BY MARYBETH GASMAN
An English professor at Iowa State University threatened to discipline students who submit papers opposing abortion, the Black Lives Matter movement, or same-sex marriage. In response, administrators at Iowa State University required the professor to change the syllabus and issued a statement to media outlets:
The syllabus statement as written was inconsistent with the university’s standards and its commitment to the First Amendment rights of students. After reviewing this issue with the faculty member, the syllabus has been corrected to ensure it is consistent with university policy. Moreover, the faculty member is being provided additional information regarding the First Amendment policies of the university. Iowa State is firmly committed to protecting the First Amendment rights of its students, faculty, and staff. With respect to student expression in the classroom, including the completion of assignments, the university does not take disciplinary action against students based on the content or viewpoints expressed in their speech.
Having watched academic freedom and First Amendment issues closely for years—beginning with a study of McCarthyism against African American and Jewish communities as part of my dissertation—I am interested in this case.
The professor stated: “You cannot choose any topic that takes at its base that one side doesn’t deserve the same basic human rights as you do (i.e.: no arguments against gay marriage, abortion, Black Lives Matter, etc.). I take this seriously.”
I want to make it clear that I am a Democrat; I am on the left. I also want to be up-front about my perspectives. I am pro-choice, which means I believe that women have a choice and not that I am pro-abortion. I believe that gay marriage is a legal right for gay couples (and so does the Supreme Court) and I support my friends and family members who are gay and married. And I believe that Black Lives Matter, and I have donated to the movement’s national and state organizations and do everything I can to bring about equity and opportunity for African Americans.
Despite these firm and well-considered perspectives, I do not think that it is right, smart, or legal to tell students what they can or cannot write about in class. If an assignment allows any topic to be explored, students should be able to write about any topic from any perspective. The First Amendment allows a student this right as does academic freedom as originally conceptualized. Do students write papers with perspectives that I am opposed to? Absolutely and often. However, they have a right to do this. Over the years, I have had excellent students author well-argued papers that I completely disagreed with in terms of content and perspective. The best papers forced me to wrestle with and sharpen my own ideas and arguments.
James Baldwin said, “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” I assume the professor who created the syllabus in question understands and believes this notion, as I do. I could feel the professor’s passion for justice. However, I believe that students need the opportunity to grapple with tough ideas and that their thoughts are at the early stages of development. Students come to college shaped by their families and environments. As faculty, we should be assigning readings that challenge them to think deeply and help them to look at issues from many viewpoints. We should be offering assignments that allow students to explore ideas even when those ideas are in opposition to ours.
What better way for a student to learn why Black lives matter than writing a paper that results in a challenging discussion with a professor? In order to write the paper, the student will have to read a variety of perspectives and will learn something new. Why can’t an anti-abortion student write a paper about this stance? Being anti-abortion is a personal choice. Perhaps the student will come to understand more about the complexities of the issues, and the unique role of women in this decision, as a result of writing the paper. And if a student doesn’t think that gay marriage should be legal, wouldn’t exploring the issue be an interesting assignment? Having to find evidence for one’s ideas is vital and the student would encounter nuance across various sources. In all of these situations, I would require students to share evidence and not merely opinions in their papers, and I would push back against unfounded ideas to help students sharpen their perspectives and learn.
I think that Iowa State University made the right decision by requiring revision of the syllabus and providing the professor with materials on First Amendment rights. Unlike some on the right who are calling for the professor to be fired for the syllabus statement, I think there are important lessons across the board in this situation. 1) The professor was passionate about ensuring that students have a learning environment that was free of “isms.” We should all want a professor who fights to eliminate “isms.” 2) Although we may think that our views on controversial issues are merely our opinions, these opinions can feel and be oppressive to others. It would behoove us to think about what it would be like to be on the receiving end of this oppression as James Baldwin so eloquently explained. 3) Students have the right to free speech and the academic freedom to explore topics of their choice even if we disagree with their perspectives. 4) We on the left need to be careful what we wish for in terms of curtailing academic freedom and free speech. The curtailment of free speech has been used in the past to destroy those who have fought for justice, and it will be used again.
Marybeth Gasman, an historian of education, is the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair in Education and a distinguished professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. She is also the author (with Clifton Conrad) of Educating a Diverse Nation (Harvard University Press, 2015).
I agree wholeheartedly. In an attempt to be “P.C.” this professor limited the thought processes of his students and denied them Freedom of Speech. (I’m glad that the administration saw that for what it was; too often, they are even more “P.C.” than most.)
I assume that this prof is tenured because he would have even been in more trouble than a “re-education” session had he been an adjunct.
BTW, in my field, Cinema, many instructors prohibit their students from making films about certain subjects or that feature certain elements — i.e., violence, suicide, dating, stereotyped representations, etc. etc. I alway object to such prior censorship but to no avail.
