Samantha Lee
Do our feelings really matter? Certainly they matter to each of us. Emotions, in all their varieties and magnitudes, are an inextricable element of humanity. They can also matter to those around us; our interactions with those we count among our friends, family, colleagues, etc. are reliant upon our estimations of each other’s emotional states and our corresponding responses. I think few would deny these claims. But I am acquainted with many who would impassionedly but disparately answer the more contentious question: must our feelings matter to others?
To assuage any worries that this is no more than an esoteric inquiry, I submit that to answer this question is to arrive at an understanding of the bitter tensions and motivations for recent protests engulfing universities across the country. The resignation of the University of Missouri’s top officials following student occupations of public spaces and subsequent denial of the press’ access on the grounds of “emotional safety,” the student demands for the removal of one of Yale’s residential college administrators over an email suggesting that Halloween costumes ought not be policed, the resignation of Claremont McKenna’s junior class president after she faced student condemnation for wearing various articles of traditional Mexican attire, and the student body’s rejection of an annual 9/11 remembrance at the University of Minnesota alleging that such an activity would provoke “Islamophobic” sentiment—while undeniably linked by claims of racial or ethnic insensitivity—share a more fundamental commonality.
This commonality is the conviction that each individual’s sensibilities are inherently and universally valuable. At first glance, this may appear to be an unobjectionable position, but when we appreciate the extensive and potentially dangerous effects this mindset may have, we will quite rightly be much more wary to adopt such a position.
By default in liberal thought—that is, the classical liberalism of its truest Enlightenment-era form—individuals are tasked with forming their beliefs and doing with them as they please. Naturally, in a liberal democracy (and I think few would object to the application of this term to, at the very least, the American ideal) this paradigm extends to all citizens. The distinguishing feature of liberal thought is that such individual beliefs are unenforceable, insofar as others may not be subjugated to them. Instead, beliefs are exchanged in the oft-invoked conceptual marketplace of ideas, or more contemporarily, an “intellectual space.” Crucial to the intellectual space is the ability to freely express these ideas to one’s satisfaction, no matter how disagreeable or even reprehensible this ability appears to any other marketplace participant. In short, one cannot be so confident (and I would suggest arrogantly confident) in one’s beliefs to impose them on others.
With only this cursory understanding of liberalism and its necessary protection of free expression, a disharmony between liberalism and certain contemporary movements becomes strikingly visible. A new phenomenon of potently illiberal thought has worryingly secured its footing in higher education —namely, the idea that free expression is outmoded. Rather than committing to the idea that all individuals have an inborn liberty to speak, write, and think in whatever manner that individual sees fit, we have seen in the past several days students across the country, and even within our own university, committing to the notion that certain perspectives are, by their very nature, superior. So superior are these perspectives that to challenge them or even fail to proactively support them is to commit an unspeakable injustice. As confused and treacherous as such an ideology is, this is still nothing but a set of beliefs that is duly protected by liberal principles. What would be truly worrying would be the enforcement of this ideology. Sadly, the last few days have revealed precisely that: the tangible and brash espousal of censorship.
More concretely, we must ask ourselves: when did this begin? How did we arrive at the point where University of Missouri students (and, far more gravely, professors) believe that they are due the right to occupy public spaces exclusive of the press—more specifically, the rights not to be photographed, spoken to, or even exist in the presence of any who stand to challenge their convictions? How did we arrive at the point where Yale students demand that administrators face disciplinary action for suggesting that individuals have the right to dress as offensively or inoffensively (acknowledging the subjectivity of such determinations) as they choose and be subjected accordingly to civil discourse? More broadly, when did a paradigm shift occur in which the burden of securing individual peace of mind was transferred from each individual to everyone but the individual?
These are not new systems of thought. Such censorial ideologies join the company of a long line of illiberal ancestors. They are merely the modern incarnations of the Bolsheviks, the Chinese Cultural Revolutionaries, and the French Committee of Public Safety. Like the early Christian Gnostics, they invoke vague and unchallengeable justifications, presuming to know what is best for everyone else. Now, this is not to suggest that today’s autocratically-inclined collegians espouse the violence perpetrated by these named groups. However, they are all unified by implacable confidence in the righteousness of their beliefs, which gives rise to censorship of opposing views—by its definition, the antithesis of liberalism.
In order to preserve tolerance, we must be intolerant of the confused view that free expression is the enemy of any individual or group’s ideology.
The question then, which each of us faces, becomes how to counter ideologies that view censorial means as permissible for enforcing their own conceptions of what is civil, respectful, or polite. The answer is rather simple, though its implementation poses a considerable challenge. We must drive out the notion that anyone other than oneself is responsible for securing one’s positive emotional experiences. Each individual has his or her own preferences and standards of decency by which he or she believes others should abide. However, these standards are subjective determinations. The marketplace of ideas on campus, which is to say, the ability to speak, dress, write, or think without seeking the approval of an administrator or self-appointed committee (or more commonly, a mob) of students allows the exchange of these subjective determinations. Whether each is successful in gaining popularity upon entry into the marketplace is of no consequence to this discussion.
In order to preserve tolerance, we must be intolerant of the confused view that free expression is the enemy of any individual or group’s ideology. To put a face to this position, we must swiftly and unequivocally condemn in strong words the Yale student’s heart-wrenching but nonetheless logically incoherent cries that academia is “not about creating an intellectual space,” but a “place of comfort.” I doubt I could have encapsulated so bluntly and accurately the core of this ideology in my own words.
Moreover, we must reinforce cultural environments that are inhospitable to the use of extortion and intimidation as valid means of advancing one’s cause. There are undoubtedly noble causes to be undertaken on today’s college campuses, and the resistance of racial intolerance is indeed among those causes. But none is so noble a cause as to warrant the suspension of ethical standards. This means that we must not decry calls for free expression and a free press as trivial and detractive, or worse yet, as racist, insensitive, or instances of “White fragility.” Nor can we accept the shamefully petulant but common refrain that students are simply tired of discourse, that they want results when and how they want them. That will not do. Such accusations of malice are unfounded and irrational when launched against those advocating the universal right to speak. As the beneficiaries of a liberal democracy, each of us is obliged to safeguard the principles of free expression and free press without fear of the illiberal juggernaut that stalks campuses across the country today.
Joseph DiPietro is a sophomore in the College.
