Frank Furedi's What's Happened To The University?

The following are extracts (for review purposes) from What's Happened To The University? A sociological exploration of its infantilisation, Frank Furedi, 2016-Oct:

Introduction

Socialisation through validation

"[A]s early as 1979[,] the American sociologist Alvin Gouldner...drew attention to the difficulties...parents faced in...carrying out...the task of socialising their children, stating that 'parental, particularly paternal, authority is increasingly vulnerable[,] and is thus less able to insist that children respect societal or political authority outside [of] the home.' He claimed that teachers in higher education were increasingly involved in socialising their students into its [own] values....

"For some time now it has been evident that parents and schools have been struggling with the transmission of values and rules of behaviour to young people. In part, this problem was caused by the lack [of] confidence of older generations in the values into which [they were] socialised by their parents. More broadly, Western society has become estranged from the values that it once held dear, and has found it difficult to provide its adult members with a compelling narrative for socialisation....

"Lack of clarity about the transmission of values has led to a search for alternatives.

"[T]here has been a perceptible shift from instilling values[, over] to the provision of validation. The project of affirming children and raising their self-esteem has been actively promoted by parents as well as [by] schools. This emphasis on validation has run in tandem with the custom of a risk-averse regime of childrearing. The (unintended) consequence of this has been...to extend the phase of dependence of young people on adult society. The extension of the phase of dependence is reinforced by the considerable difficulties that society has in providing young people with a persuasive account of what it means to be an adult." – pp. 5–6

The return of in loco parentis

"[M]ental fragility, and [a] disposition to emotional pain, often become...integral to the ways in which some students make sense of their identity. It is how they have been socialised to perceive themselves....

"Advocates of the etiquette of paternalism...see themselves as...'aware', 'respectful'[,] and emotionally and morally attuned individuals. They perceive themselves as 'enlightened' in contrast to their opponents...who, they claim, are steeped in outdated, prejudiced traditional values. Yet if there is an age-old[,] traditional value, it is that of paternalism." – p. 9

The deification of safety

"Unlike its censorious ancestors, [t]he trigger-warning crusade...is not particularly interested in the content of the literary text: its entire focus is about the potential effect that a book may have on an individual. This speaks to a narcissistic culture, in which the affirmation of 'my feelings' is seen as [a] sufficient reason to reorganise course content. The subordination of literary content to the arbitrary emotional reactions of students is likely to have a chilling impact on the quality of campus life....

"In contrast to the fragile child in need of trigger warnings, the English revolutionary poet Milton posited the ideal of the fit reader. He believed that readers 'possessed a fundamental capacity to judge, endowing them with importance and dignity'." – p. 12

Entitlement for validation

"In wider society and in higher education, the demand for recognition serves as the central motif for the politicisation of identity. That is why demands for trigger warnings or safe spaces to protect students from emotional damage are frequently coupled with calls to recognise and affirm the cultural identity of those asking for them. [T]he call for trigger warnings is as much a demand for the validation of a student's identity as [it is a demand] for a health warning....

"Students who demand to be validated are not simply asking it for their individual selves but [rather] for the culture or the lifestyle with which they identify. The individual psychological need for an identity is sublimated through culture and lifestyle." – pp. 12–3

The drivers of the paternalistic etiquette in higher education

"Libertarian paternalism is...wedded to the belief that people cannot be relied on to make important decisions concerning their future. [C]ontinually[, c]ommentators argue that...individuals lack the capacity for autonomous action. Often, people are portrayed as unwitting victims of the media, powerless to resist its subliminal messages—so they are kindly offered therapeutic censorship....

"The inference conveyed by this negative assessment of people's mental capacities is that because citizens cannot exercise independent judgment, they require someone else to do it for them....Because it assumes that people lack the moral resources to know what [is] in their best interest, paternalism infantilises its targets....

Paternalistic attitudes that are current throughout society have subjected universities to their influence.

