April 2010
There are two conceptions of what a university should be, and the differences between them are mostly about respect.
In the first conception, members of a university community are to respect each other as individuals, as persons.
On the second conception, they are to respect each
other’s values or beliefs or cultures or experiences — whatever it is that
makes up a person’s identity.
On the first conception, professors and students are
to be treated as autonomous agents brought together in a community so that they
might more effectively and more pleasantly pursue their inquiries into the ways
of the world.
Respecting each other consists in applying no
pressures other than those of argument and evidence. Members of the community
may believe or value whatever they wish, study whatever they wish however they
wish, and say whatever they wish, with no fear of censure or ostracism.
This is the conception according to which a
university community is a community of intellectuals.
On the second conception, professors and students
are to be valued and celebrated for the groups to which they belong.
Respecting each other consists in helping each to
appreciate her identity and the identities of others, and the struggles and
accomplishments associated with them. Members of the community have come
together in order to discover how from within their own tradition they might
best contribute to a diverse society.
This is the conception according to which a
university community is one of appreciation and validation.
Now, a community of intellectuals is a community of
criticism and controversy. No idea and no value is exempt from being roughed up,
not even the ideas or values on which the community is founded. Of course, this
means that in this community feelings will get hurt, as people often quite
naturally take personally attacks on the ideas and values that define who they
are.
Moreover, people being people, their attacks on
ideas and values will sometimes, though not inevitably, in fact be personal.
That argument and evidence are the only appropriate critical tools doesn’t mean
that they are the only tools that will get used.
But because members of the community recognize the
ideal, they will attempt to live up to it. And, with luck, they will also grow
fairly thick skins.
A community of appreciation and validation cannot be
one of criticism or controversy, at least not one in which the ideas or values
of any member may be criticized. Rules will have to be in place about the
targets and nature of criticism, and there will have to be policies to deal with
violations. The administration will have to devise and enforce codes of conduct
for students, professors, and visitors to the university. Whereas at a
university of intellectuals, professors and students will form societies at will
and invite to campus whomever they want, at a university of validation a
committee will vet society applications and proposed campus events for both
content and format.
The attractions of a university of validation are
easy enough to see. It’s not pleasant to think one’s identity is under attack or
being neglected, and it can be difficult to learn in an unpleasant atmosphere.
But it’s also easy to see, people being people, that such a university might
often be a place of rancour and enmity, where anything said could be perceived
by someone as a slight, or as insensitivity.
There’s no reason a university of validation
couldn’t produce good research and train students well, though there’s some
reason to think a university of intellectuals will do better. Universities with
religious charters and missions, for instance, though they lack the diversity
that characterizes the secular kind, are universities of validation, in which
certain topics, methods, and conclusions are out of bounds, and yet such
universities have added to the growth of understanding and have prepared countless young adults for careers and life.
A preference for one conception of university
community over another, then, cannot primarily have to do with the research and
teaching missions of a university. It has to do mainly with the sorts of
experience available at each, the sort of community one enjoys, the sort of
person one wants to be.
Right now in Canada most, maybe all, universities
embody both conceptions. All style themselves places of critical discussion, yet
all state firmly that they are safe spaces, "safe" in the sense of
non-threatening to one’s identity, as the term was used in the discussion of Ann
Coulter’s aborted appearance at the University of Ottawa.
Administrators have tried, with some success, to
find workable compromises between the two conceptions. At my university, for
instance, a memo from the academic vice-president distinguished between the
inside and the outside of the classroom. What is unacceptable outside the
classroom can be acceptable within it.
In the end, of course, compromise is impossible, as
any concession to the university of validation must restrict our conduct as
intellectuals.
Now I know which conception of university community
I prefer (and which conception I roundly despise). But though I can’t see how
the two conceptions could be reconciled, I don’t see any reason why Canada
cannot be home to both. Community at some universities could be intellectual, at
other universities validating.
Partisans of validation would disagree. Not only can
critical discussion put people at risk of psychological harm, they say, but it
also can easily lead to the destruction of laws and institutions we hold dear.
Critical discussion of abortion, for instance, not only disturbs and hurts, but
threatens a woman’s right to choose.
But why not try it anyway? Let’s have professors and
students voice their preference, and then shift people around accordingly. One
venerable reason for having lots of universities rather than a few large ones,
after all, is to provide people with options.
No starker or more consequential choice exists than that between a university of intellectuals and a university
of validation.
Mark Mercer is a professor in the department of
philosophy at Saint Mary’s University. [He is also a member of SAFS Board of
Directors]
The Ottawa Citizen, April 2, 2010.
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