding to move forward. What other case for “why it’s worth re-considering this matter in the first place” would we need?
The fact is, however, that it is very difficult to produce an original, prima facie plausible argument for the view that slavery is good, or that 2+2=5, or that all life was created by a deliberate act of a divine being six to ten thousand years ago. That is a legitimate reason why we don’t see those arguments very often, if ever.
However, if an academic discipline or ‘discipline’ has been allowed to reach a consensus through sociopolitical pressure against dissenting peers — and the existence of petitions for non-COPE-based retractions or open letters calling for the firing of peers for the views they have argued for is excellent evidence that these pressures exist — then there is far less reason to trust that consensus, and we should give that consensus less weight in assessing whether the argument made against that consensus is prima facie plausible.
“Have you not seen any of the petitions”
Yeah there’s like, what, less than one of these per year? And usually about something that shouldn’t have passed peer review anyway. As said, I find it pointless to get oneself this worked up about a failure of peer review, but I also don’t find it very concerning that people do get so worked up.
“any *position* may be argued for (which is what I’m advocating)”
How do you define “arguing for a position”? Does Juror 10 have a “position” that he “argues for”?
How do you know your definition is the correct one? Are you entertaining the possibility that it might not be correct? Are you listening to the people who have a different definition?
“it is very difficult to produce an original, prima facie plausible argument for the view that slavery is good … That is a legitimate reason why we don’t see those arguments very often, if ever.”
Good! Now what about the people who really think that they have prima facie plausible arguments for, say, slavery. What do we do, when we tell these people that their arguments are not prima facie plausible and not worth engaging with — which leads them to go on social media to complain that free speech is dead?
Who decides what is prima facie plausible? You? Me? Majority vote? Private organizations?
Should we give journal space and invited lectures to arguments that are not prima facie plausible?
I don’t think there’s any better answer to this than that a scholarly community sets its own standards of prima facie plausibility, thus of what is worth engaging with. That’s exactly what is happening.
You may not personally like the present standard, but your attempts to launder your preferred standard as the one true explication of norms of inquiry is rather grating.
“I don’t know what you’re recommending: that private organizations should be prevented from operating when what they write disagrees with the academic consensus?”
I’m recommending that academics shouldn’t parrot the bad faith arguments of these private organizations that are aimed at undermining trust in academia. I can’t force you not to do this, of course.
“Well, Preston up there seems to believe that if we would stop arguing against racism in our classes, the racists won’t think of us as biased.”
Julian, I hope that you will agree to stake your reputation as a contributor to this discussion on this claim of yours. It makes it very clear how wildly you are misinterpreting what others are saying.
Preston has made very few comments in this thread, and not one of them says what you are saying here. Please, prove me wrong. Give us a direct quote of what Preston said in this thread, and explain how what you said fairly represents that quote.
I’m looking forward to this.
Gladly. Here’s what Preston said:
“We need to reclaim our professional common spaces as bastions of apolitical inquiry and the uncoerced open exchange of ideas. If we did that, I suspect the Musks, Trumps, and Rogans of the world wouldn’t be such a worry.”
Sounds great, but what might Preston mean by “bastions of apolitical inquiry”? Supposedly he means something that would be obviating the complaints of the Musks and Trumps.
One of their salient complaints is about “critical race theory”. But that is just the discipline where one argues against racism.
So how else am I suppose to read Preston, in this context, than to advocate for not arguing against racism to appease those who’d rather have us not argue against racism?
A couple things, Julian. First, feel free to introduce yourself if our paths ever cross. I’d be pleased to hash this out in person.
Second, thank you for rehearsing the chain of reasoning that led you to infer, from my remarks on the importance of maintaining our professional common areas as bastions of apolitical inquiry and the uncoerced open exchange of ideas, to the conclusion that I am advocating for, as you put it “not arguing against racism to appease those who’d rather have us not argue against racism”. And thank you for explicitly flagging where you weren’t sure how else to understand things. The illicit step in the reasoning you’ve reconstructed here (as a reconstruction of what I was thinking) was made on the basis of 1) your understanding of what a criticism of partisan politics in our common professional spaces amounts to, 2) an association of that criticism with a criticism of Critical Race Theory as an academic field of research, and 3) an unjustified attribution of that latter criticism to me.
