The outbreak on antisemitism on college campus has put a new focus on academic integrity and also on viewpoint diversity. For those wondering why those issues are related, three items are worth a look.
The first is Yale President Peter Salovey's August 21, 2023, opening assembly address to the Yale College Class of 2027.
I think, too, of the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, another honorary Yale degree recipient I reference today, who expressed powerfully that "arguments are won only by giving your opponent a hearing."...
I take as my final words today a part of what Rabbi Sacks wrote on the merits of engaging with diverse perspectives. Jewish scholarship in the first century BCE, he noted, "was riven by a series of controversies between the schools of two great rabbis, Hillel and Shammai. Eventually, the views of Rabbi Hillel prevailed on most issues. The Talmud explains why: 'the disciples of Hillel were pleasant and did not take offense, and they taught the views of their opponents as well as their own; indeed they taught the views of their opponents before their own.'" He might have said, seek lux et veritas, light and truth, through audi alteram partem, listening to the other side—that is, if Rabbi Hillel spoke Latin.
This reinforces the post here from the other day on "The Talmudic Cure for Campus Ideological Conformity." It's also worth mentioning that Salovey's speech has 12 footnotes. If you look at other major Salovey speeches, a lot of them also have footnotes. None of Claudine Gay's major speeches had any footnotes. Personally I'm a fan of the hyperlink rather than the footnote, and a footnote is sort of an oddity in a speech designed to be delivered orally. But I like Salovey's approach. It's a small point, but it says something about tone-setting from the top when it comes to standards for source attribution in a scholarly community.
The second item is Jared Kushner's interview with Lex Fridman, from Monday, October 9. Question: "What's the best way to defeat hate in the world?" Kushner: "We don't do it by being on Twitter and yelling at people. We don't do it by just being critical. We do it by finding the people we disagree with, by listening to them, by asking questions, by sitting with them."
More from Kushner: "I have some degree of confidence in the things that I've studied and what I've learned, but I'm always trying to find people who disagree to sharpen my perspectives and to help me grow and to help me learn further."
And finally: "I was living on the Upper East Side in a very liberal echo chamber. I then traveled the country. I met so many people who I never would've met otherwise, on the conservative side, on the independent side, on so many different issues, I think that people benefit, if you have such a strong point of view, I would follow the John Stewart Mill marketplace of ideas and find people who disagree with you, and don't call them names, don't say they're a bad person. Say, 'I want to understand why you feel the way you do.' Let's have conversations in this country, and I think that that's probably going to be our best way to work through the issues that we have currently."
This reinforces my New York Sun column from the other day, "Make Harvard Great Again — Jared Kushner for President." Kushner isn't talking about Ivy League universities in particular, but rather about the more general issues of learning and progress.
And the third item is William Galston, writing in the Wall Street Journal, "Claudine Gay's 'My Truth' and the Truth":
John Stuart Mill famously said, "He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that." In testing the strength of an argument, the presence—and clash—of multiple views is essential. This kind of diversity is central to the purpose of the university, which is why the dominance of a single point of view in the faculty and student body is so damaging to the academic mission. If people with unpopular views are cowed into silence, everyone loses and the search for truth is impeded.
Sometimes I think "viewpoint diversity" is the wrong framework to use with the outbreak of antisemitism. Do we really want a "conversation" with supporters of the October 7 terrorist attack that featured rape, beheading, burning alive, kidnapping—as if one were discussing marginal tax rates or zoning policy? It is indeed the case, though, that on the campuses, as in some of the newspapers and radio stations, it's the scarcity of conservative and pro-Israel voices that has allowed the conversation to go so far off track and afar from the truth.
And there are implications that go far beyond Israel and antisemitism, in part because the hate-Israel chorus also hates America and hates capitalism. The stifling conformity of groupthink and its trend to mediocrity and myth, away from excellence and truth, has consequences far beyond the Israel-Hamas war.