"[T]he present-day mood of illiberalism is not underpinned by a self-conscious political project. The current issues raised on campuses tend to be not political but prepolitical, and they often...refer to conditions that are psychological. There is an important shift from the domain of ideas to that of emotions when people state...'I am offended' instead of 'I disagree'." – pp. 14–5

Chapter 1: The weaponisation of emotions

"[T]herapy culture has come to exercise [a] powerful authority...over higher education[.]" – p. 17

Chapter 2: The harms of the academy

"The current zeitgeist[, a] culture of fear[,] has as its premise the belief that humanity faces dangers that are hitherto unparalleled." – p. 36

Chapter 3: Culture war

"In the 1960s and early 1970s, activists tended to identify themselves through...the social causes they fought for....But today, political affiliations have receded to the background and cultural, religious, sexual, gender or lifestyle-related identities have come [to] the fore." – p. 53

Chapter 4: Safe space: a quarantine against judgment

A crusade against critical thinking

"[T]he educationalist Robert Boostrom...has pointed out that from 'Plato through Rousseau to Dewey', the education of students has led to the painful experience of 'giving up a former condition in favour of a new way of seeing things'. He asks, 'being interrogated by Socrates would evoke many feelings, but would a feeling of safety be among them?'

"[W]hat is probably the greatest shortcoming of the educational practice...of safe[-]space policy [is] that it runs directly against the grain of critical thinking." – p. 78

Chapter 5: Verbal purification: the diseasing of free speech

Loss of cultural valuation for free speech

"The task of protecting the individual from psychological pain is perceived as logically prior to upholding the right to free speech....

"It is now an article of faith on campuses that speakers who espouse allegedly racist, misogynist or homophobic views should not be allowed to speak....

"Those who are concerned about state intervention into public debate are looked upon as having an old-fashioned and irrelevant obsession. One critic notes that 'free speech advocacy is steeped in the historical context' and that, therefore, the First Amendment is 'a direct expression' of the historical 'fear of state power'. His implicit conclusion is that it is therefore no big deal and writes with apparent puzzlement that for 'First Amendment absolutists, state power is inherently suspect.'...

"As [the] free speech advocate Steven Gey...points out, what 'most offends critical race theorists' is the

• presumption that the intellectual 'consumers' in the market place are free actors, capable of intelligently and fairly considering competing political ideas, policy proposals and value systems before forming conclusions of their own about the direction in which the country and its government should move.

"In this model, mental enslavement trumps the capacity for autonomy. The inference conveyed by this assessment of people's mental capacities is that because citizens cannot exercise independent judgment, they require someone else to do it for them." – pp. 102–104

Chapter 6: Microaggression: the disciplining of manners and thought

"Those accused of committing an act of microaggression are not simply condemned for their words but also for the hidden meaning and intent that might lurk beneath their remarks. The concept of microaggression provides a narrative that helps [to] interpret the ontological insecurity faced by an individual as the outcome of other people's acts of bias and injustice....

"The term 'microaggression' is associated with the publications of counselling psychologist Derald Wing Sue....

"People accused of this misdemeanour...are indicted for their unconscious thoughts." – p. 107

Chapter 7: The quest for a new etiquette

Bypassing moral sensibilities

"Like the promoters of verbal purification, advocates of the theory of microaggression are engaged in constant moralising but [again] in a form that lacks a foundation in a system of morality....

"Through the use of idioms of vagueness, the commanding rhetoric of higher education avoids engaging explicitly with the principles of right and wrong and the system of values that underpin morality. Instead of cultivating its own positive antitraditionalist morality, it opts for the strategy of moralising—which is the self-righteous condemnation of inappropriate thoughts and behaviour.

"[T]he sociologist Alvin Gouldner['s] study, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (1979), offers a compelling sociological explanation for the ascendancy of an antimoral and antitraditional language and ideology in American universities. Writing in the late 1970s, Gouldner pointed to the role of what he called the new class of intellectual and knowledge workers in promoting the antitraditionalist turn in society, and especially inside the university. The exercise of the monopoly that this group had over education and expertise unleashed forces that worked towards the deauthorisation of traditional and cultural authority. Gouldner contends that this development was [further] facilitated by the decline of paternal authority within the family. The twin forces of women's emancipation and the expansion of education in the context of growing prosperity weakened paternal authority, which in turn damaged the capacity of the prevailing system of socialisation to communicate the legacy and the values of the past....

"Parental authority in general, and paternal authority in particular, found it difficult to impose and reproduce 'its social values and political ideologies in their children'....Gouldner...argued that schools and, chiefly, universities, [instead] assumed a central role in the socialisation of young people, claiming the right to educate young people in line with their enlightened opinions and, even in schools, sensing no 'obligation, to reproduce parental values in their children'....

