The most important thing I teach my students is to find people who disagree with them.
This is because the essence of learning is to test one’s ideas, assumptions and values. What better place to test ideas, assumptions and values than at university?
Apparently Columbia University President Minush Shafiq disagrees with me. Last week, she knelt before House Republicans and pledged to discipline professors and students who protested the ongoing massacre in Gaza, which has killed about 34,000 people, mostly women and children.
The next day, she summoned the New York Police Department to arrest more than 100 students who were peacefully protesting.
Can we make something clear?To protest against this massacre is no Express anti-Semitism.This is no Engage in hate speech.This is no Endangering Jewish students.what is it doing should Conducted on college campuses – taking a stand against behavior perceived to be wrong, sparking discussion and debate.
Education is provocation. If not provoked—stirred, disturbed, stimulated—even the minds of young people will remain stuck in old tracks.
Israel’s war with Hamas is shocking. The atrocities committed by both sides demonstrate the inhumanity of humankind and demonstrate the pernicious consequences of hatred. For these reasons, it provides students with an opportunity to revisit their preconceptions and learn from each other.
If Columbia, or any other university now subject to student protests, is doing what it is supposed to do, it will become a hotbed of debate about the war. Dissent is welcome; demonstrations are accepted; arguments are invited; differences are examined.
The mission of a university is to teach students how to learn, not to tell them how to think. This is about stimulating debate, not silencing it. Truth is a process and a method – more of a verb than a noun.
I like when my students take issue with something I or another student says, start with “I disagree!” Then explain why. Disagreeing is not disagreeing. Disagreement invites thought and discussion. It requires students to reconsider their position and investigate more deeply.
This is why universities should encourage and protect unpopular views. This is why unpopular speakers should be invited and welcomed to campus.
This is why students should not be immune from what are often carelessly called “microaggressions.” Being irritated means being attentive and open to new ideas.
And why peaceful demonstrations should be encouraged, not banned. It is inappropriate to use armed police to arrest peaceful student demonstrators.
Ultimately, this is why universities should do their best to tolerate speech that may make some people uncomfortable. Classifying and banning all offensive speech as “hate speech” would remove a core pillar of education. Of course, this is offensive.This is Designed offend.
Of course, there are limits. Expressions that target specific students, “trick” them or are otherwise intended to harm them because the individual does not advance learning. This is intimidation. This should not be allowed.
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I’m old enough, and have been a professor long enough, to have seen the rage that erupted on campus—at the paranoia of people like George Wallace running for president, at the horrors of the Vietnam War, at South Africa’s universities Invest and work to stop free speech.
Some of these protests were loud. Some caused inconvenience. Some protesters occupied university buildings. But most people are not violent. Nor do they seek to harm or intimidate individual students.
Whenever university presidents call out the police and students are arrested and suspended, all learning comes to a halt.
This reminds me of the central role of universities Tie Protect freedom of speech on campus.
That role is especially important now, as the jobs of college presidents and trustees have been reduced largely to fundraising — often by wealthy alumni who have their own short-sighted ideas about what speech should be allowed and what should be banned. view.
Columbia faculty have every right—and, in my view, obligation—to protect Columbia’s peaceful free speech by issuing a vote of no confidence in Shafiq’s leadership and seeking to terminate her presidency.
Faculty and staff at Yale, NYU, and other campuses are now caught up in protests about what is happening in Gaza, and they should do their best to use the resulting provocation, inconvenience, and discomfort as an opportunity to learn, not opportunity for suppression.