Setting the last aside (again, feel free to reach out to me personally), I encourage you to consider the various ways that Critical Race Theory, as a basis of partisan political action in our common professional lives and not an object of scientific inquiry and research, can be criticized without denying anyone the right to “argue against racism”. You might consider the way black American intellectuals, for instance, have provided resources for criticizing Critical Race Theory (Coleman Hughes and Thomas Sowell immediately jump to mind). I suppose I should explicitly mention, though it’s a shame I have to, that I say all of this without prejudice as to the merits and flaws either of Critical Race Theory, or any of the criticisms raised against it.
Now a couple more general remarks.
Concerning charges like “appeasing racism” or even “racism”, I worry that the reasoning on display in Julian’s comments illustrates a dysfunctional development in these terms’ conceptual roles. The circumstances of application (the conditions under which the terms rightly apply to some act or event) have been lowered to such a degree that, without a commensurate change in their consequences of application (the judgments and volitions that are warranted on the basis of an application of the terms), their use increasingly inhibits productive dialogue and shared agency across partisan political divides that are otherwise ripe for amelioration. Because the denotation of these terms includes prescriptions for agency that can be punitive to the one found guilty of the charge, this denuding of their connotation leads to an unwarranted and unproductive condemnation of those with whom one might otherwise find common cause.
I’ll close with an observation. In response to Justin’s thread “Election Day Predictions”, I expressed optimism that various sorts of fanatical and extremist views in the U.S. would find less and less traction in the future, on account of the fact that, no matter who would win the election, Americans have turned a corner and will find it harder and harder to take these views seriously, whether coming from the left or the right. I also surmised this would have knock-on effects across the globe.
We’ll see how it goes, but it occurs to me that one way of combatting the spread that kind of thinking, at the level at which most people can actually make a difference, is to see that its transfer across a community is checked by good-faith pushback in our common areas, and an effort to get the fanatical partisan to think and speak more carefully. (And to be clear, I’m not calling Julian a fanatic – he or she seems like a perfectly reasonable member of the profession, and is no doubt a fair and equitable teacher and conscientious colleague.)
“The illicit step … was made on the basis of 1) your understanding of what a criticism of partisan politics in our common professional spaces amounts to, 2) an association of that criticism with a criticism of Critical Race Theory as an academic field of research”
Okay, I realize that *you* make a difference here between criticism of partisan politics as separate from criticism of a particular field.
But this just means that you said something unequivocally false by “If we did that, … the Musks, Trumps, and Rogans of the world wouldn’t be such a worry”.
Because *their* criticism of partisan politics in CRT is not confined to “the various ways that Critical Race Theory, as a basis of partisan political action in our common professional lives and not an object of scientific inquiry and research, can be criticized without denying anyone the right to “argue against racism””.
To appease them would be to eliminate everything from the curriculum that they *call* “CRT”, which includes among many other things the correct telling of American history and sociology — really anything that paints anything but a rosy picture of race in America.
This isn’t a secret, or something that you or anyone could reasonably deny. The architects of the “CRT” controversy are open and explicit about it.
So — by “reclaim[ing] our professional common spaces as bastions of apolitical inquiry and the uncoerced open exchange of ideas” you either meant something that would appease the conservative critics of what they call “CRT”, in which case my original reasoning is valid. Or you mean some else, in which case your claim is just false.
More generally, and to your more general points, I know where we differ: where I see bad faith, you see good faith or at least you recommend to proceed under the assumption of good faith.
But we cannot “reclaim our professional common spaces as bastions of apolitical inquiry and the uncoerced open exchange of ideas” by appeasing bad faith.
I’m all in favor of anyone to participate in “the uncoerced open exchange of ideas” who does so in good faith. But to invite or appease those who do so in bad faith will not allow us to “reclaim” anything, it would just corrupt and destroy these spaces.