"As a result of this development, 'public educational systems' bec[a]me a 'major cosmopolitanizing influence on [their] students, with a corresponding distancing from localistic interests and values'." – pp. 128–31

The contestation of values

"On university campuses and beyond, the suspicion directed at [both] normative values and the language of morality is paralleled by the attempt to moralise problems that are connected to cultural identity, lifestyles and the prepolitical sphere of private life....

"Through the moralisation of new issues, supporters of cultural politics attempt to give meaning to human experience." – p. 133

Turning consent on its head

"Oregon State University announced in the spring of 2016 that it plans to introduce a new training programme for its new intake of undergraduates[.] The course outline indicates that students will 'learn how...to advance the values of the OSU community'. Th[is] is represented through the neutral and technical language of a 'learning outcome'....

"Training students to advance the preexisting 'values of the OS[U] community' raises the question of how much opportunity is available for undergraduates to develop, explore and advance their own individual values. And what happens to students who may wish to advance values that contradict or conflict with those promoted by the Social Justice Learning Module? The course outline conveys the imperious assumption that the values...it teaches are beyond...question. Therefore, they must be learned and, even more importantly, must be lived by every member of the university. As in an old-school theological institution, not believing in the Truth is not an option. Moral policing is now conducted through the technocratic language of training. The trainer in the skills of the new etiquette serves as the functional equivalent of the old-school theologian." – pp. 142–3

Chapter 8: Trigger warnings: the performance of awareness

Rapid accommodation

"The academic community is more concerned about the use of trigger warnings than it is about most of the other paternalistic practices that have been imposed on universities in recent decades." – p. 151

Sensitivity on demand

"Once the teaching of an academic topic becomes subordinate to a criterion that is external to it—such as the value of sensitivity—it risks losing touch with the integrity of its subject matter." – p. 159

The dangers of reading

"Ultimately, trigger warnings degrade the spirit of artistic endeavour." – p. 160

Intellectual paternalism

"[A]cademic teaching presumes that the people sitting in the lecture hall or in a seminar are not children, but young adults....By the time young people enter the university, their personal reactions have to be subordinated to the need to master intellectually demanding issues—regardless of the uncomfortable challenges they pose....

"The use of trigger warnings is particularly unhelpful for establishing a climate that fosters the habit of free inquiry and risk taking....Trigger alerts...provide an opt-out clause for students struggling to decide between making easy and difficult choices. One of the least discussed, but most damaging, consequences of the regime of intellectual paternalism is its effect on the way that students discuss and debate amongst themselves. Students frequently acknowledge that they find it difficult to discuss sensitive issues because they fear putting a foot wrong and offending their peers....In the current climate of intolerance towards 'insensitivity', there is little cultural valuation of a student who wishes to express a view that is controversial or unpopular.

"The advocacy of trigger warnings personalises academic learning[.] The privileging of the personal emotional response[s] of students creates a serious obstacle to the conduct of the free exchange of opinion through intellectual debate....A genuine clash of views ought not to be personal in an academic setting, and a serious academic institution teaches its members how not to be offended by uncomfortable ideas. The conduct of a robust debate is not always consistent with the idealisation of sensitivity." – pp. 162–3

Chapter 9: Why academic freedom must not be rationed: an argument against the freedom–security trade-off

Academic freedom—the threat from within

"[T]he cultural climate of universities has changed from one that is welcoming of ambiguity and the risks associated with the quest for knowledge[,] to one that is preoccupied with the certainty offered by process and rules....If academics can be told what words they should use in their course material on [values] learning outcomes, then why kick up a fuss when guidelines on microaggression and speech lay down the law on what words to avoid?...

"The University of Derby's 'Code of Practice for Use of Language'...warns that the 'university recognises that individuals are responsible...but expects line managers to help staff carry out the terms of this policy'." – p. 175

Academic freedom devalued through the sanctification of other values

"[W]ithout the right to offend, academic freedom becomes emptied of its experimental and truth-seeking content....

"There are powerful cultural forces at work that encourage the perception that the policing of academic freedom is not what it really is—the coercive regulation of everyday communication and the repression and stigmatisation of certain ideas. From this perspective, the regulation of academic life is not perceived as a form of authoritarian intrusion but as a sensible and sensitive measure designed to protect the vulnerable from pain.

