The Common Room: Academic Freedom and Classroom Conduct

[Music] welcome welcome welcome i'm jonathan friedman and this is the common room pen america's conversation series about free speech diversity and inclusion in higher education pen america's mission is to celebrate creative expression and to defend the civil liberties that make it possible and i invite all of you in attendance today to consider joining our national membership of writers journalists scholars and their allies in support of our mission today we'll be tackling a pressing issue in higher education following a spate of controversial cases where issues of academic freedom for faculty have been pitched against the rights of students to be protected from abuse or harm and generally go to school in inclusive classrooms i'm delighted to be joined for this very important topic by three experts first najima celestine donner uh assistant dean for diversity equity and inclusion at the in the school of social work at the university of maryland baltimore celestine donner leads efforts to respond to hate and bias through trauma-focused response and support training education data collection and distribution nesma thanks for being here thanks for having me second we're delighted to be joined by amna khalid an associate professor in the department of history at carleton college in northfield minnesota specializing in modern south asian history and history of medicine this year amna is serving as the inaugural john stewart mill faculty fellow at heterodox academy welcome amna thank you pleasure to be here and third john k wilson contributing editor of academe blog of the american association of university professors who was also a 2019-20 fellow at the university of california's national center for free speech and civic engagement john is the author of eight books including the myth of political correctness the conservative attack on higher education john thanks for being here glad to be here all right so before we get into the main topic of the hour today i just wanted to quickly remind everyone that this is a forum for interaction and open dialogue so i ask everyone participating to speak with to one another with respect and of course to remember to mute when not speaking we'll be reserving time for questions in the second half of the program but audience members are invited to submit comments or questions in the chat or the q a throughout so to the topic of today i thought we would just get right into it with a generally a framing question which i think is important to bear in mind when talking about college classrooms and higher education generally question is what makes a college classroom environment so unique a setting for conversation dialogue and debate unlike any other john why don't you take it first well i think what makes colleges unusual is that they have this atmosphere of intellectual freedom and and that's part of what it means that for professors freedom in the classroom means they have the freedom to express their ideas to guide the class to assign this to create the syllabus and how the classes is run and and to say what they wish to during the class and that way higher education in some ways is very different from k through 12 education where you have a lot more regulation about what what books are supposed to be read what how perf how teachers are supposed to teach and so the idea in higher education is that that academic freedom that freedom of the professor within the classroom uh makes for a higher quality uh education that having that liberty uh allows for uh professors to explore new boundaries and and to express ideas i'm not how does that sound to you that definition um i think i completely agree with what john said and you know to me as someone who's in the classroom all the time teaching it's it's a space where people are coming together to genuinely learn and i think it's a place where we can go down different kinds of lines of inquiry and just see where they take us so without pre-determining what's going to happen and for me it is a testing ground uh where we explore ideas together so it's not necessarily a place where a professor is professing in that they're giving knowledge to students but a place where we have discussion and explore things together and it is an experimental ground so as much as the academic freedom of the professor is important it is also something that i think is important for students for them to be able to test out ideas and positions without thinking that they're going to be consequences a testing ground exploration a place for intellectual freedom and exploring new ideas nationwide when you think about college classrooms is this what you think makes them unique too yes i would say that and what i really appreciate about the classroom setting is uh unlike um i don't want to say adults but i like folks that are not in the classroom students are not necessarily stuck in their ways or their opinion and ways of thinking and so there's a level of openness that i experience where there is much more of a willingness to to listen and learn and understand and i think that um allows for a lot of um fruitful conversation dialogue and debate that doesn't necessarily take out um take place outside of the classroom a unique pa space for people to be listening to one another for young people i mean what responsibilities then do you think rely are are on um the professor to create that climate nezhma so i mean i think that professors should be able to introduce new ways of thinking i think that they should be able to create an environment that really allows for academic debate and discussion but i also think that it's the responsibility of professors to be really in tune with uh power privilege and racial trauma if we're not paying attention to those things then i think sometimes we can uh cause some harm even in our attempt to have some of these intellectual debates and conversation so i think the responsibility is twofold i'm now how do you respond to that you know thinking about this question there's been a lot of national debate around the question of whether students sense of harm should be used to evaluate where the bounds are for what professors can teach you know what what they can explore to reference what you were talking about before yeah i want to in part echo what najman said in that you know we talk about intellectual freedom and academic freedom and that's our right indeed and i agree that there is a responsibility that the professor has to create an environment with that that kind of fosters that kind of open inquiry however where i distinguish or would part ways with maybe perhaps what nederman said is that you know i i'm wary of the language of harm and trauma becoming the uh touchstone to determine what the limits of conversation in classrooms should be i think it should always be respectful but you know these are very capacious terms and the offense is again another big term where you know people can be offended by anything i sometimes get offended with my children true with their mouths open you know but that doesn't necessarily mean that i um should not uh be able to say something or that they shouldn't be able to say something so i