FLAT-EARTH SYNDROME

 

 

 

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

       Voltaire

 

In the old film Nicholas and Alexandra, Kerensky – newly come to power – ponders what to do about the Bolsheviks.  Kerensky has fought for freedom of speech.  Can he allow freedom of speech to the Bolsheviks, when their aim is to abolish freedom of speech?

Locke, when arguing for religious toleration, felt unable to extend this to Catholics.  The Catholics, in his view, would have abolished religious toleration if religious toleration allowed them to regain their former religious status. 

In the interests of freedom of information, do you have a duty to reveal your battle plan to the enemy general?   In the interests of honesty, should you reveal the most intimate details of your private life on television?  What are the limits of national security and personal privacy?

Toleration cannot afford to tolerate intolerance, or it will simply be supplanted by its opposite.  Everyone in power has to operate some form of censorship as a matter of survival.   Anyone who doesn’t soon ceases to be in power.   The quickest way to get rid of pacifism is to allow it; whereupon you will be defeated by a totalitarian neighbour that forbids pacifism. Hitler banned pacifism in pre-war Germany, but funded it in Britain.

And so on.   This conflict between what is desirable and what is actually possible is never free from public life. 

 

Different people are influenced in different ways by what they see or read.  That is why there is a TV watershed, and age limits in the cinema.  Does the same sort of distinction apply when criteria other than age limits are involved?  Should those who make a living from the traffic of ideas have access to material that might be damaging to others?   

When I was still at school, my concept of a university was of a place where the free interchange of thought was possible without the sort of constraints and strictures indicated above; just as you can say things within the House of Commons that you would not be allowed to say outside.  That was what academic freedom meant. 

My heroes were Voltaire, for supporting the right of others to hold opinions at variance with his own; and Socrates, for his willingness to take an idea and examine its implications.   I was aware, even at that stage of my life, that ideas could be hazardous to your health.  Voltaire said what he thought, and earned himself a spell in the Bastille for his pains; although he had not, in fact, written the particular work for which he was imprisoned.  (He probably would have written it, if he had had the opportunity).  Socrates’ insistence on following things through to their conclusions led him to a cup of hemlock, but also laid the basis for the Western tradition of free inquiry.

            My first sense that change was in the twentieth-century intellectual wind – that the sort of restrictions imposed by society on speaking your mind were now also within the groves of academe – occurred while university was still a future prospect for me.  It was a news item on television.  A politician, addressing a university audience, was booed and jeered until he abandoned his attempts to speak. 

            I had missed the beginning of the episode, and I only found out later that the politician was a man called Enoch Powell, and the venue was the University of Essex.  Powell had apparently made a controversial speech a short time before, and it was to this that the students were objecting.

            But it all seemed a very far cry from Socrates, or Voltaire.  Socrates would have listened with interest, and, if there was error, would have tried to pinpoint where that error lay.  Voltaire, likewise, would have listened, and would then have provided rational counter-argument had he considered it appropriate.  

            While at university, I read a book relatively new at the time:  The Universities, by V H H Green.  From this it was clear that the Essex episode, far from being an isolated incident, was becoming a recognized feature of academic discourse.  The way to treat an unpopular view was to deny it a platform or, failing that, to shout it down: a cure, Green noted, “more repellent than the disease”. 

            Back then, in the 70s, it was still the infancy of the phenomenon: when the barbarians at the gates had barely found their way inside the academy. Since then, the invasion has come to full maturity: as evidenced in 2005 in the case of Harvard President, Larry Summers. 

The controversy happened at a closed faculty symposium on women in science, Questioned on why there were not more women in tenured science positions at Harvard, Summers suggested, among other points, that there might be “different availability of aptitude at the high end”.  During his remarks, Nancy Hopkins – a biology professor at MIT  – left the room and reported Summers to the Boston Globe.  Her justification  for not staying to hear the conclusion of the arguments: was, “I would’ve either blacked out or thrown up”.

