Blog Post #1, Menaldo on Higher Education & Democracy
Democracy is a miracle. Its practitioners sometimes need to call upon a superhuman ability to transcend their self interest and self regard, prejudices, and desire to suppress things they don’t like. Democracy only works if we tolerate dissent, unpopular opinions, speaking truth to power, and whistle blowers. That, and affording those accused of wrongdoing due process. It is not only the case that these rights and habits are intrinsically good, but are instrumentally valuable as well.
Democracy therefore requires a leap of faith: we have to believe that, if we allow others to speak freely, organize, vote, protest, contest political office, and hold power, that they will do the same in return: they won’t use their freedoms and power to tilt the playing field in their favor, repress our freedoms, or otherwise harm us. We must also believe that justice will prevail even when we give the benefit of the doubt to those accused of doing bad things.
Democracy rests on trust. We must trust that others are worthy of the rights that make democracy work. And we must believe that others will respect our rights just as we respect theirs. Trust must be strong enough to compel us to defend others’ ability to enjoy democratic rights. Even when we strongly disagree with them, and even if doing so gives them power and platforms to challenge our interests and values.
Sometimes, doing all this seems too difficult. It is hard because our fellow citizens are flawed human beings who may anger us, make us afraid, say things we strongly disagree with and, when exercising power, do things that we believe are bad, wrong, or dangerous. And, they might come to believe the same thing about us, and fear the same things about us.
Yet the surest way to erode the trust that makes democracy work is to threaten each other’s basic freedoms. Because that makes its fundamental leap of faith impossible: if I believe you will use your rights to speak, organize, vote, protest, contest political office, and hold power to persecute me and make it harder for me to enjoy my rights, I will stop treating rights as rights. I will instead view them as privileges worthy of the few who think, look, and act the correct way: just like me. “Rights” will therefore become things to be conquered and monopolized as a spoil.
Perhaps I will convince myself that I am justified in doing this. I may come to believe that your opinions and interests are so wrong or dangerous that they make you unworthy of exercising the same rights as me. That you are too stupid or hateful to fully deserve them. And you will come to believe the same about me. We will tell ourselves that it is no longer necessary for us to give each other the benefit of the doubt, and that it’s okay to deprive each other of basic freedoms.
Democracy will then be replaced by a cynical will to power. The miracle that is seeing ourselves as trustees of a system that is greater than us and our narrow self interest and opinions, which treats citizens as equal partners who are worthy of exercising rights, contesting power, and holding office, will die.
The good news is that abusing political power to protect my rights and abrogate yours, even in the interest of what I believe to be the common good, is wrongheaded. Because I am a flawed human being myself, I may be mistaken about what the common good actually is. And, by the time I’ve deprived you of your rights, it may be too late: there may be nobody left to point out my blind spots and check my worst impulses.
The really good news is that we can use basic freedoms to oppose policies we don’t like or don’t believe in. This should help reduce our fear, as any political advantage our “adversaries” might accrue by exercising rights will be temporary; we ourselves will also be able to translate the ability to think, speak, assemble, vote, protest, and run for office into the power to influence social life. One point of view will balance another and one faction will check the other. A cliche, perhaps. But a true one indeed.
We must therefore fight to protect those who we disagree with and do everything we can to allow them to think, say, and act in ways we don’t like. Because doing so is not only the right thing to do, but it’s smart: it’s what allows us to think, say, and act without looking over our shoulder or cowering in fear.
For this reason, it is critical for us to respect whistle blowers, analysts, scientists, dissenters, critics, satirists, cynics, and gadflies of all types. They are the antibodies that strengthen democracy because they exercise its freedoms so fully. That means we must refrain from indulging our instinct to repress things we don’t like and to attribute bad intentions to those who may disagree with us. We must even hold out the possibility that they may be right and we may be wrong.
In a democratic society, the university is therefore a very special place. It is where whistle blowers, analysts, scientists, dissenters, critics, satirists, cynics, and gadflies of all types reside. Its administration, faculty, and students must do everything in their power to uphold basic freedoms. There is a lot more riding on them doing that than simply their self interest, or even their school’s best interests: They are helping to keep the democratic miracle alive.
Besides being an engine of discovery and purveyor of knowledge, the university should be the place where unpopular ideas are safe, so long as they are rooted in facts, logic, and evidence. Indeed, because the university’s citizens obtain so many privileges from their society, including the opportunity to indulge the life of the mind, they have a responsibility to give back to it in the best way they know how: by learning, teaching, speaking, debating, dissenting, disagreeing, and seeking consensus in good faith, whilst acknowledging its limits. Professors and students are therefore obligated to defend free speech and academic freedom and they can start by exercising it fully.
