We must regain our ability to discuss, debate, and disagree
Last week, my family’s charitable foundation sponsored a program featuring Arthur Laffer and Robert Reich, two well-known and ideologically opposite economists. This program is part of a series of the New Albany Center for Civil Discourse and Debate initiative where we host speakers with opposing views to engage in spirited discussion and debate on issues ranging from freedom of speech, national security, politics, and economics. On page 9 of the most recent program, I wrote of the inherent tension between creating a vibrant economy that raises living standards for all while minimizing the worst effects of the inevitable inequality that results.
And, yes, inequality of outcome is indeed inevitable simply by virtue of the unequal distribution of talent, skills, motivation, and opportunities each of us possesses. While we can — and I believe we should — mitigate some of those differences, no economic system has ever been developed that both broadly raises living standards and eliminates inequality. So the question becomes one of how to best find the right compromises for our circumstances and culture.
A unique part of our series is that our speakers agree to participate in two separate sessions, one during the school day with an audience of hundreds of high school students from districts around Central Ohio and one in the evening for (mostly) adults. The views of speakers we’ve hosted are as different — and sometimes controversial — as are those of our audiences.But I’ve yet to see anyone walk out because either a speaker or topic was too difficult for people to tolerate.
Contrast that with the events this past week at one of our nation’s most prestigious law schools at Stanford University. There, a group of law school students, ostensibly some of the best and brightest in our country, heckled and then walked out of a presentation by Kyle Duncan, a sitting Federal Judge. Worse, when the judge asked that an administrator for the school enforce the school’s free speech and civility policies, he was instead lectured by Tirien Steinbach, the school’s Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Imagine for a moment the consequence of lawyers-in-training for a profession that, by its essential nature is adversarial, being unable to sit quietly and listen to opposing counsel’s perspective. It would no doubt be a bad outcome for their client if they happened to be in Judge Duncan’s courtroom — or any courtroom for that matter. And what about the mundane, every day sort of work that lawyers do to serve their clients, which is all about both advocacy and compromise.
Yet this sort of behavior and the childish excuse-making and imaginary victim-creating behavior of Dean Steinbach has become far too common in academia, a place where the exchange and debate of ideas was once its primary mission.
Just as presaged in George Orwell’s dystopian 1984, the meanings of words have become their opposites and the new meanings are being enforced by those in power. The laudable goals of creating a more just world by celebrating and advocating for diversity, inclusion, and reducing inequality, has instead become little more than state sponsored conformity, discrimination, and exclusion.
DEI Dean Steinbach unironically asks Judge Duncan if “the juice is worth the squeeze” in reference to whether his comments, if not his very presence, is worth the “violence” it does to the fragile psyches of these chronologically adult students. Universities that seek to coddle rather than challenge their students have abandoned the reason for their very existence and should pay the price for doing so. The “Chicago Principles” from the University of Chicago remain one of the few guiding lights in an otherwise dimming academic environment. These principles state, in part that
“education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think. Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom.”
I would add that university students should be required to listen to ideas with which they disagree, and their transcripts should reflect their active — and mature — engagement.
Fortunately, and to their and their institution’s credit, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Stanford University’s President and Jenny Martinez, the Dean of its law school, issued a letter of apology to the judge. Sadly, the students were not impressed. And, while Judge Duncan had a positive response to the letter, the student newspaper reported that he too fell into the incivility trap immediately after the students’ immature behavior. As I’ve noted previously, I know the trap all too well.
Every single one of us has emotional instincts that need to be restrained on certain passionate topics while still allowing those topics a full public hearing. And seeing it firsthand is why I am so determined to help our society get back to not just the ability, but the commitment to vigorous — and civil — discourse and debate.