There are several issues here. The first is process: I think that any decision about overturning a syllabus should be made by a faculty committee, and not decreed by administrators. The second is about broad principles: can a professor declare certain topics off limits? For example, can a professor say that you’re not allowed to argue in favor of the Holocaust, or to deny its existence? Can a professor prohibit a student from arguing for the death penalty for gay and lesbians? I’m skeptical of a total ban on professors limiting topics, even though I oppose professors doing that. Of course, the problem here is that professor tried to restrict areas that we regard as legitimate topics of debate (abortion, BLM, gay marriage).
Agreed. Such a decision should be made by a faculty committee. This, too, would help with the issue raised by Frank Tomasulo — assuming discipline of any kind is appropriate (which is not the case here, I would say), an adjunct shouldn’t face more serious repercussions than a tenured professor for advocating the same position. A faculty committee that adjudicated academic freedom issues would be a kind of barrier of sorts behind admin and the faculty member.
The point that some topics *have* been considered off-limits is also instructive. The window for what is acceptable and unacceptable changes over time and we may be in a moment when it is changing (or at least the struggle to change it is very real).
I am usually no fan of administrative fiat (or any fiat, for that matter). However, a faculty committee is not the best answer either. The university leaders are, in theory, best equipped to evaluate and adjudicate situations that pertain to larger institutional norms (not just department values) and policies (i.e., students’ Free Speech rights). This question is bigger than the wording of one prof’s syllabus.
I often use hyberbolic exaggerations to advance an argument, so I easily perceive them when used by someone else. For instance, John K. asks, “Can a professor prohibit a student from arguing for the death penalty for gay and lesbians?” I say NO, even repugnant views (with few exceptions) are protected by the First Amendment. (Of course, if the student actually attacks a gay or lesbian, that is NOT protected. Despite many misconceptions, there is NO such legal entity as “hate speech” in the U.S. The “Supremes” have ruled on this at least three times.)
Finally, why can’t we all live by Justice Brandeis’s wise words: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is MORE speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression.”
Yes, more speech to counter bad speech has long been the liberal consensus. We have never before had, though, a president who so willfully repeats falsehoods and fallacies, despite plenty of speech demonstrating to him his mistakes, coupled with social media that allows people to live so completely in the echo chambers of their choice, ignoring any speech they don’t think affirms their worldview. There are no easy answers but this, at least, needs to be recognized.
Its hard to tell but the individual may have been operating under a belief fallacy. Obviously you can and should both direct what students write and penalise them for writing certain things. If you set an assignment asking students to write about a scientific theory or fact which is widely misunderstood or not accepted it would be sensible to warn them in advance that a defense of flat earth theory or intelligent design would be intellectually unsound and would likely get them failed.
And actually a similar thing may have applied here, depending on the assignment. To argue that certain groups do not deserve basic human rights without tackling that such a position is enshrined in laws at both national and international level would obviously also be unsound – though an essay exploring why some people seem to believe that in relation to the issues discussed would have potential.
The point is that there are plenty of answers which are wrong to any question, and its not unreasonable to warn students when such answers might be acceptable in general conversation – though in this case the individual seems to have mistaken their fervent belief in these causes for the advocate groups involved being beyond question.
Re.: “Obviously you can and should both direct what students write and penalise them for writing certain things.” The word “obviously” is often used when something is NOT actually obvious, at least not to everyone. Directing students to write about a specific topic — i.e., evolution — is perfectly fine. (I once had a student who wrote about a silent film from 1920 in a course devoted to International Cinema, 1945-present.)
However, telling students what they cannot write about is pre-censorship, pure and simple (“obviously”). And, of course, flat-Earth and Sun-goes-around-the-Earth theories are often used as the exaggerated hypotheticals to discourage students’ Freedom of Thought.
I believe in Evolution but how it all got started — “Big Bang” or “Intelligent Design” — is still somewhat up in the air, even if there is a scientific consensus on it (which there isn’t). Likewise, abortion can still be critiqued until someone definitively determines when “life” begins, and — as I understand it — the scientific community is leaning slightly closer to an earlier date for that.
The point is NOT whose OPINION is right or wrong. Most are neither. If a student can mount valid arguments in favor of a given position, he/she should not be prohibited from doing so — even if the censorious prof thinks that there is no valid grounds for it.
Nobody is probably checking this post at this point but I just came across this excerpt from the offending syllabus.
“GIANT WARNING: any instances of othering that you participate in intentionally (racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, sorophobia, transphobia, classism, mocking of mental health issues, body shaming, etc) in class are grounds for dismissal from the classroom. The same goes for any papers/projects: you cannot choose any topic that takes at its base that one side doesn’t deserve the same basic human rights as you do (ie: no arguments against gay marriage, abortion, Black Lives Matter, etc). I take this seriously.”
