I managed to sit through video of the 90-minute debate at the University of Delaware this past week; considering how discussions on this topic can go, the actual debate was pretty dry stuff — Princeton Anthropology Professor Agustín Fuentes argued gender is a “spectrum,” while Pepperdine’s Tomás Bogardus, a philosophy professor, supported the binary.
One student said an event “that challenges queer identities is kind of like a slap in the face.” Others complained about the “power imbalance” of a university-sponsored debate, saying it was “unfair to expect vulnerable students to defend their identities.”
As such, “multiple student groups” organized a counter-event to the official debate — a “safe space for students to discuss how it impacted them.”
In attendance as an “ally” was Delaware State Rep. Mara Gorman who offered up the classic I’m all for free speech, BUT: “[Gorman] said she didn’t support shutting the event down, but that she didn’t understand why it was a productive conversation for the school to have.”
The local American Civil Liberties Union was the same, its executive director saying “while the [ACLU] supports the right to discuss controversial topics, universities should keep in mind how those conversations affect marginalized communities.”
For me, the best part of the debate was right at the beginning — when U. Delaware Philosophy Dept. Chair Joel Pust told the audience the goal was to have a debate “about what’s true, not what’s politically expedient.”
For right-leaning students and community members, I’m sure it was very refreshing to see a major university official say something like this … and mean it.
“Normally I would just say ‘thank you for being here,'” Pust said. “But this appears to have, this debate, has generated some controversy. I’ve seen and been the recipient of messages objecting to its very occurrence.
The main criticism I’ve seen is that debating this topic is somehow harmful to people. I should emphasize we’re debating whether biological sex is binary; whether or not that relates to gender or gender identity and how it would do so remains an open question. People have different views on that question […] we’re talking about biological sex, the thing we humans share with vast swaths of the animal kingdom.
The main post I’ve seen criticizing this says the university should center teaching based on evidence and compassion and the well-being of students. And then it goes on to say […] that academic freedom is fine, but it shouldn’t extend to interfering with student well-being.
But I guess I have to say I don’t know what this is except argument and evidence [holds up both of the debaters’ books]. These are people who wrote books defending their points of view […] they’re not out to enrage people, they’re out to figure out what’s true.
Joel Pust / U. Delaware
I think figuring out what’s true, what we have evidence for, should be the North Star of any university that’s worth its salt […] the idea that we should limit academic freedom on account of what makes people uncomfortable … if well-being is construed in the way people seem to be construing it, I wholeheartedly reject … and I invite you to do the same.
If we said we shouldn’t debate things that make people unhappy, render them feeling unsafe, or, in some sense, unwelcome, we wouldn’t have debates about abortion […] we shouldn’t have debates about Gaza because maybe that’s going to make Jewish or Palestinian students […] feel threatened or unsafe.
We shouldn’t have debates about racial discrimination because that’s going to make the people who benefitted from it feel unsafe … or the people who are alleged to have committed it feeling unsafe.
I just think there’s no end to that principle and it can’t be where a university is going to lie.
Pust noted if the debate he was introducing took place in Texas, Prof. Fuentes’ view would not be permitted. At UD for this discussion, many had wanted Bogardus’s view banned. “That kind of attitude is just poison for a university,” he declared.
While I wholeheartedly applaud Pust for his remarks as a whole, I think mentioning Texas was merely throwing progressives a bone. Certainly there have been instances of red areas overreacting to long-time progressive idiocies, but if he’s honest, Pust knows the biggest current threat to vigorous and fair debate at the academy comes from leftist students and his fellow scholars.
They’re just like Rep. Gorman and the Delaware ACLU, claiming they’re for free speech but in reality they mask their anti-First Amendment proclivities in the flowery language of oppression studies — “unsafe,” “marginalized,” “uncomfortable,” “vulnerable,” “power imbalance” — to make sure the speech is never saidin the first place.
EDITORS' CORNER