i i i would caution us for me at least um to to think very carefully about how we're defining this because there's a way in which these ideas can encroach on academic freedom and not just that of the professor that's again something i want to emphasize but also that of um fellow students you know who who want to say things and test things out but we're inhibiting them john what do you think of this uh tension well i think it's important for professors in some cases to challenge students as well as to respect them and and that's particularly true when you talk about issues of power and privilege we just experienced a trump administration that tried to ban discussions of critical race theory and and was clearly offended by the idea of talking about racism and white privilege and i think sometimes professors should feel should have to offend you know conservative students who may uh be offended by discussions about privilege and power just as they may need to offend leftist students who are offended by certain ideas and and so uh it's important for me for professors to have that sense of responsibility and respect for students but it's also important for them to have the freedom that that responsibility is a moral responsibility and not something that's that's imposed upon them that there are that there are banned ideas that they're not allowed to talk about that instead we have a broader discussion about what is the proper way the best ways for faculty to to teach and to respect their students yeah john you previously told me uh that you you like you think of yourself as having a really high bar for faculty autonomy what has influenced that sense just if you were to reflect on i know over a decade even longer i think of monitoring and tracking different cases where different people have expressed outrage at things professors have said you know why do you want to keep the bar high well part of it is a a distrust of the people who would regulate those kind of ideas because if it's not the professor who's going to be in a sense in charge of the classroom and and given the freedom to speak then who do we trust to be given that power do we trust the legislators or the trustees or the top administrators to decide what discussions about race are going to be allowed in the classroom what what kind of ideas are going to be permitted so there is certainly a lack of trust and authority that that's involved in that and i think there's also a long experience of in some ways an overreaction to what a professor might tweet or to some uh some idea taken out of context i i think context is really important for how professors teach and and when there's you know one word or one phrase that maybe gets posted online somewhere of what a professor has said that's offended somebody i i think that really takes away from what it what is really in-depth relationship between professors and students and i think often we underestimate what our our students are capable of of absorbing and dealing with and challenging i mean it's that do you see that as the issue nationwide i know you've you know john you're saying let's be distrustful of empowering maybe administrators or other people and how they might use the power of punishing professors but isn't it the case that professors then instead are given you know a great deal of power over their students to to kind of make these decisions for them nation are your thoughts yeah i mean i would say that and i think i noticed that you know my colleagues here are using offended a lot and i would just caution on that because i think people don't understand that it's really just more than being offended as someone who is a psychotherapist who's under receiving and having to see all those children i can tell you sorry students young adults it's not just being offended right it's really some uh deep-seated uh trauma that we're causing and i do not use that word lightly because i am a trauma clinician and so i would i i do think that there has to be a balance and act between being able to say yes let's have this discussion but also we have to know that there is not offense there is actual harm that's being caused it's not being just offended by a casual comment and to the point that john was saying like yes you know students and professors get into really important discussions but i can tell you as someone who see students they're not having they cannot engage in discussions when they've been harmed or when they're sitting in a classroom traumatized because uh you know a professor said something that really activated something in them so i think that if our goal is to really have these conversations we can't really have these conversations when we're causing harm to students and they're just sitting there so we have to figure out how there needs to be a balance uh between what we're trying to do what we're actually doing and what students are experiencing in the classroom i don't know if that answered your question but i think i think it's very interesting because often we um in the national conversation about these issues it's like you know these stories i think are often presented as you know professor this said this comment and it's kind of assumed that there should be a response to that right that there is um a kind of clear line around where you know where offensiveness is or it's set or or what is beyond the bounds but often it is somewhat subjective in terms of what you just said you know what's activated in the students right like it's not you know this thing you said to me today isn't just maybe offensive but it can trigger uh i think in your experience you've seen it trigger you know long held deeply felt sentiments sometimes of racism or sexism or marginalization um so i think the question is then like how do you train faculty to be i don't know is it is that you said you know attune to that better attune to it better responsible for it i mean i'm not do you do you think that that is what faculty need so it's a good question jonathan and i'd like to respond to some some things that have come up so i you know i completely concur if a student is truly suffering from trauma or pain uh of course it is our responsibility to make sure that we deliver to them what we're doing in a responsible fashion however my my worry comes that we're using that you know in not you in particular but that word gets used even trauma and harm is being used in a very very loose way these days and let me come back and that goes to what john was saying you know the key over here is context right and what i find in the conversations that are happening and the trends that we're seeing is that the context is totally being erased and these words that are being used or statements that are being made are being seen uh without any um attention to whether this was someone as a as a professor where they just they were just articulating a position or whether they were endorsing it so let me give you an example as a historian i deal with primary texts all the time you know which are written back in the 19th century when they didn't have our sensibilities of today and different kinds of words were used and also we have to understand um this is something i think we're becoming