Use free speech to challenge and understand your beliefs

Home Opinion Use free speech to challenge and understand your beliefs

Students at colleges and universities across the country are demanding that their administrators implement safe spaces on campus, where schools can squelch free speech if it offends someone.

Hillsdale College students are fortunate to attend an institution that believes in the First Amendment, which protects speech — no matter how unpopular — so long as it is done in a respectful manner. And on a campus with many like-minded individuals, it is important to recognize that this is not a safe space.

Several Hillsdale faculty members from various backgrounds agreed that without debate, a college ceases being a college.

At other schools, safe spaces are meant to prevent the freedom of discourse, making certain language and subjects not just taboo but, in some cases, punishable.

Although the ideas of microaggressions and safe spaces have become more widespread, attempts to stop speech that many academics find offensive are no new idea.

Associate Professor of English Patricia Bart recalled her need for self-censorship and protective measures in order to share the substance of her beliefs while pursuing a doctorate and teaching at the University of Virginia.

Bart picked UVA, knowing it was a college with a high-tier English department and hoping for a more accepting attitude of conservatives at a school founded by Thomas Jefferson.

Overall, Bart said she did find it possible to have respectful debate at UVA, but that came with some qualifications. She said she found that being in a program studying humanities computing instead of literature gave her somewhat of a pass on making unpopular comments on the campus because it was a skill not many had.

“It’s not a good idea to fire Scotty,” she said.

Additionally, Bart said she found her wardrobe made a difference in students’ willingness to discuss. While the female equivalent of a suit and tie didn’t engage students, when she entered the classroom with a motorcycle jacket, hoop earrings, black jeans, and Birkenstocks, she found that students were willing to at least listen to her ideas.

“I found almost anything I said, no matter how conservative, they’d be OK with it,” Bart said.

Now at Hillsdale, Bart said this is the first academic environment where she felt she could develop her ideas more deeply. Instead of constantly defending her beliefs, she found a place of refuge where she could better understand her conservative principles.

“We have to have a lifeboat now,” Bart said.

While Hillsdale certainly is a lifeboat to allow for discussion of ideas that many want to ban, that doesn’t mean campus should become a safe space for only right-leaning views.

“I think students, especially freshmen, are a little surprised to find there are all kinds of views on campus, and nobody seems to be particularly afraid of expressing them,” Professor of Theatre George Angell said. “They should feel free to disagree with me, and I to disagree with them.”

But such disagreement should have a purpose.

Distinguished Visiting Assistant Professor of History Samuel Negus quoted from Students for a Democratic Society’s “Port Huron Statement.”

“The ideal university is a community of controversy,” the University of Michigan students wrote in 1962.

Negus said he rejected that claim.

“Asking difficult questions is a means, not an end,” Negus said. “Pushing you guys, that’s not where I’m trying to end up. I’m trying to end up with you having arrived at something that is closer to the truth and understanding of what is the good for you as a human being.”

But part of that college education is also being able to justify that conclusion.

“Here at Hillsdale, my job is to help my students learn how to defend their positions,” Professor of Philosophy Jim Stephens said. “I don’t much care what my students believe as long as they can provide proof for it.”

For that reason, all these professors said they try to challenge their students in the classroom to help them think critically.

“We actually want you to figure something out on your own and explain it back to us, showing that you actually learned something,” Professor of Politics Thomas West said. “Even here, I make students nervous, but that’s my job: to bring up controversial ideas and not shut them down.”

So it’s OK to hear something that challenges your beliefs on campus. When you do, engage. Ask, “Why?” Argue otherwise. But remember to be open to views different from your own and allow them to challenge your ideas.

The world isn’t like Hillsdale, a place to deepen your ideas, but it’s also not a safe space. Allow yourself to learn how to justify your beliefs now.

“We, as faculty, can’t give you the talking points. You can’t live a life secluded from others,” Bart said. “You can’t be a builder of a Hillsdale-like society without engaging with other people, actively discussing things with respect.”