Hallin’s Spheres
BY AARON BARLOW
What the Eric Rasmusen situation at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business (read more about that here and here) brings to the fore is a slipping away from any sort of consensus about what a professor should be and what a student should expect. IU Provost Lauren Robel tried to respond to the problem Rasmusen’s beliefs represent by assuming a certain consensus, but hers is something of a hurried Band-Aid over a wound long festering. It may be a temporary solution, but it does not resolve the problem.
This isn’t a problem localized to academia, of course. Brian Klaas, in today’s Washington Post, writes, “Democracies require a shared sense of reality. To solve problems, you have to agree they exist.” Without some sort of fundamental agreement, it is impossible for a a couple of people, an institution, or even a system to continue to operate together to solve problems without tearing themselves or itself apart. We are seeing that today in all sorts of arenas, from national politics, where two universes of shared assumptions seem to have less and less overlap each day, to campus, where the very idea of an educator no longer resonates equally with everyone, where, also, concepts like “responsibility” and “freedom of speech” and even “academic freedom” now mean different things to different groups of people. We are seeing the differing definitions now falling along political lines (just as in the country as a whole). We are also seeing it between individuals.
Even the necessity of some sort of consensus is disputed today in all of these arenas, with “consensus” defined even as “tyranny” by some.
And, unfortunately, it can be.
In 1986, in The Uncensored War, Daniel Hallin, who teaches at the University of California at San Diego, came up with an elegant way of describing what many still think of as “objectivity” in journalism. It’s a model of spheres, starting with a center of ideas that everyone agrees on, moving to “legitimate” (that is, non-threatening) controversy and on out to the “deviant,” the ideas that don’t have to be (or even shouldn’t be) considered at all. To believers in the core consensus, to be “objective” or “impartial,” one has to stick to the ideas at the center, presenting “balance” when discussing the next sphere, and avoiding the third one completely.
A decade later, James Fallows, in Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, presented a situation where two ideas of that consensus core clash. It happened during a panel discussion at Montclair State College when Peter Jennings said he would warn American troops of an impending ambush he had learned of while covering troops on the opposing side. Mike Wallace, also on the panel, took him to task, saying it was more important to cover the story than to get involved, even if it risked American lives. The military men also on the panel were appalled by Wallace, but Jennings quickly pivoted to agree with his fellow journalist.
The assumed consensus on each side had clashed, and there was no way to mollify either, for both were seeing what the other saw as a central (and needed) agreement as deviant. The central sphere of the journalists had slipped far from that of the military, setting them into opposition, into inability for the one to understand the other.
Much the same has happened in broader American political discussions over the last few decades. Today, what the left sees as deviant, the right sees as central—and vice versa. That leaves little room for discussion on anything, for it also has moved conceptions of legitimate controversy apart and often into the other’s deviance.
Rasmusen, to the mind of Robel and many others at UI, has also moved into deviance, becoming an actual threat to students. From his point of view, this is ridiculous.
Looking at this, it becomes obvious why trying to pull consensus together out of deviance has been proving impossible both in politics and, as we are seeing more and more often, on campus–and even between individuals. Even suggesting that campus communities try to establish some sort of basic agreement that all can abide by can raise howls, people equating thee process with something forcing them into an oppressive situation, real freedom denied.
And it’s true: consensus is difficult, but is should never be coerced (coerced consensus, by definition, is not consensus). The Quakers, who make consensus central to their operational beliefs, are willing to back away from any action until consensus arrives. That’s not easy to in more time-sensitive situations—such as politics, where elections cannot be held up, or in education, where students grow up and move on, no matter what we educators do, and where they need appropriate attention now. Thus, the worry that the need for consensus can devolve into authoritarian-like demand is quite real.
That, however, does not obviate the need to struggle for agreement, to establish basic beliefs we can all agree on.
If we pare things away, perhaps we can even find things between people, in education, or in politics that we all agree on. Things that Robel and Rasmusen, for example, could even make into a basis for cooperation. They both likely would be willing to stipulate that all admitted students in the university need to be treated equally in the classroom, no matter what one believes about their potential based on sex or race. If they could, the need for Robel’s oversight of Rasmusen’s teaching would not be necessary.