a very literal-minded society where we don't appreciate that words uh change over time and their meaning changes over time so they make something very different at that point in time and some of those words may have been used in morally reprehensible ways in that context as well i'm not making a case that they weren't problematic even then nonetheless when we need to get in to that historical mindset we have to engage with those texts and when we're reading those out or when we're talking about them we're not endorsing them we are deeply thinking about those things and questions and i will say over here that if things like that are triggering for a student the onus is a on the student on to to first inform a faculty member that they're going through something um and b if they are not yet ready to deeply delve into these kinds of conversations which are at the heart of an educational experience then perhaps they need to wait and come back a little later when they can meaningfully have these conversations not because they need to be stronger just because they need to be in a position that they can truly make the most of that educational experience for themselves john just bringing you in here what are you thinking about well i think it's important to try and help students deal with issues of of trauma and and harm and and i think there is a continuum between what is offensive what is harmful what is traumatic and professors should not be needlessly harming or even offending uh students they should be worried about that and concerned about that and and not seeking out to to to offend or certainly not to cause harm to their students but i i do worry about the danger that that professors may start to you know censor themselves uh just because of the speculation they might have in their own minds could this possibly cause trauma or could someone claim to have had a traumatic or reaction to what i'm going to say and then there they become afraid to to deal with what are really important and traumatic issues in the history of this country in the world of racism and oppression these are potentially traumatic things but they're incredibly important things to talk about and and so we need to to figure out ways to help students deal with trauma not avoid trauma when when you're dealing with these kind of uh harsh and traumatic truths about history so i think i think that i think we would all agree that there are steps then that professors can take framing steps you know you know comments on syllabi the way that you you know prepare for difficult conversations or to teach difficult texts as you mentioned amna but i guess the question that we're seem to not have much agreement on is then what happens when you know the hot moment arrives so the students one student a group of students is you know offended upset traumatized triggered i mean there could be a range of of responses to something that happens in a classroom what happens when they start to tell people about it whether they tell the professor first whether they bring it to an office uh like yours nation or whether they kind of make a a public demand of some kind that something should happen how do those who have to kind of evaluate the situation evaluate what was said i mean there's there's a set of them where we have video and sometimes that helps but not always to get the full context in other cases we don't have video there's just kind of like competing testimonies uh the professor feels that they said this the students heard that the professor said something different and something else was intimated so you know if we who do we trust here uh to to kind of decide what should be done and i think we've seen you know all kinds of responses from professors being suspended pulled from classrooms uh ex you know put on leave fired uh over sometimes um really what are in time relatively short bursts of speech so i'm just curious to if you have your thoughts about like what kind of processes can be put in place to mediate these conflicts when they arrive when they rise uh we'll start with you nexma yeah so i think for me it is always a process that senses those who have been impacted i think the ways in which we respond right now uh not only are they punitive but they're also censored on the professor uh what are we gonna do to them or him or her what are we gonna do to make sure they're being punished and oftentimes it's to the detriment of the students who have been harmed and what i mean by that is we focus all our time energy and resources on punishing a professor and meanwhile we have a student who has been harmed who's not giving any time or attention and so for me it's really important that we we keep in mind that and i say this over and i know john you've heard me say this uh punishment does not equal healing so you can punish a professor all day long fire them take them out of the classroom but what does that do for the student who has been harmed and so from a trauma uh censored perspective the ways in which we have to respond needs to censor those who've been harmed we can also be thinking about ways in which we can address what has happened to the professor but if if we're responding to the professor and we're not responding to the student then we're really doing our students a disservice so the way that we operate at our institutions and the way that i have uh always operated in this role is what can i do to censor this student to make sure they're okay and oftentimes that is not necessarily being punitive to the professor because again my perspective is supporting right um and sometimes that leads to having a restorative conversation between the professor and the student to say these are the ways in which i've been harmed how can we move forward in a restorative approach now there are some professors that i believe that have done really really horrible things and have said horrible things that i do think should be fired it's probably not the majority um but have done really really harmful things but i do think there for me the the majority of times we are punitive uh to the detriment of the students and we don't have to go down that route so amna same set of questions you know what kind of processes to you are necessary to be putting in place the first thing i'd say is before we get into thinking about processes that are putting in place yes there are those few professors who have said horrible things with the intention of saying them and have harmed students and those should be i would never make a case for them to not be taken to task for that right right now what i'm i think our conversation is about this trend that is taking place where increase increasingly there is a tendency to there are a couple of things over here one that the students don't approach the professor directly and go to either an administrator or to social media now then i think we are doing a disservice to our students to by not teaching them how to bring a problem to your own professor that should be the first port of call go and tell them and most often i think a lot of these disagreements or offense or harm situations can be dealt with by saying hey i don't agree with this or i was hurt by this why did you say this and