Just want to shout out to this Iowa State Professor who takes seriously all the messages our own institutions send us about not tolerating bullying or discrimination in the classroom. And who also takes seriously the ugly climate we’re currently experiencing by setting their own limits on what’s acceptable. Notice that they specify “intentionally”. The line was that a student had to be clearly belittling a group. That this could happen — consciously denigrating, distorting, exaggerating in order to intimidate — is sadly very possible in Trump’s America.
Thanks for sharing the full text of this “trigger warning.” It is even more arrogant and threatening than I imagined. if I were a student I’d be loath to write about at all controversial, nor even something that might be construed as “insensitive.”
I also want to “shout out” to this Iowa State Professor: “Get over yourself and your pseudo-P.C. censorship!!!” It is THE PROF who is the bully here, not the rare student who might express a non-P.C. opinion. In 40+ years of college teaching I can think of only 4-5 instances of INTENTIONAL bigotry voiced in class or in paper assignments, but HUNDREDS of utterances that MIGHT be interpreted as a MICRO-aggression by those with a “cancel culture” mindset.
The word “intentionally” does not absolve this prof from misinterpreting a remark. For example, Here’s what happened to me whilst an Adjunct Full Professor at CCNY and my use of ONE WORD (no, not THAT one!) ended up costing me my job: https://www.academia.edu/23593134/A_Leftist_Critique_of_Political_Correctness_Gone_Amok_Revised_and_Updated
But the Free Speech issue is the primary one. BTW, although there may be SOME justification for banning certain words from the classroom, where individuals might get offended, why would this subject matter censorship apply to written reports, where only the prof. would presumably read them? Why would an anti-abortion argument be verboten? Which group would be being “belittled”: those who believe that abortion should be legal?
And, of course, Jennifer Ruth, who I had originally thought was rational, like so many others, insists on blaming all the ills of society on Donald Trump. Boring!
I hadn’t seen the first part of the syllabus, and I find it much more disturbing. Professors have some authority to set guidelines for paper topics. But they don’t get to dismiss students from the classroom because they think someone has expressed an offensive idea. It’s very disturbing that a professor would set these rules (especially without defining any of these terms), and we should be condemning it, not praising it. This sounds more like an act of bullying than an attempt to stop bullying. It’s noteworthy that this list of possible offenses includes “sorophobia,” which nobody has ever heard of (and appears to be a misspelling of sororophobia, which is also incomprehensible, https://www.oxford.co.za/book/9780195073874-sorophobia-h#.X0_uf6jYrnE).
John K. Wilson: Great minds DO think alike! Bravo for your brave statements.
John, I respect you but have you ever been a young female professor teaching a feminist theorist and had a student write about “hairy feminist cunts”? I was 30 when that happened and I was scared by the anger and told by my chair to just ignore it. I’m 50 now and I’d tell the student to get out and stay out of my class. And I’m sure the kinds of incidents I’ve faced are nothing compared to what other people (particularly BIPOC, LGBTQ) have had to deal with.
I don’t think this teacher’s approach is necessarily the way to handle the problem. But I am not studying philosophy because in philosophy departments, papers and the legitimacy of trans identities is a topic which is treated as “up for debate.” Every way of saying this is cheapened by the way buzzwords so rapidly slip into meaningless cliché; suffice it to say that I am not particularly capable of debating papers arguing for the validity of policies and attitudes that left me, as a trans woman in her early twenties, homeless and suicidal.
None of this is to say that the way this professor handled the situation was “good.” When possible, addressing these positions as arguments is a better route for persuasion, if only because the horrors of the anticommunist purges of the mid-20th century should remind leftist professors of how precarious their positions in academia are. But I know that if I were forced to spend hours and hours of my time teaching students who wrote paper arguing, as professional philosophy papers in recent years have, that I am an ontologically invalid person, I would emotionally and psychologically suffer, in ways medical consensus understands as legitimate.
The stakes are high. The slippery slope I am most concerned about is not the one that leads towards some sort of leftist authoritarianism, but the one that leads trans students to attempt suicide at disproportionate rates, that, as has been empirically demonstrated, imperils the well being of LGBTQ students and students of color.
While I certainly empathize with Thea’s circumstances and feel compassion for their [?] plight, I find it hard to believe that professors are “forced to spend hours and hours … teaching students who wrote paper arguing, as professional philosophy papers in recent years have, that [trans people are] ontologically invalid persons,” First, as an old Philosophy grad, I wonder if “ontological” is the right term here. More important, my guess is that if trans students attempt suicide at disproportionate rates, it is not because of scholarly essays in philosophical quarterlies. There’s a big, wide awful society out there that practices discrimination A LOT more than anything one would read in an academic essay, especially if that essay merely asks questions.
Whatever happened to Spinoza’s old axiom: “Sticks and stones will break my bones but [mere] words will never harm me”?
“The stakes are high. The slippery slope I am most concerned about is not the one that leads to leftist authoritarianism but the one that leads trans students to attempt suicide . . . ” This is the best thing I’ve read in the context of these kinds of debates in a long time. Thanks for putting this so clearly.