College Work

Who decides should be obvious.

I recently heard Jill Lepore, professor of history at Harvard University, on The Good Fight podcast. In discussing campus culture, she expressed dismay at the fact that some of her students had refused to read the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision (1857), which she had assigned. They refused, apparently, because it would cause them (or perhaps others) pain to read a defense of slavery in the United States. Lepore seems to have struggled with having to defend the assignment.

I’m sympathetic to the struggle Lepore faced, but I also think we should be willing to defend what we do, which includes determining the assigned readings. I don’t mean we must always defend our choices to students in our classes. I think, though, that we must be able to defend our right to make those choices and should be willing, at times, to defend our overall approach.

I think there are (at least) two obvious defenses of assigning material like the SCOTUS’ Dred Scott decision, the first mundane and the second significant.

The first defense is simply that students and professors occupy roles that are part of the institution of college. Those roles include professors making assignments and students doing them if they wish to do well in the course. To fail to recognize this is to fail to recognize what one does in a university classroom. If a student doesn’t want to do the assignments that a professor requires, that student should not take that professor‘s class. If a student doesn’t like many assignments from many professors at a university, they should not go to that university. This should be obvious; if it’s not, the norms of classrooms are in worse shape then I would have thought.

Students need to know—and do know—that they do not stand on desks in their classrooms, that they do not lecture to the class (unless the professor assigns that to them), and a host of other things. That has always included—and ought to still include—the simple fact that professors, like all teachers, make the assignments and they, the students, do them or get lower grades. This is simply how the institution works. If many students refuse to follow through, the institution is no more. Where this happens there may be some sort of club, but there is not a college or university.

As should be clear, my view is that giving up the basic norms of an institution is giving up the institution. Failing to recognize the roles of professors and students is giving up on colleges. It’s not clear why the resulting clubs would bother having professors if they could not determine the readings for a class. Those clubs could hire people with no qualifications at all to attend “classes” in their place and report who attends, if that is of concern.

So the first defense is simply a reminder of what the basic institution is. The second defense is similar. In a way it’s more basic—rather than explaining what the institution is, we should explain the purpose of the institution. Students must do the assignments professors provide because that is necessary to ensconce oneself in the purpose of a university.

So what is the purpose of a university? Friends of the blog will know that I have discussed this before. See here, here, and here. I’ll briefly rehearse the view.

In a nutshell, “the purpose of universities is to help young adults become well-developed, well-rounded, rationally autonomous persons.” Such people are, fortunately (but not coincidentally) “truth seekers and will want a society in which they can thrive.” They “are truth seekers because acting rationally and being well-rounded both require recognizing facts, not just beliefs or feelings. Because they will want a society in which they can thrive, they will be prepared to participate in governance—they will be good citizens.”

Given that view of the purpose of universities, part of the response to students like Lepore’s, refusing to read defenses of evil, should be:

you need to read this not only because if you don’t you will get a lower grade (or fail the class) but because if you don’t read it and/or other things you disagree with—you will not be able to discern the truth, including about justice. The argument you will be reading seems to me misguided, but I can read it and understand where and how it goes wrong. If you graduate without being able to do that, we will have failed you and it is all too likely you eventually will be taken in by sophistic arguments for something or other. You should be able to read and determine if the arguments against Scott stand up to the arguments in his favor. You should be able to determine if the arguments for the continued enslavement of his family stand up to the arguments against. Similarly, you should be able to read arguments for and against DEI and other contemporary practices and determine whether their goals are worthy and whether they are likely to be attained by those practices or others.

In short, students need to know that they do not go to college to parrot what others say or to hide from difficult questions, wrong-headed views, or viewpoint diversity. They go to college—or should—to learn how to intelligently question what they are told and, similarly, to reason clearly so that they can determine whether they should endorse or oppose different views, policies, practices, etc.

I suspect most college and law students reading the Dred Scott case today will understand that the decision should be rejected. When students refuse to read it—or other statements of mistaken or controversial views—I fear for our future. I fear too many will be unprepared to respond to arguments for injustice masquerading as justice and I fear too many will be unable to discern truth (or care that they can’t).