they could explain and say well actually i didn't mean it that way and it's a clarification question and the conversation can move on yet i feel sometimes people are getting so um wedded to the idea of uh you know punishment as a form of social justice that it's being used in that fashion so that's something that i worry about the other thing i worry about in these contexts is we are teaching our students that there is a very flat understanding of power if we think that the only power in a classroom is that that the professor holds um power is a very complex thing in fact i would argue these days it's a small minority of people on campuses who speak very loudly who are not necessarily in authority positions who are wielding the power and we have seen how that has been wielded um in this past year and the consequences of that power so i'd like to complicate this notion of power as being only or as only residing in figures of authority students have a lot of power and if we can begin to recognize this i think we can all have far more productive conversations that are truly educational as opposed to getting hemped into these ways of thinking about you know what is um harmful or not harmful so it sounds like you're talking about um you know calling in rather than calling out as they say but um what i didn't hear though and i'm curious to push you a little bit further on this is so you call in the professor you say the dear professor you know what you said today was really offensive to me and then the professor let's say uh finds it you know absurd that you know anyone took offense at anyone anything they said they um can't imagine how a lecture they've been giving for a long time i mean i'm just kind of conjuring uh one scenario here but you know they've been giving lecture a long time and um you know they can't imagine why a student got offended where is the student to go with that next i mean i know there are cases where that calling in hasn't happened first but there are also ones where those kinds of attempts haven't really resulted in much change leaving people frustrated um so i'm glad you asked that actually because frankly i think most responsible professors and i would say the majority are would take that as an opportunity to have a conversation you know why were you offended oh that's interesting because i've taught this for a long time let's explore this and i've had students who've come to me and talked about this and i'm like okay let's think about it and let's get to the root of it and then i'll explain what my intention is and what the pedagogical um purpose is of using this in a particular way and and i clarify like you know this was not meant to hurt you but there is a bigger thing that we're exploring over here and in some of those conversations i have had students who are genuinely traumatized because of a history of trauma and in that case i've helped them try and get the help that is necessary for them to responsibly engage with this material such that they can learn and not shut down because of the trauma um in the event in those rare cases i think whereas you know it would be very unbecoming of a professor to be flip about it and say well this is absurd i don't know why you're offended i think that's an opportunity an educational and teaching opportunity that a professor should embrace and dig into but in those rare uh cases you know i i still think if it doesn't rise to the level of harassment and discrimination really it is an issue for the student and the professor to resolve in some way shape or form because when we send our students out into the broader world we need to equip them to have those difficult conversations they won't have someone else to run to to complain about it this is about becoming adults and learning how to engage in sustained difficult conversations things don't get resolved instantaneously and in this particular moment in the u.s where we're having a moment of racial reckoning we need to be prepared both as professors and students to have sustained difficult conversations there is no quick fix over here john your thoughts on some of these matters i i think i disagree with that sort of analysis of power because i think professors have an enormous amount of power over students and students are quite powerless uh and and so i i think we we need to give students and protect students give students the freedom to criticize their professors in class outside of class two administrators they should have the right to to go public and denounce their professors and demand their firing that that that's a right they have it's not ideally how i want to see this situation resolved i would love to see professors be the support systems for students but i think we need to provide the fact provide for the fact that students are not always going to be comfortable to go directly to their professors and say you harmed me we need to have other people they can go to support systems whether it's students ombudspersons administrators others who can who can help them ideally go to their professors and have a conversation but in in cases where they don't do that to try and help them deal with these kinds of issues and so i i think we need to protect both the right of professors to offend students but also the right of students to be offended and to speak out and to express that that that harm and that trauma they've experienced john do you have any ideas about how you think you know when so let's say that happens the students go to one of these other bodies on the campus you know how do those bodies how could they i think i think you and i follow these things pretty closely we've seen just numerous cases where we thought you know i'm not sure that the people have made the right decision here whether it's you know pulling a professor or suspending them etc using the kind of measure of how upset or offended a group of students is or how much attention something is getting on social media as the metric for how much the administrator should take action are there any thoughts that you have on how you could insulate those processes uh from that public reaction or from the student's reaction or how you could ensure better that you know there is a kind of fairness or impartiality if that's even possible in how we're evaluating you know that thing that professor said that upset people well it's it's obviously difficult under some circumstances to to solve all these problems easily i i think there are ways to to create structures where you're not punishing professors for causing harm to their students or traumatizing their students in ways that aren't harassment or discrimination that you can help professors learn better ways to deal with this that you can help students to deal with this without having to bring in the apparatus of punishment and and so there are ways also to bring it as part of a public conversation i don't think necessarily all these public conversations about these issues are are a bad thing i i think it is a bad thing when it leads to punishment and and and silencing uh of of these kinds of things but i i think it is important sometimes to have these difficult conversations and uh that where students have been harmed for