Thanks! That’s what I was hoping for. I’m glad we found at least some common ground. It appears we see things very differently otherwise. But perhaps someday we’ll be able to see each other eye to eye. Either way, for now, thanks for the chance to talk. I’ll close by reiterating: please feel free to introduce yourself should we ever cross paths in person.
If you’re happy with either having said something false or having said something you then denied — that works for me too.
Without meaning to accuse you of any insincerity, I do not care one bit for performative displays of “openness to discussion”.
On the one hand, it’s just the same kind of virtue signaling as is so often decried for other virtues.
On the other hand, it is a method and hallmark of those of bad faith — loudly protesting one’s commitment to that which one seeks to undermine.
Again, fascinating. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! I’m glad you find it fascinating.
I of course welcome further debate on this. I love debate. Debate is the best. I’d never just say such things as a means to an end. Who would do such a thing?
Sorry, post got duplicated.
Julian, the inferences you are making from what Preston said to your bizarre interpretation of what you think he must have meant are fallacious in ways that it would be difficult to miss. Among many other blunders in the short chain of reasoning, you actually make the inference at one point from someone’s opposition to critical race theory to that person’s being a racist!
Why? Because, you say, critical race theory “is just the discipline where one argues against racism.”
Most opponents of racism from the days of the abolitionism movement, including Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and many other major figures in the fight against racism, rejected core ideas of critical race theory (see Coleman Hughes’ _The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America_ for a review of this history). So do most opponents of racism today. And yet, on your characterization, these people cannot exist, since you see no possible room for arguing against racism if one does not adhere to *the* discipline where one argues against racism.
You do not even give an argument for this remarkable claim.
You also seem, throughout this conversation, to have a very hard time distinguishing between an academic discipline (that is, an area of inquiry in which people can advance and object to any number of arguments for the various possible conclusions on the range of topics under discussion) and a position that one could argue for within that discipline. To argue against racism — that is, to argue that racism is wrong — is to argue for a certain position. But there is no proper academic discipline constituted by arguing for any pre-selected position, even if that position is obviously true. This is not just a blatant category mistake: it opens the door for the cynical exploitation of academia for the promotion of any number of positions, rather than keeping it as a place of open inquiry. The consequences of that would not be good for anyone of any political persuasion, in the long run.
You make things worse by speculating that attempted cancellations in academia are so rare that they amount to less than one per year(!!), and that, usually, articles that journals retract under pressure from a mob “shouldn’t have passed peer review anyway.” Clearly, you have not been following that many of these cases, and you don’t care. But you don’t let that stop you.
In response to all this, Preston responded with far more charity and kindness than I would have been inclined to offer to someone who isn’t even contributing to the discussion under his own name, so that he cannot be identified while Preston, I, and others can. In fact, Preston is gracious enough to offer you a chance to discuss things with him in private if you wish to, rather than embarrass you (to the extent that someone who hides behind a mask can be embarrassed!) in a public forum. And this, after you falsely and baselessly smeared him as an enabler of racism, under his actual name, due to your unwillingness or inability to reason with any degree of care or accuracy about things as simple as the difference between being critical of ‘critical race theory’ and being a racist.
But that generous move by Preston is not enough to satisfy you. You had to go further and insult him for his act of offering to have a conversation with you.
If you’d like to know why so many people are turning against the universities, and why a political party that shares that growing cynicism about higher education is winning more and more support, I recommend that you take a good look at the sort of conduct you’re engaging in here. One doesn’t need to be a racist to dislike being treated dismissively by a high-handed academic who holds himself as so morally elevated that it’s beneath him to even engage in fair discussion with people who don’t see things just as he does. And it’s not surprising that, if such people go even further and politicize their classrooms and the university more generally, outside parties will resent academia even more.
Republicans deserve some blame for the attacks on academic freedom, for sure. But so do people like you, for portraying us in such a bad light do to our association with you. I hope you will give more thought to how badly this is playing, but I’m not holding my breath. It’s almost as though you woke up last week, saw how badly the voting public had been driven away from the Democrats, and said to yourself, “I’m sure we can push even more of them away next time.” Whatever your intentions, this is the likely result of your attitude. But I doubt you will give that much thought, either.
