Liberalism at Exeter and The Paradox of Intolerance

While a sea of red apparel and face paint floods the campus at our Big Red sports games, a different color dominates the political realm of Exeter. We live on a campus symbolically imbued with the blue of the Democratic Party and liberalism. We may be shouting “Big Red” at every school event, but the majority of us have been voting blue in past elections. The monolithic political makeup of Phillips Exeter calls into question the very notion of diversity on our campus. Can we truly be “youth from every quarter” without political diversity?Along with every social justice or liberal opinion published in The Exonian comes the invariable piece detailing the intolerance of conservative voices on campus. In 2015, Nathan Bray ’15 published “The Third Red Scare” while Thomas Clark ’14 published “Disagreement in Good Will,” calling out the school’s lack of critical discussion around issues like gay marriage. The year before that, Michael Shao ’16 published his opinion “On PC” about the censoring effect political correctness may have on unconventional opinions on campus. In 2011, one news story in The Exonian even covered the topic “Conservatives Feel Marginalized at Academy.”This phenomenon comes as no surprise. Free speech organizations like FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) have listed liberal campuses like Harvard, Brown, Columbia and Yale as some of the schools with the worst free speech ratings. Last week, The Harvard Crimson published its own version of the story in a piece titled, “The Elephant in the Room: Conservatives at Harvard,” in which the author follows the stories of conservatives and their journeys in navigating Harvard’s liberal campus (which the piece notes, was once called the “Kremlin on the Charles”). The piece profiles students of Harvard’s conservative community, from its socially-liberal yet fiscally-conservative to its even more marginalized socially-conservative individuals. Center-right students find themselves struggling to publicly identify themselves as “conservative” without attaching the stereotype that liberals hold of them as bigoted white men. Socially-conservative students find it even harder to voice their opinions on campus without facing ridicule from liberal peers and professors.Many Exonians have been comparing this suppression of conservative speech on Harvard’s liberal campus to the environment here at Exeter. However, do the arguments surrounding free speech really apply to Exeter’s campus? According to “Conservatives Feel Marginalized at Academy,” in October 2008, 88 percent of faculty and 71 percent of students identified as supporters of then-candidate Barack Obama. Stephen Cobbe ‘11, the Republican Club co-head at the time, argued, “Conservatives, like any minority group, are marginalized to a degree simply because they are a minority… But it is harder to defend your points as a conservative because there are fewer voices in the classroom who are willing to support you, a fact of any minority group.”But some conservatives feel that their marginalization goes beyond having little peer support; their marginalization has come to intolerance. In Clark’s article “Disagreement in Good Will,” he argues, “Dissenters [of Exeter’s dominant liberalism] risk being lumped together with racists. Yes, free expression of ideas sometimes creates conflict and discomfort, as the Charlie Hebdo attacks showed us. However, when a place of learning cannot tolerate even respectful, non-provocative expression that goes against the grain of the majority opinion, it makes me deeply concerned for Exeter’s future as an elite academic institution.” Clark points to highly educated members of Princeton’s student body who freely discuss gay marriage and a respected Rhodes scholar who argued against it without even appealing to religion. Clark questions why such detached, academic debates can not occur on Exeter’s own campus. In Bray’s piece “The Third Red Scare,” he writes that Exonian liberals will not be satisfied “until every person who makes a lewd joke, raunchy statement or politically daring maneuver is locked up and thrown away in the public-shaming jail.” He continues, “Is this multi-culturalism? Is this how to promote diversity? Absolutely not—in fact it is the exact negation of diversity.”The argument behind many outspoken socially-conservative students on campus is that they feel they are not able to say what is on their minds for fear of being branded a racist, misogynist or bigot by our school’s “frightening” liberals. But it’s important to note the fact that a variety of people exist under the umbrella term “conservative,” and perhaps even more imperative to distinguish socially-liberal, fiscally-conservative students and those who are socially-conservative. A distinction must be made between conservatives asking for more political diversity and social conservatives using their title of “conservative” to preach intolerant beliefs. While liberal politics has certainly benefitted my family (my parents were finally insured through ObamaCare a couple of years ago), I can acknowledge that liberal rhetoric is not steadfast—what political ideology is? But there’s a difference between discussing the national debt and the validity of gender identity. Yet conservatives and intellectuals demanding free speech on campus often ask for the riddance of political correctness and blind tolerance in exchange for more academic political debates. However, to deem the ability to speak out against mainstream social-liberalism as a primary concern of conservatives on campus largely detracts away from the conservative political agenda. If anything, it does a disservice to the far more common center-right conservatives who exist on school campuses.While issues such as the national debt, the execution of ObamaCare, and methods of immigration reform can perhaps be put in a more academic light, it is difficult to see why some Exonian conservatives would want to debate issues such as the validity of gender identity or marriage equality. Victoria Huit ’15 addresses this concern in her response to Clark’s article. In “Good Will Doesn’t Matter,” Huit indicates how she gave a speech at a prior year’s GSA assembly urging students to be “tolerant of the intolerant.” But she made a distinct point that she cannot discuss matters like gay marriage in a purely academic sense as she has a strong emotional attachment to the issue. Huit writes, “I wish that we did not live in a world where my rights were up for debate, but we do, and so my only option is to do my best at engaging in said debate.” While conservatives on campus deem themselves as a “minority,” it’s hard enough for students with marginalized identities (any students who are not cis-gender, straight, white, wealthy, or male) to grapple with their identities in a historically white, male, wealthy prep school at such