students to talk about that and and to have ways for for universities to deal with that whether it could even be some people are very opposed to biased response teams i'm not necessarily so opposed to that i think there's an opportunity to have ways for students to go to places to to say to express how they feel from these people to respond in reasonable ways that are not authoritative and repressive to help professors maybe better understand how their students feel that's certainly been one concern that um by you know we've seen it about biased response teams or just generally the ways in which um people have been reacting to a lot of these cases that there is a kind of chilling effect on uh professors and the things that they're willing the topics they're willing to broach in the class the ways in which they might you know try to push students even their use of humor and satire i've been told uh people are afraid to to make jokes because of how jokes might be misinterpreted nationwide i'm curious you talked a little bit before about restorative justice um as a better solution you know healing better than punishment i was wondering if you could elaborate maybe on that or you know whether you share these concerns about a chilling is if that's how you perceive it on your campus or others yeah i mean i think and we've been kind of saying this i i do think that that there is some concern for this chilling effect and i also think that again there's a concern for continuous harm being being caused the reason that i i really subscribe and and use restorative practices is because i think it's sort of this middle ground where we have an opportunity to really engage in conversations that could promote healing and this is an opportunity for um students to be able to talk to professors about the ways in which they have been harmed you know i i am very clear that i don't get i don't get to define people's harm for them right so what might be harmful for them or me we may not be eye to eye so i think that's an opportunity for um students to really be able to see that and to for professors to be able to hear that i do not uh believe in students approaching professors because one to john's point there's a great power dynamic particularly if you're talking about a white male professor and a black immigrant student like myself there's there's no way that that power dynamic is not gonna come into play and i've seen seen it time and time again and and but more importantly what i see happen is that professors re-traumatize students because it becomes this interrogation of well tell me why you're offended and they just go down this sort of like fact based and and totally miss the mark and so for me restorative practices is really an opportunity where you can have a professional who knows what they're doing who's not going to re-traumatize the student where both sides get an opportunity to say this is what i was thinking this is what i was feeling and where we're not so uh stuck on intention and we're really paying attention to impact i don't think that the bar needs to be discrimination that is a very very high bar when we're talking about the legality of things and if we use that as a benchmark then a lot of these things will not be addressed uh furthermore the legality of something has nothing to do with the impact so even if the professor's action is legal that does not mean that there's not impact and so we have to be very careful about the lens that we're using we can use a legal lens but we also need to use a trauma informed because using the legal lens means that we miss lots of opportunities to address things that we should be addressing uh amna do you have any thoughts on this or you want another question uh well i was just going to say you know i think there is a fundamental disagreement and this is wonderful because we need more spaces where we can have these conversations so i appreciate the opportunity but i think for me um context and intent is key it doesn't mean that it absolves you of of the responsibility to have a responsible conversation about it but it also doesn't it cannot be put out of the picture uh in in conversations about how the matter has to be dealt with so uh i think there's some fundamental differences but i'm happy to go on to your next question sure i mean i was just curious you know taking the name from the title of the session today about quote-unquote classroom conduct so and sometimes a distinction being made between free speech and classroom conduct i saw this uh recently uh at texas a m though i've seen it at other places before which is the justification being given for uh you know dismissing or pulling a professor from teaching or suspending them in some way is well we had a lot of student complaints this wasn't just free speech it wasn't just academic freedom it wasn't just you know one thing said some time it was many things said over time or it's a not a matter of free speech it's a matter of classroom conduct um i'm just wondering you know if if you think that that makes sense is that a legitimate um distinction being made is it uh concerning to you in some ways and i i guess i was thinking if that was good for you first it's classroom conduct this is interesting so of course if there is a professor and there is a a string of incidents or there is a pattern that is emerging i think that needs to be addressed so i would never say that no you know take no measures against that person it needs to be addressed but i think the first port of call when something like this happens is for students to approach the professor and try and have a reasonable conversation about it both sides being reasonable not just the students the onus isn't just in them um but i'm it's interesting over here you know the number of student complaints in itself cannot be the sole measure because we have had incidents where students decide that they don't like a professor and they decide that they just want to band together and do that and i've seen this happen at several institutions and i'm not saying that's always the case but again it is context is key that situation has to be analyzed in the context of what is going on what are the power dynamics so this is where i would say that power can work in complicated and different different kinds of ways than we normally assume um i'm not sure if that's really answering the question jonathan but maybe if you want to clarify more about what you what you were trying to get at well i'm just curious you know how i guess it's a question ultimately in my mind again of power you know the power to say i was just struck by someone an administrator saying this isn't free speech you know when essentially uh the uh incidents or the complaints are about things said uh and and saying you know this is we categorize this somewhat differently and then and then kind of how that distinction could be arrived at so i want to make a distinction here between free speech and academic freedom i think there are two things that need to so no professor should go into a classroom and egregiously talk about factually incorrect things for instance that's not okay you know or talk about things uh in a way that is kind of trying to push a