Dear Professor Elfenbein,
When I read your editorial, “Students don’t need faculty to communicate their political beliefs” A few months ago, I found myself confused. You seem to believe that professors have a lot of power in the classroom, but whether students agree with our views out of a desire to impress us or out of fear, students so much so that they feel they can dictate their deeply held beliefs in a lasting way. Our scoring pen. In this near-dystopian vision of how power works within the classroom, students are positioned as weak-willed receptacles for information that is motivated by grade-based fears and therefore contradicts themselves. While it is easy to submit to a set of politics, professors are in such a position. They are cast as authoritarian dictators whose judgment, even with respect, cannot be questioned.
This is not me. This is not my student. And this is not what my classroom looks like.
There’s a strange contradiction in your argument. Do you believe that students are strong and capable political thinkers in their own right, that we need to “set boundaries” with “older adults” by kicking us out of protests, or do students Do you think the professor is so sensitive and fragile that he shares his political ideas? Do they resemble the professor who has a romantic relationship with them? (Strangely, you deploy UC Berkeley’s policy on romantic relationships between students and professors to argue that political positions should not be shared with students. (I’m not sure I’m ready for that) in a world where sharing political positions should be subject to the same scrutiny as sharing a bed. )
In an argument structure, the real argument lies in the warrant (the basic beliefs on which the claim is based), which is often left unsaid. From where I sit, you vastly underestimate students’ ability to discern warrant in various “objective” truth claims. In other words, students know what your politics are, I promise. Perhaps especially since you claim to be neutral. And students who say they value your objectivity are likely simply agreeing with you.
In my argumentation classes, one of the key concepts I teach is that there is no such thing as objectivity. To introduce this idea, ask students to write a summary of a heated discussion that occurred several years ago at Hamline University over the issue of trigger warnings in the classroom. When students read their partner’s summaries, they can easily infer their classmates’ positions on the issue, even though I tell them to keep their summaries as factual as possible. Selected details, omitted details, tone, phrasing – these are symptoms of political beliefs.
We extend this idea to discussions about course syllabi. I tell them that they can “hide” their political views in a misguided attempt at objectivity, which I don’t believe in anyway, but my Politics is written all over the syllabus. This is from the works I have selected for you to read. From discussions, papers and projects I assigned, and questions I designed for class discussions, to seemingly mundane things like grade breakdowns, attendance policies, and distribution of participation points. After all, second-wave feminists and early black academics taught us that there are few acts in college life as political as the creation of a syllabus.
All this aside, if I simply disagreed with you about the place of politics in the classroom, I might have been forced to write this response. I’m still hesitant to do so, for various reasons. But your encouragement for us all to adopt political objectivity hides deeper, more insidious thinking distortions that it is important to bring to light. It has almost always been the case that people in positions of power are most likely to claim objectivity: white people, wealthy people, Westerners, men.
In other words, objectivity is one of the master’s tools. Those of us whose relationships with power are more contingent and more conditional must use those tools at our own risk. Or perhaps don’t use it at all. Instead, we need to model for our students what it looks like to destabilize the truths claimed by those in positions of power. It should be done with deep respect, but with rigor. Rather than giving students the space to disagree politically in the classroom, we should be teaching them how to disagree with those in power and how to do so successfully.
We are both deeply concerned about attacks on institutions of higher education, made even more so by last week’s election, and want to do everything we can to combat the misinformation that leads to these attacks. You can see. I also believe that we both have our students’ best interests at heart. But the only solution I can think of to the problems we face is to help my students understand me, the professor, as a fellow thinker in the world with my own experiences and beliefs. It begins. When students question what I’ve said, as they often do, I know I’m on the right track. Doing my job as best as I can means making a promise to my students, and continuing to keep that promise myself, that I will never award a grade based on my own political agreement or disagreement. means. This may seem impossible, but I consider it a must. work.
I have never felt the need to silence a right-wing student in class at the end of a semester, even though he knew I disagreed with him on some important issue. I’m sure I’m a right-winger when you tell me there’s no tracking. In fact, one of the benefits I get from being open about my beliefs is that my students can also be open about their beliefs, and whether they’re on the right or the left, it’s done in good faith. This means that you can enjoy any kind of discussion in my classroom.
After all, when I teach the elements of argumentation, poststructuralist literary theory, or Walt Whitman, I find that our classrooms are somewhere else, outside of space, outside of time, outside of history, outside of politics. Refuse to act as if you exist outside of. . This candor is one way I demonstrate my deep respect for my students, both those on the other side of the political spectrum and those on the other side. For myself, as a professional and as a thinker. To my colleagues who know that we are doing our best to fulfill the important and sometimes complex roles we play in the lives of our students. and for the organization to which I have chosen to dedicate my working life.
