As a professor who is known to dissent from progressive ideologies that are dominant at universities such as Princeton, where I’ve taught for nearly 40 years, I’m frequently asked by students for advice about how to navigate a campus they worry will be hostile to them. Some are pro-Israel, or politically and socially conservative, or religiously observant.
They fear being treated unfairly by faculty members who are hostile to their beliefs. Many are afraid of being regarded as outcasts by their more liberal or progressive peers. They worry about being excluded from academic opportunities or not treated equitably in social or other extracurricular activities.
To these students I say, with regret: You’re right to worry. I’ve seen these things happen.
In the past decade, for example, a student was removed from a leadership position on a sports team because some of her more liberal teammates accused her of expressing an opinion about policing that they disagreed with. A Black conservative student was expelled from an African American students’ group chat after she participated in a pro-life event on campus. Several Jewish student journalists were subjected grossly unfairly to “no communication” or “no contact” orders that banned them from speaking with certain students after they reported on pro-Palestine protests.
My advice to students who fear that they will be subjected to discrimination and double standards is this: Don’t hide and don’t be silent. Exercise and, if necessary, defend your right to think for yourself and to dissent from campus orthodoxies.
But even as you push back against ideological bias and discrimination, remember that as a university student you are one of the luckiest — most privileged — people on the planet. So do not think of yourself as a victim. You can assert and defend your rights without building an identity around grievances, however justified those grievances may be.
Grievance identitarianism — be it of the left or the right — impedes the very thing a student is attending university to do: namely, think and learn. It turns a person into a tribalist, someone who, rather than thinking for oneself, outsources one’s thinking to the group.
Thinking and learning cannot be outsourced. They are things you must do for yourself. Don’t let your professors tell you what to think. Don’t let popular opinion on campus or any dominant ideology dictate your convictions. And don’t let a reflexive or uncritical distaste for those ideologies or opinions dictate your views, either.
If a professor tries to indoctrinate you, resist. How will you know? In courses covering controversial subjects, the lectures and readings may present only one side of a dispute or present only weak versions of competing perspectives. A good professor, on the other hand, especially in the social sciences and humanities, will challenge students’ views even if he or she happens to agree with them. A good professor’s goal is not to convert students but to prod them to think.
Let me provide an example. In the subject areas in which I teach — constitutional law and moral and political philosophy — there is no avoiding the issue of abortion. Is elective abortion a woman’s right, as some say? Or is it a violation of the right of an unborn child, as I and others say? I have thought and written a great deal on this question and related topics. But I always assign my students essays by the best thinkers and writers on the other side of the question, such as Judith Jarvis Thomson’s article “A Defense of Abortion” and my Princeton colleague Peter Singer’s essay “Killing Babies Isn’t Always Wrong.”
Nearly all of us have deeply held, identity-forming beliefs — beliefs that we are uncomfortable hearing contradicted or even questioned. But in the context of the classroom, no beliefs — moral, political, religious — are sacrosanct; all are on the table for critical rational scrutiny.
Remember that the criticism of a belief (or a practice, faith or lifestyle) is not a personal attack, though the natural human tendency to wrap our emotions tightly around our convictions can make it feel as if it is. We should be mindful of one of the key things we all have in common, namely fallibility — any of us can be wrong, and all of us sometimes are wrong. Intellectual humility, therefore, is an essential virtue in anyone who sincerely seeks the truth.
What about the ideological groupthink that survey data suggest is so prevalent on American campuses today? The response it should trigger in you is precisely a desire to probe and question.
Just as in the classroom, if most people on campus are saying pretty much the same thing about, say, marriage and sexuality, Ukraine, the Middle East, the economy, crime policy and policing or anything else, then whether you are conservative or progressive, you should be asking: What is to be said on the other side? After all, one doesn’t learn to think critically and evaluate ideas if one is awash in familiar and comforting perspectives. It is only by allowing one’s self to be challenged that one learns to be discerning.
Another thing survey data reveals is that self-censorship among students, and even faculty members, has become a common feature of campus life. Resist the impulse to self-censor when speaking your mind might offend the sensibilities of people who insist on others holding the same opinions they hold. That takes courage. Muster it. Model it.
And there is still more you can do: Defend others’ right to think for themselves and express their views. When someone is targeted for “cancellation” by an outraged mob for expressing an honest opinion, stand up in support of that person, even if you do not hold the same view.
You should be the boy or girl on the playground who rushes to the defense of the kid who is being bullied. When you defend the robust right of free speech for all, you help to secure a central value without which the university cannot pursue its mission as a truth-seeking institution.
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