point on to their students so those are all things i will i will grant but academic freedom is a very different thing it's about responsibly engaging with the material and having the freedom to explore it and ask questions with that responsibility responsibility front and center it shouldn't push any points on their students i mean aren't there some points that professors have an obligation to point out push on their students for example i don't know let's take like the 2020 election the notion that uh trump may have actually won i mean isn't there actually of course i agree with you in terms of uh not lying uh or your kind of you know the responsibility to tell the truth but doesn't with the responsibility to tell the truth come also a responsibility to correct students you know misunderstandings or falsehoods that's a factual incur yes i said you cannot say go in and say factually incorrect things if you are pointing out there are students who believe that trump won and you have evidence and you can back it which we do that in fact that is not the case that's not an opinion that is a fact that you are engaging in so i think there's also we need to be clear about how what evidence is and what an opinion is what i'm trying to say is that no no professor should go in and be like you all need to be democrats or you all need to be republicans or something is wrong with being a republican you know or being a democrat whatever whatever the case may be it's more about you know pushing that kind of ideology on as opposed to taking the question and exploring it in light of the evidence we have i mean it's interesting because what about you all or we all have a responsibility to fight racism or we all have a responsibility to support human rights around the world are there questions where that obligation would supersede those differences we have a responsibility i agree to fight injustice but why must we subscribe to only one way of doing it right why can we not explore as professors our responsibility is that let's explore what are the various ways and i have no problems with people presenting uh you know the kinds of approaches that are dominant on campuses today about the notions of justice but to open up space to say that there are other ways that we can think about these too this cannot be the sole way that we are allowed to talk about justice and injustice that is fundamentally anti-viewpoint diversity and anti-open inquiry which are the hallmarks of what an education ought to be john i'm going to turn to you on this point anything to add oh were you talking to john sorry sorry john anything to add here uh yeah i i think that i would disagree with some of what amnes just said because i think that's an ideal for what the classroom should be that professors shouldn't push points they shouldn't say anything that's inaccurate all of those things are wonderful and there should be all this diversity of viewpoints yes i that's great i hope we have that but classrooms as they really are are often imperfect that professors are not always doing all of that and it's important to protect the freedom of professors to do that to sometimes push a point to sometimes say things that other people think are factually inaccurate and and we need to be very careful not to not to fall into the trap of saying oh you engaged in indoctrination therefore you're going to be fired for it just because you've uh expressed some strong point of view and and so we need to protect the freedom of professors to make mistakes to to to get things wrong to to educate in an imperfect way even while we try and persuade them to pursue better ways of teaching just to clarify i wasn't suggesting that we you know draw these hard lines my i was sketching the ideal and uh i think as a society i completely concur with you we need to protect the freedom of professors to make genuine mistakes and i find we're becoming a very unforgiving society overall that's one of the questions is we there is no room for mistakes so at some level we're you know yes this is an imperfect endeavor we're all trying i think what we need to bear in mind is uh the goodwill with which people are engaging with this thing and that again comes back to the issue of intention and again to the issue of context go ahead right yeah i was just gonna say that you know i think we're talking a lot about sort of like historically the purposes of universities and the classrooms and texts and all of that i think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of these things have been developed that have centered whiteness that have not had me in mind historically and so even when we talk about historical texts that's why it's important to bring in uh diverse authors black and brown authors so that even when we think about history the lens that we're viewing it through is a diverse one right so like this idea of going back to like what was the purpose of classrooms and the academy the academy is is a place that that is steeped in racism and has policies procedures and practices that that are also not inclusive so how much are we really given this sort of like let's go back to what this was meant to be and how much do we sort of just need to dismantle that and think about creating new ways moving forward so i'm just putting that out there as my perspective and opinion i mean how how do you dismantle that how do you change it because you know within the frameworks of existing power dimensions you know i i am familiar with some efforts by students to insist the kind of whole core curricula be revised and other things i know john i'm sure you followed some of these things though they aren't as recent right now but naishma i mean how do you think that can happen what is your ideal of how that comes about i think one thing is something that i just mentioned and it starts in the classroom the the text and the material that we're introducing to our students oftentimes it's not diverse it's based on on white orders it might be based on men i mean i am in i'm in social work which is somewhat of a more diverse profession but even the the text that we use it's not as diverse as it needs to be so bringing in different perspectives on some of the historical things that we've been talking about bringing more diverse authors into the classroom so that we're getting all those perspectives because we we we're coming in and we're teaching texts and we're teaching things again that oftentimes didn't have people like me in mind and and that's one way to begin to dismantle it in the classroom something very simple i'm not um so i'd like to come in there i i agree that we need a diversity of perspectives even when dealing with history and i like actually if you look at our curricula so many professors have made that move already we do not teach a history that is a white man's history anymore we do not teach um at least in my classes or in a lot of professors classes you know but also i want to take a point take issue with the fact that you know when i'm teaching colonialism i have to deal when i'm talking about colonial policies i have to engage with let's say the official documents of the colonial state to show the inequities that are inherent in there right