NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE S ometimes striving to make converts creates dissidents instead — so Adam Hoffman observes in a recent piece in the New York Times.
Hoffman, a senior at Princeton University, argues that “puritanically progressive campuses” drive students to the political right. Not just to the right but to what Hoffman describes as a more radical and anti-institutional version of conservatism. After explaining, he concludes that “campuses that are more welcoming to conservatives are in universities’ own interest” given the risk that a strict and severe progressive culture will produce “conservative firebrands.”
Whether he is fair to the newer strains of conservatism or not, Hoffman points out how the culture on many campuses undermines true education.
To learn, students need intellectual space. This space takes several forms. First, they must feel they can question dominant views, in and out of class, without risking ostracism by fellow students and those in authority. Speech codes and definitions of violence that involve nothing more than disagreements on ethical matters shut down fruitful inquiry. Giving space to question doesn’t necessitate discarding civility. It does, however, require respecting intellectual curiosity that diverges from a herd mentality.
Second, students must have space in the form of time. Progressive campus culture seeks action in service to its causes. We should seek to learn in order to live and act. Yet teachers, administrators, and fellow students too often demand immediate, total conformity to a set of ideological views. This is a mistake. Forming one’s own views can take time, especially on fundamental matters of truth, goodness, and justice. Good, genuine education doesn’t rush students into making conclusions — much less firm commitments — regarding weighty issues. Instead, they must be allowed to spend a period of their education “in limbo,” weighing contrary opinions and thereby seeking to form their own beliefs. In this phase, teachers and administrators should model patience in any guidance they give, not cast aspersions and demand obedience.
Third, to offer this space, teachers and administrators need intellectual confidence. A certain fear seems to grip these campuses that their side might not “win.” They speak, as do some on the New Right, of education as a war to win, with victory defined as indoctrination leading to cultural and electoral triumphs. More significantly for education, defeat, even in the form of one student’s dissent from the orthodoxy, seems to be increasingly viewed as catastrophic and paving the road to tyranny, bigotry, and similar damnations. Yet such a perspective isn’t just counterproductive. It creates a downright terrible environment for authentic learning.
Education driven by desperation is a toxic combination. Too many educators lack confidence either in the truth itself, in their capacity to communicate it, or in the ability of students to attain and adhere to it. Any one of these fears can lead to discord and an unhealthy society. We must affirm that truth exists, goodness persists, and beauty manifests — the endeavor lies in keeping our eyes and hearts open, knowing where to look for the sources of these things. Teachers must have confidence in their capacity to present arguments well enough to equip students to learn. And, finally, we must trust that our students are capable of learning, not just of merely parroting tropes they believe teachers want to hear repeated back to them.
Fourth and finally, students need space to finally disagree. Some readers may go along with what I have said so far, so long as they think students ultimately will conform to their viewpoint. But education shouldn’t work that way, either. We certainly can hope that our students will agree with us. We can advocate, being respectful of them, to try to reach that result. But true education requires a healthy degree of both freedom of mind and freedom of will. It acts through persuasion, not coercion. It requires accepting that differences of opinion may persist between teacher and student and between fellow students, perhaps forever. True education is the cultivation of self-government, not blind advocacy.
We’re true to ourselves as educators, to our students as learners, and to our neighbors as citizens only when students have the space they need and deserve to get a true education. It’s a tragedy that so many campuses deny that space. And, as conservatives seek to attain a greater say in college education, they would do well to heed Hoffman’s warnings. We, too, mustn’t succumb to a desperation that destroys free inquiry. All of our students deserve better.