Changing The Discourse To Be About Humans and Humanity

A Focus on Love, People and the American Promise

As college presidents, we must work to defend our faculty and staff in all disciplines so that knowledge and higher education can be situated as part of the future American narrative of social justice. We can be strong together and insist that the fabric of democracy be woven with an inclusive tapestry of love, or we can remain silent and allow legitimate lines of inquiry and the citizens we serve be attacked and marginalized now and in the future. To paraphrase Radio Raheem, there are no politics, there are only love and hate. And while love may be on the ropes, it can ultimately win out if we commit to ensuring it guides our work.

Another way to frame this same point: whether or not a human being should have access to education is not a political issue. Access to education is a human issue. Whether or not a people’s history should be included in a curriculum is not political. It is an educational and moral issue. Whether or not the history of racism should be interrogated to provide a better understanding of power and its dangers is not indoctrination. It is a safeguard against the very tyranny the writers of the Constitution warned against. Safeguarding citizenship through access, success, and curriculum are all the domain of higher education, and the responsibility of leaders to protect. These beliefs, we at Education for All, see as apolitical. We also believe that many politicians from all parties are pro-education, pro-social mobility for all, pro-democracy, and pro-equality.

Subsequently, we argue for a discourse and vision of higher education rooted in love, and with a vision of defining a college degree as a human right of every single person living within the borders of our country.

Leaders and Asserting Values in Curriculum

As leaders in higher education, we have no reason to debate whether or not book banning is acceptable, or whether studying the past and present of any group is legitimate. Arguing about the existence of diverse people in America and their history is like arguing about the existence of air. There is no debate to be had: there is only a group of people who would prefer that diversity and subsequent fields of study not exist. Leaders of institutions that proclaim to be about the pursuit of knowledge and the development of citizens have every right to proclaim that marginalizing people and obscuring truth through book banning, curriculum and training gag-orders are centrally within our domain for comment, direction and action.

Responses To Claims That DEI Makes Some Student Uncomfortable

First, PEN America has researched this issue and found that faculty and staff are overwhelmingly careful in ensuring all students are free to state their beliefs and feelings. However, often, students report peers being the ones making each other uncomfortable. This is why colleges exist, though. To train students to engage in conversations with one another about topics in a way that allow for more civility and rounded understanding.

Moreover, training about DEI should allow students and employees to deconstruct mythologies that do not align with historical and social realities. Often politicians claim students feel guilty when they learn of historic oppressions. The term they should be using is empathy. Experts in DEI teach the historical realities in order to make the nation more perfect, and that feeling students often have is not guilt but sadness and empathy for those who have been oppressed. This is the start of beginning engagement with a social world to make it progress to the equality that we all desire.

As a result, educational institutions should celebrate discomfort as a means to create learning opportunities. Any legislation that seeks to limit what can be studied and reject legitimate advances in the humanities and social sciences is not advancing understanding of truth, which is the underpinning assumption we all have for higher education. Rather, the intention is to eschew nonwhite, non-heterosexual topics and perspectives as legitimate for study.

Institutional Neutrality

Many administrators and faculty claim that neutrality from administration is imperative to allow for debate on campuses, and they refer to the Chicago Principles that allow for free expression and debate. However, when our curriculum is threatened, and our students are as well, we protect freedom of expression and academic freedom by standing up for knowledge, faculty and the general pursuit of truth and knowledge, which requires a widening, not a narrowing, of what is studied.

New Contexts for Institutional Neutrality, Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech

Leaders of higher education institutions, whether they acknowledge it or not, have entered into an entirely new context. This new paradigm potentially renders the systemically ingrained constructs of academic freedom, freedom of speech and institutional neutrality obsolete.

These constructs have never truly benefited the marginalized. Educational leaders must consider new ways of examining the traditions upon which higher education has rested, or else watch the institutions themselves shift so seismically they will no longer be aligned with the aspiration of building a well-informed citizenship.

The compulsory silencing of voices and dismissal of people’s humanity was and is a major characteristic of our educational and social institutions. As such, free speech was assumed to exist, but was predicated on the absence of speech from certain groups. That is not free speech. John Warner argues that if anti-DEI voices spout hateful rhetoric and silence the marginalized, the very constructs of academic freedom and freedom of speech are being used to strike fear in those interested in social justice.

In this way, institutional neutrality in the name of freedom of speech and academic freedom runs the risk of being leveraged not for a more just society, but to reinforce problematic power structures both within and external to our institutions. We must recognize the norms of our political and social spheres impact the voices of our employees and students in the hallways.

Educational leaders must consider new ways of examining the traditions upon which higher education has rested, or else watch the institutions themselves shift so seismically they will no longer be aligned with the aspiration of building a well-informed citizenship.