For Full, Free Speech in Harkness

By: Samuel Gallagher

It’s 10:45 am on a calm Tuesday morning. The initial grogginess you felt after giving into your alarm clock at 7:30 has finally passed; Assembly was interesting, and you’ve had a cup of coffee or tea or a bagel or maybe nothing at all. Regardless, you feel fine—maybe even good. 

You walk into your humanities class after having done just enough of the homework to get by. You participate just enough in a discussion on race, love and mental health to get by. As you leave, you take about five seconds to think back on the conversation: what you said and what you didn’t, what others said, what that one guy said three times in three different ways. 

You feel content. 

Everyone got along just fine, talked just fine and walked out feeling just fine, if not thinking about the hour remaining until lunch. No one got into a debate. Maybe, you spotted a subtle eye roll, but you move on and forget, only remembering the fact that your voice cracked while telling your friend the bare minimum about your morning during the lunch that came and went just fine too.

What you don’t realize is that you failed. 

In that half-second of thought, you may, or may not, have noticed that no one disagreed because no one bothered to. When you looked at that complex passage and decided to sum it up as “I think he was reflecting on his identity” without any other thought, you just killed free speech. 

It’s not your fault; no one is going to disagree with you, and there’s a good chance that you were right. Now, the class can acknowledge that broad idea, move on and feel good about themselves for having tackled the issue of “identity.” Yet, you’ve failed, because there might’ve been someone in that class who thought that the passage had nothing to do with identity or that the character’s identity affected him in a negative way or that, perhaps, identity factored into the passage in an unconventional way. All you had to do was press the matter a little, put in the effort, say something unique.

The fact is, people at the table have different thoughts and opinions and viewpoints—some are insightful and some may sting, but they all still offer something. The ease with which we kill dissent to make life easier for ourselves in the classroom, or simply reserve that dissent for the hallways afterward, destroys the whole point of Harkness.

We walk in every day with a preconception of what is right. We have a picture, typically, of what something means or could mean or has meant, and we dream about how our idea will get that nice nod from the teacher which tells us that we’re on the right track. But we’re not—we’re on the same track that everyone else is on, and we’re all too lazy to get off. All we do is sit patiently for about ten minutes while the class circles around one idea like fruit flies buzzing around a fresh apple, pretty but superficial, until someone swats us out of the sky by saying the obvious. Then, we move on. 

We praise the swatter, vanquisher of evil, but if they had the means to take out the flies, then they should have done it while they were larvae. They should not have let nothingness fester until it became a noticeable bother. Knives sharpen knives, and if we don’t bring fresh, imaginative, or even debatable ideas to the table, then what are we doing if not endlessly circling? 

The books we read and the poems we delve into have depths of meaning just waiting for us to reach them. This is the potential of Harkness: growth through dissent and meaningful conversation, coupled with mutual respect that allows us to explore the world more than we could on our own. 

So how do we get there? To start, when you sit down at 10:46, keep your mind open and your ears perked. Don’t accept the status quo. Listen earnestly and bolster yourself and others, or challenge those points that should be looked at in greater detail. You must take the first step, and through that, others will forge their own paths as well. 

Harkness is a forest with many trails and no set destination. It allows us the freedom to wander crossways and make our own map to discern meaning. Work, think and create new things to bring to the table, and don’t be afraid to interact with others as well. If we end our sheep-like acceptance of only one, basic explanation for a complicated issue, we can reach new heights and maybe get a little closer to the open-ended, liberating dream of Harkness.