In the resultant sound and fury, Summers offered a $50 million ‘diversity program’ to promote more women to  higher positions.  Nothing wrong with that, except for the ominous message that hysterical reaction produces a result that argument cannot.  In an academic context, if Summers was wrong in his opinions, then surely he should have been refuted with convincing counter-evidence?  As it was, Nancy Hopkins’ behaviour could be said to have reinforced Summers’ point about “different socialization patterns”.  As Harvard academic Stephan Thernstrom expressed it:        “If hearing ideas that she deeply disagrees with makes her physically ill, I suggest that Professor Hopkins’s temperament is ill suited for academic life, the life-blood of which is free enquiry and unfettered debate.”

A minority opinion, however, in important tranches of the modern university. 

 

Why exactly did the academic sea change happen?  Since it is the worldviews evolved in the 60s that currently control the social mindset of the West, that is the place to start the search. Crucial in this context would appear to be Herbert Marcuse’s 1965 essay ‘Repressive Tolerance’. 

            Marcuse, formerly of the Marxist Frankfurt School, argued the need to suppress conservative speech and cultural access because conservatives represent the rule of a repressive and dominant social class.  “Revolutionary tolerance” could not be neutral towards rival viewpoints.  The need to be “partisan” would justify not appointing staff with the wrong social, religious or political views, and would make the exclusion of conservative texts from reading lists a necessary duty.

            An obvious difficulty with this is the designation of the Right as the dominant class.  Suppose  Marcuse’s strategies are successful – as they have been in many areas of academia – and the Left achieves control.   Is the Right still to be excluded if it ceases to be the dominant class?  If so, doesn’t that make the Left repressive in its turn?

            And where would it stop?  Would Pythagoras’ theorem of the square of the hypotenuse become untrue, or have to be suppressed, if Pythagoras turned out to have been a political conservative; or would the suppression apply only to his politics?  Even then, shouldn’t the perceived truth or otherwise of the opinion be the criterion, rather than its source? 

Defining the limits of “repressive tolerance” is like the difficulty in defining “reasonable force” when a teacher restrains a violent child.  One person’s ‘reasonable force’ is another person’s ‘assault’: especially if there is money to be made from suing. 

The danger of repressive tolerance is that it can so easily turn into repressive intolerance in which all views you happen to disagree with are simply excluded. 

To do that with impunity, you have to be certain that you have the full truth.  Can you be sure?  How does Political Correctness know that it is correct?  It knows it is correct because Political Correctness says it is.   But that’s like you being the one who writes a reference about you when you go for a job interview.  Someone outside the loop must be the one to make the judgement.

 

I remember some years ago looking at the corrugated trunks of redwood trees in Yosemite.  At one time, it was feared that annual forest fires must harm these ancient giants, and fire breaks were created to protect them. 

            As a result, the trees ailed: falling prey to insects and  diseases  that the flames had killed off.  They had thrived on the fires.  Exposed to them once more, they regained their health.

            In the same sort of way – or so it seems to me – truth is refined in the furnace of conflicting views.  Try to cosset it, and truth dies.

 

If physical muscle is to develop it needs resistance.   This applies no less to mental muscle.  If you want to develop intellectually, find intellectual enemies and cherish them. 

 

Let us conclude with an imaginary scenario to highlight the problem caused by departure from the old academic ideal of teaching how to think rather than what to think. 

            You know with certainty that the world is round like a plate.  But then along come interlopers who think that  it is round like a ball. 

            If you are Socrates, you consider the merits of this new argument; indeed, if you find it convincing you adopt it in preference to the view of the world you currently hold.

            If you are Voltaire, you listen to the argument; and then demolish the absurdity of it with mordant wit. 

            If you are a modern academic totalitarian, you deny the heretics  a platform, or  – if they succeed in finding one – you turn off their microphones.  You ensure that their views may not be published, and you deny them access to research funding. 

            In doing this, you may have the high motive of wishing to protect the populace from falsehood.

            But may it be, alternatively, that you are not certain of the truth of your own viewpoint, and  wish, above all, to avoid its exposure to a  rational alternative?