Silencing Contrary Voices and the Chilling Effect (5 Minute Flourishing)

Craig 00:00 

Welcome to Live Well & Flourish. I'm your host, Craig Van Slyke.

Normally I stay away from politics since that’s not the focus of this podcast. Recently, however, I heard about an event that disturbed me so much that I feel compelled to talk to you about it. I’m going to be intentionally vague about the details, but this is the gist. A well-respected scholar was in the last stages of securing a job offer when some remarks they made several years ago (on their podcast) came to light. These remarks questioned a growing practice in academic hiring as being ineffective and too easy to game, making it largely a performative practice rather than something that had a real effect. In other words, it was an exercise in window dressing rather than something that makes a tangible difference. This scholar clearly stated both during the discussion on the podcast and many other times that I've heard that they were fully behind the goal of the practice; they just didn’t think this particular practice worked. I want to be really, really clear on this. This individual was NOT disagreeing with the goal, they were criticizing the practice. Apparently, there was a small furor among a subset of the organization involved and the hiring committee took the unusual step of denying the candidacy without a vote of the academic department. Apparently, this was within the committee's purview, but it was really unusual.

Craig 01:30 

I gotta say that this saddened, worried, and infuriated me all at the same time. Here was someone who was denied a job due to voicing a legitimate criticism of a practice. The whole thing is kind of crazy and is counter to the role of a university as a place for free exchange and debate. We weren't talking about some reprehensible nazi racist screed, they were just saying, you know, this is not the best way to go about achieving the goal that we all believe in (or at least that many of us believe in). For crying out loud, if you can’t have honest disagreement and debate at a university, where can you? I don't know, they criticized the practice … not the goal … not the underlying value … the practice. I just don't get it. Or maybe I do, I don't know, maybe that's what worries me.

Craig 02:22 

So I heard about this when this scholar was being interviewed on another popular academic podcast. The hosts, and the scholar in question were all very experienced academic mentors, and they pretty much all agreed that they would advise their doctoral students to avoid expressing contrary opinions. Just don't upset the orthodoxy. They had a pretty good discussion of the pros and cons of speaking out and of holding your tongue, but my take was that they would all advise students to not speak out against the orthodoxy. And frankly, I would advise my students the same way. The professional risks just aren’t worth it. Hopefully this makes you a little bit sad and a little bit angry.

Craig 03:08 

John Stuart Mill in his essay “On the Liberty of Thought and Discussion” (which is Chapter 2 of his book, On Liberty, if I remember correctly), talks about silencing distasteful opinion as depriving us of the opportunity to learn and grow. Mill writes a very long, complex, really hard to understand sentence in his essay that basically says this (at least this is my interpretation):

-         Preventing someone from freely expressing their opinion harms everyone … even future generations.

-         This harm is even greater for those who disagree with the opinion being expressed than for those who agree.

-        If the silenced opinion is actually right, then everyone is robbed of the chance to learn and discover the truth.

-        If the silenced opinion is wrong, then we’re prevented from understanding the truth more deeply and vividly. Defending a belief with intellectual honesty gives you more confidence in and a greater understanding of that belief.

Craig 04:08 

The worst thing about this in many ways is that we’re not only robbing ourselves, we’re robbing, as Mill pointed out, future generations. Mill wasn’t just concerned about governments banning free expression, he was also concerned about societal pressures and conformity. Again, I wanna reiterate, this wasn't some racist nazi screed, they just said, 'I don't think this the best way to go about achieving the goal'. Mill was really worried about what he called the tyranny of the majority -- when social norms and pressures silence unorthodox or minority views. This sort of oppression can be even harder to resist than that from governments.

Let me give you my bottom-line argument for allowing contrary speech -- we can fully trust the correctness of our beliefs and values only by vigorously testing them from all possible angles. This is true for individuals. This is true for organizations. This is true for societies. If we don’t allow contrary opinions, how can we be sure that our own opinion is correct? And how can we correct ourselves when we’re wrong?

Craig 05:16 

So why do we do this? Why do we silence contrary voices? There are a bunch of reasons, groupthink, intellectual arrogance coupled with a fear that we might be wrong, a fear that the undesirable speech might spark a flood of distasteful thought and practice … these are just a few of the many reasons that might lead us to try to silence contrary voices. I’ll admit, listening to people that challenge dominant ways of thinking is risky. But history is replete with examples of brave souls who stood up against orthodox thinking and changed the world for the better -- Rosa Parks, Galileo, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harvey Milk, Nelson Mandela … Every one of these amazing individuals spoke against common opinion and paid a price. How many others had the chance to change societies thinking for the better, but failed to express their views out of fear? Sadly, we’ll never know.

Craig 06:18 

We all suffer when the chilling effect takes hold. The chilling effect is just when someone suppresses their speech due to the fear of consequences. The person whose free expression is suppressed bears a significant personal burden. When you decide not to speak out, you're not only faced with the stress of the decision about whether or not to speak out, you may feel a degree of inauthenticity along with maybe a bit of cowardice, even though the decision to stay silent may be quite rational. Look, I’m not saying that somebody who decides not to speak against the orthodoxy actually IS inauthentic or cowardly, I’m just saying it can feel that way.

What makes all of this worse is the fact that disadvantaged and marginalized groups are often the most susceptible to the chilling effect. The professor I spoke of earlier already already had a good job at a really good university, so losing out on the prospective job was disappointing, but not disastrous. But what about someone who desperately needs that job to survive? For such folks, the chilling effect is very powerful. For them, it’s best just to keep their mouths shut and survive. What a terrible situation for a free society.

Craig 07:37 

I’m going to close by recognizing that I write this from a position of great privilege. Look, I’m a lucky guy and I know it. Nonetheless, I firmly believe that the best way to counter a reprehensible opinion is to expose it to the light of public scrutiny and full discussion. Let the truth illuminate the flaws. This is even more critical when we agree with the goals but we want to have a debate about how to go about achieving those goals. When people are afraid to go against the common ways of thinking, even when we're all in agreement, or most of us are in agreement on a goal, we all suffer. Societal progress is impeded, and we just don't flourish.

That's it for this time. Thanks for listening to my little rant. I’ll talk to you next time.