a young age in an independent environment. It’s even harder when their rights and identities are constantly put in the spotlight to academically pick apart by students calling for “intellectual” discussions. More discussion about social justice needs to occur on campus, but it should be based on empathy and understanding rather than detached debates about the validity of social justice in our society. Apart from that, I do think the world needs more enlightened discussions surrounding issues like gay marriage or gender identity to understand the rhetoric behind both sides of the issue. But there is a time and place for everything, and Exeter is neither. Students spend their formative years at the Academy discovering who they are and what place they hold in this new elite world. Academic discussions that question their fundamental identities place their emotional developments on a delicate thread. Conservatives may argue that they feel that their conservative beliefs are also constantly questioned through criticisms of the liberal community, but a fundamental difference of equality exists in this statement. Socially-conservative individuals often hold intolerant beliefs that deny rights to certain groups. Invalidating these beliefs does not rid them of any rights; however, upholding these beliefs denies rights to others. If we continue to tolerate opinions, for example, that condemn the concept of gender fluidity, we do more harm to the teenager whose fundamental identities and rights are contingent upon the acceptance of their gender. If we choose to socially discriminate against the opinion condemning gender fluidity, it does little to affect the rights of the intolerant individual.This concept (as Huit mentioned, “tolerating the intolerant”) is commonly referred to as the paradox of intolerance. How should “tolerant” social justice individuals react towards the intolerant who cry out for more free speech? The most quoted work on this matter is Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper writes, “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” He then clarifies that we must obviously not “suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion…. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument….We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”Conservatives’ arguments are somewhat correct in that free speech at the Academy is limited through the school’s strict rules about hate speech. But as I mentioned before, we censor hate speech on campus and in publications like The Exonian because we are in our formative years at the Academy; no student deserves to have their identity or rights questioned. But even the censorship of hate speech has its limits. Students are still able to make those “lewd jokes, raunchy statements, or politically daring maneuvers” that Bray asks for without facing major punishment. For those who espouse intolerant beliefs, however, free speech also allows tolerant students (often labelled as the liberals on campus) to socially discriminate against offensive or insensitive opinions. Therefore, the argument of social-conservatives that they do not have free speech on campus is untenable. Bray questions why liberals are so socially discriminating towards those who make those daring “lewd jokes,” but they in fact, liberals are just that: socially discriminating, which is different from censorship. Free speech does not entail the equality of respect when appraising different opinions. Free speech allows us to arbitrate opinions and speak out against opinions we dislike. Of course, not all conservatives on campus ask for free speech just to be able to openly preach their intolerant beliefs. I acknowledge that I have perhaps only heard the extremists of the conservative side as, with any extremists, they are the most vociferous. It has been difficult for me to separate bigotry from the politically-conservative part of students as I’ve too often seen them hand in hand. It’s hard to take Trump seriously if he is making derogatory statements towards racial minorities. Similarly, it’s hard to listen to the political opinions of conservatives on campus if they are simultaneously invalidating the experience of its minority students.This is not to say liberal chauvinists do not exist on campus as well. I know some social justice students who take political correctness to a degree that stifles any discussion about sensitive topics. When I was at an affinity group conference last year, the guest speaker Rosetta Lee (also the keynote speaker of the AISNE student of color conference last spring) shocked us all when she said she didn’t like political correctness. When students asked why, she said it often gets in the way of open discussion which inadvertently gets in the way of understanding. Political correctness is an ideal that can only achieved if both parties meet halfway in respecting one another’s feelings while trusting one another’s intentions. Thus, it’s not an easy solution to ask for either the abolition of political correctness or its blind support; it’s a delicate balance that students need to find through dialogue, which can be uncomfortable on both sides. Some liberals have also told me that conservatives on campus are “just wrong” or “narrow-minded” when asked to see the other side of the issue. Such liberals often live in an environment cushioned by according opinions. They often lack the intellectual rhetoric and evidence to back up their beliefs. Meanwhile, it seems as though many conservative students who must constantly defend themselves are skillfully well-read and articulate in their views. I know liberals who are steadfast in their political opinions who would not hold up in a debate with a conservative at our school.Thus, political conservatism—not necessarily social conservatism—is a much needed voice around the political dinner table, and I commend groups like Republican Club for holding nuanced political discussions about policy and fiscal matters. In September, President Obama said, “I’ve heard of some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative…. Anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with them, but you shouldn’t silence them by saying you can’t come because I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.” It’s important for liberals to know that there is no legitimacy without opposition. We need opposing political views for fruitful discussion and understanding. Be wary of falling into a political consensus in which you lack the rhetorical tools to defend your ideology.At the same time, remember that Exeter is not just a school for dispassionate academic debates; Exeter is a home for teenagers during their most formative years of discovering their identities. Don’t let Exeter completely intellectualize you—the Harkness table invites the understanding of different backgrounds just as much as it invites academic debate.