"[U]niversity administrators have promoted the value of civility as an antidote to uncivil—that is, robust—free speech. In September 2014, Chancellor Nicholas Dirks emailed members of the University of California at Berkeley[.]

"Dirks's email warned that 'when issues are inherently divisive, controversial and capable of arousing strong feelings, the commitment to free speech and expression can lead to division and divisiveness that undermines a community's foundation.'...As he explained:

• Specifically, we can only exercise our right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in doing so, and this in turn requires that people treat each other with civility. Simply put, courteousness and respect in words and deeds are basic preconditions to any meaningful exchange of ideas. In this sense, free speech and civility are two sides of a single coin—the coin of open, democratic society....

"Dirks's avowal of free speech is rendered meaningless by the conditions he places on its exercise.

"Fortunately, the Council of the University of California Faculty Associations took issue with the meaning of Dirks's call for civility, declaring that the right to free speech is not 'contingent on the notion that anyone else needs to listen, agree, speak back, or "feel safe" '.

"[T]he balancing of these two values tends to be at the expense of academic freedom." – pp. 177–8

Academic freedom becomes a second-order value

"In 'A message from the leadership at Penn State', [the u]niversity [a]dministration communicated its version of the qualified defence of academic freedom:

• Debate and disagreement are critical constructs in the role of universities in testing ideas and promoting progress on complex issues. But, the leaders of your University at every level, from the administration, faculty, staff and students, are unanimous in deploring the erosion of civility associated with our discourse.

"[T]he manner in which this argument is framed indicates a preference for civility over free speech, concluding with the words:

• Respect is a core value at Penn State University. We ask you to consciously choose civility and to support those whose words and actions serve to promote respectful disagreement and thereby strengthen our community.

"[T]he statement...is conspicuously silent on where free speech and academic freedom stand...in the hierarchy of values.

"Despite the formal adherence of institutions of higher education to the ideal of academic freedom, this principle has in practice become a second-order value. In formal statements on the subject, academic freedom appears to be valued [only] instrumentally[,] as essential for intellectual and scientific advance. Its begrudging acceptance as useful for the development [of] scholarship coexists with ambivalence towards its idealisation as a foundational principle.

"[A]cademic blogger...Robin Marie...is scathing of liberal academics who are not prepared to acknowledge that they, too, regard their values as more important than academic freedom.

"Marie points out that so-called liberal academics frequently discriminate against their conservative colleagues. Drawing attention to the double standard that prevails in higher education regarding the employment of conservative academics, Marie writes:

• Academic institutions, moreover, are spaces that are morally policed—it is not a coincidence, nor due solely to the weak evidential basis of their positions, that only a minority of professors in the liberal arts are conservative. Declining to hire someone, publish their paper, or chat them up at a conference are exercises in exclusion and shame which those in academia, nearly as much as any other community, participate in.

"Marie's allusion to the practice of marginalising conservative academics in the social sciences and the arts—a practice of which he approves—serves the purpose of reinforcing his argument that academic freedom is not allocated impartially and is a liberal shibboleth. For this advocate of social justice, academic freedom deserves to be treated with pragmatism and cynicism.

"[A]lthough [c]ritics of the 'liberal shibboleth' of academic freedom...are happy to deny its application to their opponents, they fervently uphold their own right to academic freedom....

"Until recent times, critics of academic freedom tended to argue that, although they regarded it as a very fine principle, they felt...there were clear limits to its application. [But i]n the current era, critics of academic freedom are openly scathing about the values it embodies....

"It is not surprising that many student activists lack a strong attachment to what they regard as a value that is less important than that of respect, safety, security or social justice....

"Through their socialisation[,] students entering the university already possess a low level of tolerance towards verbal slights and uncomfortable challenges. Once they become undergraduates, their sensitivities and risk-averse attitudes are validated and enhanced through the paternalistic etiquette to which they are exposed. Thankfully, many students are either untouched by this ethos or have a healthy reaction against the risk-averse paternalism that would treat them as children. However[,] they are rarely offered a genuinely tolerant and liberal counternarrative which would help them to challenge these trends. They are seldom exposed to positive accounts of academic freedom and free speech." – pp. 178–82

The trade-off between freedom and security/equity/recognition

"Often, individuals who attack the academic freedom of their foes still claim the rights it encompasses for themselves. [P]roponents of 'academic justice'...merely...call for...academic freedom['s] subordination to their own values....