But that could not happen without it being made evident by Rasmusen that his beliefs about differing abilities based on sex or race have no place in the classroom. The problem would be believing that Rasmusen was acting our of agreement and not coercion, the same problem that those military men on the panel with Wallace would have with him. Would they be willing to work with him, after what he said, in a wartime situation? Even if he were to say he would act in accordance with the general American military consensus, he could no longer be trusted. Nor could Rasmusen, for both have ventured into the deviant in the eyes of those responsible for troops and students.
This, in a microcosm, is the dilemma of our society as a whole, not just our colleges and universities, is facing. Even among friends, our various “sides” have moved their center to the other side’s deviancy, so far so that neither can trust the other.
Each side sees their own center, the small-group consensus of like-minded believers, as the “real truth” that the others have deviated from. And neither side is willing to budge enough in its beliefs to make room for the other in a real consensus. In fact, each side sees the deviancy of the other as a danger.
I do see Rasmusen’s beliefs about women and non-whites as dangerous, as deviant from what I view as what should be the American consensus. He, a professed Christian, probably feels the same about me, a lapsed Quaker, an atheist. We both probably see the other as a threat to the young, to today’s college students.
The question for us, for the various parts of the faculty, and for the American political future lies in how to overcome the mistrust we have engendered through our own conceptions of deviancy and bring us back to a level of trust under which we can, at least, work together.
I don’t know how to do that between professors, within institutions, or for the country as a whole. Except by pulling away from reliance only on our own set of Hallin’s spheres.
What I do know is that, unless we find some sort of real consensus and trust across the boundaries we have created, the American experiment, at all levels, is headed for failure.
I’m willing to talk, to try.
Are you?
Addendum: My father and I were on opposite sides of one of the struggles toward consensus within the Society of Friends (Quakers) during the 1970s and 1980s, the struggle toward how to deal with gay relationships. I was all for same-sex marriage under the aegis of the Meeting. My father, though he was fine with gay relationships, was not. He felt that Quakers could not sponsor something not allowed by law. At an impasse, Meetings started sponsoring ceremonies of commitment that had all the trappings of marriage ceremonies but were not supported by law. These, which any couple could ask for, became symbols of Quaker support for gay marriage in law and eventually led to a real Quaker consensus on the issue, one that contributed to the still-developing (but legally successful) fight for recognition of marriage equality throughout the country.
My father never felt coerced into supporting gay marriage (though his views did change), but the process he was part of probably helped focus the gay-rights and then LGBTQ movement, allowing for what have proved to be productive conversations within the wider community.
Consensus requires respect for the views of everyone and cannot move forward in the face of dissent. As a practical matter, individual Quakers can “stand aside” from an issue if they feel that blocking something is, for whatever reason, not worth their while.
This process is difficult and it doesn’t always work. I left the Society of Friends because I felt I could no longer stand against something my Meeting proposed to do (it involved giving money to an entity in Africa that my experience on that continent told me was a likely scam) and remain. I was made to feel uncomfortable and unwanted. I felt that individuals in the meeting were acting in a manner toward me that bordered on coercion and that I had best just leave rather than consent, stand aside or continue to stand against.
When the process of working toward consensus does work, however, as it did with gay marriage, it can be magnificent. But it is always difficult.
Consensus, like civility, strikes me as a dangerous concept that probably does more harm than good. It’s important to remember that until recently (and to this day in some places), Rasmusen’s bigoted views were the consensus. One of the things that allowed that consensus to change was the protection of the freedom of dissenters from the consensus. Continuing that progress requires us to allow people to violate the consensus.
One of the difficulties of achieving any sort of consensus is fear. Fear that agreement will be coerced not arrived at by work.
Rasmusen’s views never were consensus views, as incidents such as the Civil War make clear. And consensus itself is a process of change, for it requires serious attention to–and respect for–dissenting views. Otherwise, what you have isn’t consensus but tyranny.
We have never had consensus in the United States, though many Americans have worked toward establishing it. In that respect, my title is something of a misnomer. Perhaps it should be “Getting Back to the Idea of Consensus.” We clearly need to talk about that, first. Too many of us don’t seem to really understand just what consensus entails.
What do you mean Rasmusen’s views were never consensus (among at least the ruling or educated classes)? I suspect that many people who opposed slavery nonetheless would have claimed black people were academically inferior. It’s a long way between those things.
