Skidmore Scope Magazine Annual Edition for 2017

31 SKIDMORE COLLEGE is by no means absurd or trivial. The political right has lately em- braced the free speech issue in ways that are opportunistic and dishonest, and recent widely publicized developments on American campuses have played into the hands of right-wing demagogues, from Donald Trump to Ann Coulter. For campus partisans to call attention to the unsavory views or shoddy scholarship of a speaker who is about to appear on campus is not an assault on free speech but in fact the exercise of free speech and an invita- tion to debate. — boyers I have often struggled with activism surround- ing campus speakers. From a student’s point of view, there is a certain perceived level of endorse- ment when a school allows a person to come and speak. And there is a pattern of disdain for the concept of “safe spaces,” particularly among the older generations. Safe spaces are seen as a protective shield that supposedly hin- ders academic freedom and creates a false bubble within a college, but that view fails to recognize the various shapes and forms of the marginalized within the academic realm. Young men and women who demand a space conducive for learning are brave souls. I have often been guilty of the opposite: finding myself sitting in a class silently as a teacher espouses grossly outdated stereotypes about Africa. — themba shongwe Colleges are the safest intellectual places on the planet. But the risks involved in talking about politics, race, class, or religion can discourage speaking freely. The manufactured outrage at “liberal fac- ulty,” administrative concerns about publicity and funding, students’ desires to avoid conflict, and faculty fear of student evaluations and a tight labor market also conspire against robust discourse on campuses. There is freedom of speech, but also an inclination toward playing it safe. — oles The controlling of speech via peer pressure is nothing new on campuses—all communities have unspoken rules about what one can and cannot say. But as the social fabric weakens, strictures become more explicit, and some people feel more con- strained by rules that don’t make sense to them from their perspectives and histories. This goes for a first-generation student of color who might feel constrained by old social rules, or for a middle-aged white professor who may feel constrained by new social rules. And so they speak up, only to be accused of threatening the other person’s free- dom of speech. On the one hand, this is a sign of progress in diversity, because it is an almost inevitable consequence of bring- ing together people from very different backgrounds. On the other hand, it can have a dampening effect on aca- demic freedom as distinct from constitutionally protected freedom of speech (which is not being violated). The bread and butter of intellectual progress is argument, but fewer and fewer students, professors, or administrators want to engage in argument connected to diversity and identity, for fear of making a gaffe, being misunderstood, or being confronted with passion and anger. — delton Yes, campuses need to be bastions of free speech, but they also need to be bastions of intelligent, honest, civil dialogue. Sorry, but someone like Ann Coulter offers none of the above, so when Berkeley students objected to her—I’m not talking about violence, but vocal objections—I did not find that an affront to the First Amendment. We are living at a time when the force of speech is being redefined. Once, it came from either numbers or the power of a platform, but now the Supreme Court has added money: you are entitled to as much speech and influence as money can buy. Coulter and other rich pundits like her are emblematic of that, and they shut down speech themselves by hanging up on callers, not letting them past the call screener, or shouting them down on the air. Against this, all students have, really, is the power of their numbers to say, “We don’t want people coming to our campus bearing a message of hate.” — jay jochnowitz Online “analysis vacuum” Social media is in part responsible for the breakdown of elite control over the country’s discourse. Voices that were once marginalized, confined to mimeographed or xeroxed handbills, now have a platform that reaches millions. So radical black feminists have more of a voice, but so too do radical white national- ists. And the elite moderate center has lost its ability to manage public discourse. — delton Some Twitter or Facebook posts have a pro- found impact on U.S. politics and policy; most have zero. The true benefit of social media is to “SOME TWITTER OR FACEBOOK POSTS HAVE A PROFOUND IMPACT ON U.S. POLITICS AND POLICY; MOST HAVE ZERO. THE TRUE BENEFIT OF SOCIAL MEDIA IS TO SURFACE THE HATE: IT’S MUCH BETTER TO KNOW ABOUT IT THAN NOT TO.”