"The most coherent opponents of the ideal of academic freedom are often illiberal academics and administrators who are wedded to the belief that this principle simply reinforces the marginalisation of the powerless. They claim that academic freedom is monopolised by those who possess [the] privilege and power to flourish, at the expense of those who require special protection....

"Numerous academics have pointed to the threat that a range of new antiterrorism laws, such as the American Patriot Act, pose for civil liberties. However, when a similar trade-off is proposed in relation to limiting tolerance towards offensive speech in order to protect the emotional state of members of the university community, such criticisms are conspicuous by their silence....

"The premise of the academic freedom and security trade-off is rarely spelled out in a self-conscious and explicit form, but its assumptions underpin many current controversies....

"Omar Barghouti[,] founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel[,] claim[s] that some values override those of academic freedom and therefore [the latter] can, in good conscience, be traded for some alleged benefits[.]

"[T]he British educationalist Joanne Williams suggest[s that] arguments like those advanced by Barghouti are similar to those put forward to justify exchanging freedom for the benefit of the vulnerable. Calls for free speech to be balanced against the right not to be offended, made uncomfortable or emotionally harmed, exemplify what can be best described as the securitisation of freedom.

"Arguments used for regulating academic freedom are founded on the assumption that a consistent and unwavering commitment to this principle can clash with, and undermine, the psychological well-being of members of the university. Similar arguments are widely used to restrict free speech....

"The Canadian legal scholar Lynn Smith expresses the relative character of this balancing act in the following terms:

• Should academic freedom take priority over subjective discomfort? Yes. Should promotion of equality take priority over unfettered expression of whatever may occur to an individual scholar, even when irrelevant to the subject matter, simply because it flows from his or her personal creativity? Yes.

"Smith is happy for academic freedom to take precedence over a bit of discomfort, but insists that it must give way to the promotion of equality....

"Since the beginning of modern times, assertions about the necessity of trading off freedoms for an alleged benefit have been used by critics of liberty, and these benefits have turned out to be illusory. However, the belief that human dignity and a sense of self-worth requires protection from the pain inflicted by hurtful speech is possibly the most counterproductive example of the trade-off argument. People acquire dignity and esteem through dealing with the problems that confront them, rather than through relying on the goodwill of the paternalistic university administrator.

"Trading off freedom for some alleged psychic benefit...deprive[s] freedom—in any of its forms—of moral content....As the philosopher Ronald Dworkin...argues, 'in a culture of liberty' the public 'shares a sense, almost as a matter of secular religion, that certain freedoms are in principle exempt' from the 'ordinary process of balancing and regulation'.

"[T]he principle of academic freedom is based on the presumption that people can be trusted to take risks. An academic community and wider society that is confident about its capacity to engage with uncertainty is likely to trust in its citizens' ability to use their freedoms in a responsible manner.

"Justice Louis Brandeis [wrote]:

• Those who won our independence...knew that...it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate, that hate menaces stable governments; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies....Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech....

"When a society discourages people from taking risks, risk-taking becomes equated with irresponsible behaviour and conformism is turned into a virtue. Such a society is likely to be uncomfortable with allowing freedom to serve as a foundational value. It is for that reason that academics['] freedom has become a negotiable commodity." – pp. 182–5

Final thoughts

"The main casualties of intellectual paternalism are the students themselves. In an infantilised higher education environment they are encouraged to adopt the role of biologically mature school children. [T]hey are expected to assume the habits of risk-averse and passive individuals who need to be protected from harm. Yet the flourishing of higher education needs individuals who are ahead of their time and prepared to search for the truth, wherever it may lead and whomever it may offend.

"A serious higher education institution...teaches its members how not to take uncomfortable views personally[,] and [how] not to be offended by them....

"Universities have to reeducate themselves [so as to] presum[e] students to be young adults who possess a capacity for embracing opportunities and creating a new world. [W]e need to take students seriously[,] and expect them to be able to act as adults[,] capa[ble of] moral autonomy and independent learning." – pp. 185–6

Copyright (c) 2022 Mark D. Blackwell.