The Dialogue About Dialogue, Or Why It Makes You Feel “Unsafe” (Update)

At Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein asked a good question:

Where and when did this “makes me feel unsafe” thing start?

Sorry for being so loud about it, but like asking for clear definitions of misused words, it’s a question that needs asking.

But it’s such a common complaint that one hears it from across the political spectrum these days, in a loud chorus of whining victimhood, from gay students who object to proponents of traditional marriage, and from Christian students who object to nondiscrimination rules meant to protect gays; from Muslim students objecting to pro-Israel speakers, and from Jewish students objecting to anti-Israel posters. Just today I learned (via Hans Bader) that Oberlin, supposedly one of the great liberal arts colleges in the world, has been in a tizzy because of a speech by the rather mainstream conservative feminist Christina Hoff Summers, which supposedly made students feel “unsafe” well in advance. And so on.

In no examples that I have seen has there been any actual threat or prospect of violence against the students complaining that they feel “unsafe.”

That’s the problem when words, in this case “unsafe,” are used untethered to definition. David, mistakenly but understandably, attributes meaning to “unsafe,” as in a threat of harm from violence, when the only “violence” (another word used without connection to any viable definition) it does is to the sanctity of ideology unmolested by other views.  And, indeed, that’s what makes students feel unsafe.

Almost daily, a student newspaper from some college or university has explained, prefaced with the requisite caveat that they “love free speech, but,” why ideas that conflict with their beliefs are evil and must be silenced.  By and large, team members applauded their sensitivity and depth of understanding, or ridiculed their blind irrationality muddled in empty rhetoric.

Having read many of these editorials and op-eds, I’ve struggled to try to come up with an understanding of how reason has gone so horribly awry, and how otherwise bright and well-intended students have blindly leaped into the abyss.  There are moments I think I’ve come to grips with the flaws, but then it’s gone in a flash of logic.

Then I read an op-ed by Stanford sophomore Mysia Anderson, which is very well written and, given its genre, clearly states her position.

During last Thursday’s Faculty Senate meeting, Provost John Etchemendy shared a prepared statement about the importance of dialogue to divisive campus issues. He stated, “The essential feature of dialogue is not monologue times two. The essential feature of dialogue is not speaking but listening, listening with respect and then expressing, in turn, one’s own view with clarity, rather than volume.”

Etchemendy is right about his definition and insight into the parameters of true dialogue. It takes discussion and differing opinions. There are often no answers, and it is understandable if there is a disagreement because of a difference in ideologies or priorities. Dialogue is important for academic discussion and personal and communal growth.

But Etchemendy fails to acknowledge where dialogue falls short.

Sure, it was overly touchy-feely and conditional, none of which reflects the nature of true dialogue, which is what happens naturally, without resort to Robert’s Rules of Talking as an overlay to distinguish acceptable speech based on pleasing other people’s sensibilities, but this is how academics pretend the world happens. Let it go.

When two dissenting groups or people engage in dialogue, the conversation is not divorced from the framework of power and privilege in which it takes place. Each group or individual comes in with its own privileges and marginalities. There is always a power struggle. There is always an imbalance of who will actually be valued and heard.

There it is. Did you see it?  Dialogue “is not divorced from the framework of power and privilege.”  It’s not two people talking. It’s not that the person with the better position prevails.   It’s a power struggle, “always an imbalance of who will actually be valued and heard.”

One might think that this means, the more powerful person can ignore the sound reasons of the less powerful person, and indeed, I suspect that’s what Anderson believes it to be. But it’s not.

The stakes are high for people who are screaming for their voices to be heard; dialogue does not communicate urgency. Dialogue is unfair to require of everyone, especially if they feel disempowered by the entity or person with whom they are engaging in dialogue.

By dint of this power imbalance, the less powerful may not win the day. If they feel really, really strongly about something, this makes it unfair as they deserve to get their way regardless because they “feel disempowered.”  Why engage in dialogue if you aren’t going to get your way?

Dialogue is fine when there is no urgency and people are ready to listen. The organizations involved in these coalitions have been in conversation and have been trying dialogue for years. Etchemendy’s comments prove that the university administration is out of touch with the conversations that have already been happening on campus and the struggle for justice worldwide. We have already transcended dialogue, and we’re ready for change.

When they’re ready for change, there is no room for dialogue, as they have already decided the outcome of dialogue, and any denial of change is due to the power imbalance. Because they cannot be wrong.

When someone like Christina Hoff Sommers goes to speak at a school like Oberlin, students feel unsafe.  Sommers isn’t physically imposing. She didn’t come bearing weapons.  She has never, to my knowledge, struck anyone who disagreed with her.  But she is, without question, the personification of Mysia Anderson’s power imbalance.

Christina Hoff Sommers came armed with facts, sound statistics and logic.  She was privileged by facts. She was powerful by statistics. She was powerful by logic.  It was an unfair fight.  Mysia Anderson made me understand the problem, that feeling unsafe is when the power of reason overcomes the feelings of justice that are as deeply held as any religion that defies proof.

To answer David Bernstein’s question, this “makes me feel unsafe” thing happened when belief systems failed to prevent those who didn’t share them from engaging in dialogue that ripped the comfort of blind certainty from their religion.  There is nothing that makes a person feel more unsafe than having the emptiness of their ideology revealed.  Rational dialogue cuts more deeply than any knife, and disagreement plunges that knife not into their heart, but into their soul.

Update:  Via Turk, this works on so many levels:

 

11 thoughts on “The Dialogue About Dialogue, Or Why It Makes You Feel “Unsafe” (Update)

  1. David M.

    So what Anderson describes is a Fabian strategy to fight logic. Wage a righteous war of attrition against the reasoning unbelievers. Maybe Sommers isn’t too far wrong when she compares these guys to cultists.

    1. SHG Post author

      My preference is true believers, but belief is the coin of religion and leaves no room for thought.

  2. LTMG

    My education is in engineering and business. With ample time in my retirement, I’m considering auditing liberal arts courses at a nearby private college. I’d be in a classroom with students who are 20 +/- and an instructor in the 30s or 40s, maybe older. During class discussion the generational divide would soon be obvious. I can easily imagine that my comments during discussion and the intensity with which I might deliver them could drive snowflakes to seek shelter in what they call a safe place. “So what if you feel unsafe. There is no safe place you can find since you carry your thin skin with you.”, I’d throw at them as they scuttled out the door.

    1. SHG Post author

      No matter what you say, it won’t change their certainty that you are wrong. But then, you are privileged and powerful, so that justifies whatever rationalization is needed (or if any rationalization is needed) to shun you.

  3. Alex Bunin

    One man’s uncomfortable dialogue is another man’s introduction to primitive dentistry.

  4. Bartleby the Scrivener

    article doubleplusungood; refs ‘marketplace of ideas’, reason, free speech, other unorthodoxy.
    christina hoff summers thoughtcriminal in joycamp

    rewrite fullwise prolefeed upsub antefile

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