In the first place, the conversation has primarily been about whether you should discuss the election at all, and the people arguing “yes” (here and elsewhere) have generally thought that there are things we should discuss , largely independent of the specific topic of your class, because of a generalized duty. If by happy chance your specific course is at a point where discussing the election is a perfect fit for your antecedent pedagogical needs, go for it, but it’s implausible that will be true for most classes. Mine and others’ concern is with the use of a teacher’s position to do political advocacy.
In the second place, a general detachment and open-mindedness about contentious topics (I’m not sure I’d exactly call that ‘neutrality’) is something that in most contexts we all agree is pedagogically proper. I am very confident of the truth of, inter alia, compatibilism, eternalism, functionalism, moral anti-realism, the view that a woman has an absolute right to abortion, and the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. But I’m going to give a sympathetic hearing to the rival views if I teach on any of them.
Since I know how calendars work, I structured my classes so that around the election I’d be at a point in the syllabus where the election is relevant. My antecedent pedagogical needs include making students appreciate the relevance of philosophy outside the classroom, so I expect a philosopher to discuss world events in their teaching just as much as I expect a scientist to discuss the latest cool science stuff.
This really isn’t very hard to do for nigh-all areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, one can discuss the ontology of the popular will, in epistemology, misinformation, in phil of science, the statistics of polling, in logic, fallacies, in phil of lang, oh where do I even begin. Ethics, political theory should go without mention. In fairness, philosophy of quantum mechanics is plausibly among the exceptions.
If one were to, say, discuss misinformation in Epistemology or, say, bullshit in Phil of Lang *without* pulling some examples from the political climate due to concerns about appearing “partisan” — I’d say their students would be deprived of something.
I agree that simple expression of regret about the election, combined with some platitudes is pedagogically unsound. But the partisanship, by itself, is not the source of the unsoundness. Rather, it’s that platitudes can be had anywhere, so it is incumbent on the philosophy teacher to say something philosophical and within the context of the class.
If your class is unsuitable, sure. But you may underestimate the rest of us.
In fairness, there are branches of the wave function where you don’t misconstrue people’s objections.
Help, partisanship, my views are being suppressed.
In the admittedly unlikely event that I end up teaching a course on academics’ attitudes to partisanship in teaching, as opposed to participating in a first-order discussion of what those attitudes should be, and use this thread as a case study, I promise to try to give a sympathetic presentation of your position!
“ I expect a philosopher to discuss world events in their teaching just as much as I expect a scientist to discuss the latest cool science stuff.”
In the vast majority of cases, discussing “the latest cool science stuff” is a terrible way to teach a serious science course. If the replication crisis has taught us anything, it’s taught us that doing so is a glide path to error, hype, and the confirming of one’s priors.
Fair point. I guess it depends on your pedagogic approach, just like it might depend on your approach whether to include the election.
But just to clarify, I don’t mean to teach the latest hype credulously, but to be sensitive to what science-interested kids may be aware of and to contextualize it, when appropriate, in the class.
For example, I know I’d be a little bummed as a student if I’d were to sit in a gened physics class, the news are abuzz with the years Nobel prize in physics, and my professor doesn’t even acknowledge it. Or a few years back when gravitational waves were discussed even in the mainstream media, I figure an astrophysics class would have mentioned it to help the students gain an understanding of the matter beyond the popular science reporting.
I see where you’re coming from; it probably depends on the details (and a DN thread on something different is probably not the best place to thrash them out!)
Agreed
For some reason this conversation reminded me of this song by Leonard Cohen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTviN-lpGYg
I just remembered what I told my students in 2016. It was something like
‘anything good is possible if we don’t hate other people. If we all hate each other, then nothing good is possible. A thing that I don’t remember happening when I was young that is happening constantly now is that people are trying to get you to hate other people. Hate messes with people’s capacity for good judgement, and historically hasn’t led anywhere good so I’d think twice before I embraced those kinds of ideas.’