There were many other white Americans who never saw African-Americans as intellectually inferior (including most of the Quakers, by the way). A consensus among white Americans, or even among “ruling or educated classes” would have required that they, and many others, agree–which the record shows they did not. The prevailing attitude was as you say, but it was no consensus.
Thanks for your thoughtful essay. You seem to position consensus as an objective, fair, or at least moral norm. But I wonder whether, given the stakes, conflict is the real norm. Many of these are life-and-death issues. At Syracuse last week some threats were made on a faculty member. I doubt that the threatened faculty could be persuaded to sit around a conference table with her threatener. Nor should she be. When people are willing to kill or be killed over these issues, then consensus is unattainable. Besides, there is this question of a “system” that favors the already powerful and wealthy, and so the Others distrust it and its exhortations to come to the table. Consensus would be much more attainable if the various clashing sides were roughly equal in power.
Good points, especially about power imbalance. Consensus is easily abused, especially by those with the power to coerce agreement. The process is difficult and requires steely will, and willingness to block the majority (and, on the part of the majority) to respect that blockage.
Such an impasse is particularly dangerous, though, in cases (such as education) where the passage of time acts to the advantage of one position or another. Consensus isn’t an end-all, but it can be the ideal behind creation of a starting point, even when people have been injured, as South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
This seems to miss a central issue. The soldiers do not need to agree with the journalists in order to understand them, they just need to recognize they are not soldiers. The journalists presumably accord that respect to the soldiers, they would not shoot people but they understand the soldiers will. Exactly the same applies in the academic case. Its entirely possible to believe that ‘women’ are less capable than ‘men’ (and depending on how nuanced your position is somewhere between doubtful and absurd) and still treat all students equally – it would even be entirely consistent with believing that to actively support laws and campus policies which required students to be treated equally. The problem here is not that the underlying belief is ‘deviant’ it is that one group are unwilling to accept people who simply abide by rules (several posts on this issue have made clear there is no evidence the beliefs led to discrimination, so it seems a reasonable working hypothesis), they also require that they think alike in terms of the rules justification. Sometimes differing beliefs require different courses of action, but not always. A society needs that acceptance but it seems (and given the internet its always hard to distinguish perception from reality) to have become less common in recent decades.
Soldiers and journalists, in the traditional American view of things, are both supposed to be citizens–and it is there that the consensus should lie. Recognition of the needs of the “other” is not a replacement for basic agreements that underlie citizenship. One of the underlying principles, one of the points of agreement, should be, in my view, that all are created equal. We have never lived up to that, but it should be our common goal that the structures we build promote equality. When we pare away other arguments, I think we can all agree that we should operate on a one-person-one-vote basis for the most part, even though the structures of the Senate and the Electoral College do weigh votes differently. That gives us something to build on.
You are right, in cases like this one we need to rely on how a person acts. We worry, however, that people can act against an agreed-upon course while still appearing to comply, which is what makes many of us in education suspicious of people like Rasmusen. We don’t know if he is really treating all students equally.
A lot of what consensus requires is trust, and we are sadly lacking in that. It also requires the ability to stand aside from making a decision yet being willing to abide by it, a critical point in the Rasmusen case.
I think it’s important to distinguish between consensus of opinion and consensus on the basic facts of reality. We’ve never had the former, and never will. We must have the latter, or democracy doesn’t function.
It’s the difference between thinking Trump is a better president than Obama, and thinking that Trump had a larger crowd at his inauguration than Obama. That we’re seriously disagreeing about things like the latter is what gives me little hope in our future as a country.
Good point, but I think we need to negotiate a consensus of operation as well. That is, a consensus on how a country as large and diverse as the United States works. This will be almost impossible, but working toward that goal might even allow the consensus “on the basic facts of reality” to reassert itself.
Oh, and I do share your pessimism, though I hope it doesn’t lead us to give up.
I like it that you are willing to discuss things seriously. If I wrote a reply on this theme, would you publish it here? –Eric Rasmusen, erasmuse@indiana.edu. It is indeed an important question as to what consensus morality, if any, a public university should demand of people who teach there. I don’t know that I’ve a definite view, but I’d love to discuss it.
I’d appreciate that.