and that were in the framework over there so i'm actually using them to show precisely how people were silenced but i can't do that without looking at some of those texts having said that a lot of my classes for instance will include subaltern voices uh the voices of the people who are being affected by those policies when available but in many historical contexts those voices are not available by virtue of the fact that they weren't written of course this is very very contingent on what period you're studying and whose voices were documented but when you go back to medieval period you know you don't have the peasant writing and we can't engage with that we can commentate with different perspectives or try and access those ideas through different perspectives but we have to engage with the texts that we have at our disposal for particular periods and the second thing i'd say is to think that we all of course i love i mean i grew up reading you know european literature pakistani literature and uh french literature you know it was a delight to be able to extend myself beyond who i am and have the ability to imagine which i think is at the heart of an education as well is to be able to transcend yourself and see things from different perspectives and that is allowed to you when you are engaging with all kinds of materials diverse voices indeed um but not necessarily only those voices that are uh coming from people who look like me or who come from a place like me i'm all for diversity uh but the true heart of diversity where we're really encouraging people to transcend themselves and think in new and creative ways for a better society i want to pause here to invite any questions from the audience please feel free to put them in the chat or q a boxes if you have them um and i'll ask you john this question you know we've seen um pivoting here from the kind of question about like is you know history and diversity and uh you know how how that is reformed over time i wanted to come back to the question of investigations you know what what to you is sufficient grounds for administrative bodies to say you know we need to pull this professor from the class and you know conduct an investigation and do you think that people have been too i don't know quick to to kind of launch into that phase or not quick enough well i think in a lot of cases they've been too quick to to go into investigations and the first thing i would say is that you investigate first and then you pull the professor from the classroom after you've found some grounds for doing so so i think there's a really dangerous tendency to suspend professors while you look into something rather without recognizing that a suspension like that is a form of punishment that it shouldn't happen unless there's an immediate danger or uh or an actual evidence of wrongdoing and and and that to me is the key case that there is a really there is a chilling effect that can happen just from having an investigation and so there there should be authority within universities to dismiss cases that clearly don't meet the standard of of harassment and all that and there also needs to be as i said whether it's biased response teens or other ways ways to address things that professors have done that are imperfect that are bad that are harmful but that don't rise to the level of a punishable offense and so we need to have ways to to address the ways that that students may be harmed and try to get professors to to educate them and convince them to change the way they they engage in their practices without using the threat of punishment without using even the threat of investigation to have ways of of really having a conversation about these issues with with professors and with the students who are upset by what's happened when it comes to those decisions i'm also curious to ask you you know what is your view of who should be making them and to what extent to what degree they should be academic governance issues or faculty committee issues versus you know administrative bodies i i do think strongly that there ought to be these ought to be faculty committees that deal with things faculty are the experts on students they're the experts on teaching they're the experts on all these kinds of issues within the classroom not in administrators really and so it ought to be certainly the faculty that ought to be the primary ones regulating other faculty when faculty have committed misconduct to to either speak out against them and criticize them to try and help them and educate them or when necessary to punish them and investigate them and and so the faculty ought to be at the core of of addressing these kind of problems because they are the real experts about what what is proper within the classroom any thoughts on this question of investigations and what kind of merits investigation or suspension in a you know quick hot pressure situation can you also hear me yeah okay so i am very careful of using the word investigation i think that there's investigation and i think that there's assessment and so words matter and so for me i have always used uh the the words assessment because we're actually assessing the situation to get a sense of uh what is happening i think for me investigation is heavy and it from the beginning can begin to point fingers just the fact that you're even doing an investigation and so i think it's really important um one to get the input of the the person who's been harmed to figure out what is it that you actually want i think that's a step that we miss and we launch into these investigations and i've had students who are like wait wait a minute this this is not what i want i really just want a conversation so i think first being able to sort of pass out whether this should be an investigation or just an assessment to figure out is is really um important and so i have often advised universities when you're doing an investigation to me that is your uh your office of uh conduct or we're talking about um the general counsel's office or something like that when you're doing sort of an assessment that is more of a less formal thing we're just trying to do this sort of like initial and i have found even using assessment has allowed people to share much more and and give a lot more information because they don't necessarily feel like this is an investigation being conducted so i'm not any thoughts on this question um i agree if there is a situation where there is a breach of uh serious uh norms there there should be consequences i'm not saying that nobody should be taken to task uh but i like nedrama's framing of it i think so much of how we think about these things um recently has become you know in this kind of punitive punitive um framework where we're thinking about justice and and punishment and so yes of course i i wouldn't ever say that if there's a complaint we should just dismiss it you need to it is the responsibility of the institution to look into it um and assessment might be a better way to frame it uh yet at the same time i think you know not not everything should rise to that level there is a responsibility as an educational institution to say well you know before even looking into like calling in the professor and doing things is to like really listen to it and see does this really have any merit is this a complaint that merits more attention so yeah assessment i agree with that all right we had a question here in the audience and i wanted to put it to you all uh which was just kind of returning to the question of different processes other possibilities using um transformative or restorative justice to resolve these situations neishma john amna do any of you have any thoughts if you could talk a little bit about what you think that could look like in the case where you know someone a professor has said something students are upset uh and it's been brought to one of your offices or your office maybe if you were running one so i mentioned uh restorative justice practices in the beginning that is what we use um and so what that looks like is first of all you have to make sure that your institution is trained on understanding what restorative practices is on a practical level you are having conversations with the professor you're having conversations with the student before you have a meeting to get a sense of sort of what happened and when you come to that space the purpose of this space is not to rehash the facts when you come to the space there is already an understanding that harm has been caused and really that conversation is how do we move forward beyond this harm and what do we need to move forward with healing and so i am really really big on restorative practices because i think a lot of people also don't think about it as accountability but in fact it is really a level of accountability and i have had both students and professors who've actually said to me that they would rather have this punitive response because the punitive response is like one and done it doesn't really get into the nitty gritties of let's talk about the harm um and so for me when you get to that room in that conversation i have seen nothing but really really successful results um and what we're also doing is um the professors are also getting an opportunity to receive coaching and information on okay this thing happened to me the next time i go in the classroom i have some skills and awareness and they're not sort of afraid to say or share things because they learnt something from being in that restorative session i'm not any it's on on a kind of process would react to it how you think faculty might react to it yeah i i think you know this is precisely the kind of process that has that chilling effect on on um academic freedom and conversations on campus so i will agree a hundred percent that we need to have spaces where we can talk as a campus or public panels about these kinds of issues but to think about again in a restorative justice framework where we don't even question whether the harm is merited or not you know to not hash out the facts but to really attend to the harm or the feelings of the person is really not what an educational institution is about i would argue we teach responsibly you know we don't like actively try to harm people but this is precisely the kind of thing that subtly will insidiously start changing what people feel that they can say in their classrooms or not so if in this context you know it's like oh next time i shouldn't say this because frankly sitting through these struggle sessions is a commitment and it's long and most professors you will find in their accounts have stopped teaching difficult material precisely because they don't want to be in a position to be doing these things and as a result what we're having is very good interesting controversial material that should be engaged with that will help our students be equipped to really be responsible and critical citizens is missing uh nation any response and then john will come to you next i mean i i can't really relate to that because we've had nothing but success with our restorative practices our professors really really love it even those that come in um a little bit resistant and as i said before as a trauma clinician i don't really get to define people's harm for them and so i really don't operate from the perspective of whether harm is warranted or not your experience is your experience i do just want to bring attention to a comment here in the uh q a at the bottom um from professor jennifer ho uh who is just cautioning that perhaps maybe there are different definitions of restorative justice that we're discussing here uh in her few uh amnesia says what you're describing is not what those processes promote or what they're about um so maybe there's some question uh for a future panel for us to take up here around what those processes do or don't it is interesting to consider uh you know the role of mediation if if we wanted to just use a different word for it and how it could i think impact these processes john i'm going to give last word to you here um you know when you think about these processes and how they can be better handled what what sticks out in your mind as a best practice or your advice well i i think there's always a danger that there can be a chilling effect from dealing with criticism whether it's this process of restorative justice or through public criticism and denunciations but ultimately the university is about engaging in criticism and engaging in debate and and as long as we're avoiding i think the process of formal punishments of people for their speech that kind of criticism has to be wide open students have to be free to criticize their professors and students have to sometimes deal with that criticism or things they don't like from their professors so i i think ultimately that kind of wide open opportunity for debate is what a university has has to be all about and we have to be unafraid to deal with the fact that there's going to be conflict and denunciations and cancel culture and all this kind of criticism that's out there i i think universities just have to protect the formal processes of allowing that debate to happen for people not to be punished for engaging in free speech and when that happens we have to deal with uh you know the danger of self-censorship from criticism as another problem among many that we have to deal with in our culture and and understand that you don't have the right to be free from criticism and universities are all about creating an atmosphere where there is criticism that goes on all right well thank you so much john i'm not najma for being with us today we didn't resolve all of our disagreements about these issues but i do think it was a fruitful and informative conversation about some of these challenges and the challenges in how they're resolved when new incidents arise on college campuses thank you all to our audience also for tuning into this episode of the common room our program will return in a few weeks for further conversation we'll see you then

Channel: PEN America

Views: 116

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: diversity, equity, inclusion, higher ed, university, college, academic freedom, free speech, campus, conduct, professor, common room, pen america, free expression, speech, expression

Id: KfGJYwaRXlM

Length: 60min 26sec (3626 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2021