Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Should Speech About Gender Cognitive Differences "Not Be Tolerated" on Campus,
and Instead Treated as "Verbal Violence" Rather Than "Free Speech"?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_07_23-2006_07_29.shtml#1153936816
I blogged yesterday about [1]Stanford neurobiology professor Ben
Barres' article in Nature; I thought his argument was quite
interesting, and may be generally quite right as a scientific matter
(my [2]correction was only focused on one error, which may not affect
the bottom line). Yet the following passage from the article troubles
me (emphasis added):
Steven Pinker has responded to critics of the Larry Summers
Hypothesis by suggesting that they are angry because they feel the
idea that women are innately inferior is so dangerous that it is
sinful even to think about it. Harvard Law School professor Alan
Dershowitz sympathizes so strongly with this view that he plans to
teach a course next year called 'Taboo'. At Harvard we must have
veritas; all ideas are fair game. I completely agree. I welcome any
future studies that will provide a better understanding of why
women and minorities are not advancing at the expected rate in
science and so many other professions.
But it is not the idea alone that has sparked anger. Disadvantaged
people are wondering why privileged people are brushing the truth
under the carpet. If a famous scientist or a president of a
prestigious university is going to pronounce in public that women
are likely to be innately inferior, would it be too much to ask
that they be aware of the relevant data? It would seem that just as
the bar goes way up for women applicants in academic selection
processes, it goes way down when men are evaluating the evidence
for why women are not advancing in science. That is why women are
angry. It is incumbent upon those proclaiming gender differences in
abilities to rigorously address whether suspected differences are
real before suggesting that a whole group of people is innately
wired to fail.
What happens at Harvard and other universities serves as a model
for many other institutions, so it would be good to get it right.
To anyone who is upset at the thought that free speech is not fully
protected on university campuses, I would like to ask, as did
third-year Harvard Law student Tammy Pettinato: what is the
difference between a faculty member calling their African-American
students lazy and one pronouncing that women are innately inferior?
Some have suggested that those who are angry at Larry Summers'
comments should simply fight words with more words (hence this
essay). In my view, when faculty tell their students that they are
innately inferior based on race, religion, gender or sexual
orientation, they are crossing a line that should not be crossed --
the line that divides free speech from verbal violence -- and it
should not be tolerated at Harvard or anywhere else. In a culture
where women's abilities are not respected, women cannot effectively
learn, advance, lead or participate in society in a fulfilling way.
As best I can tell, Prof. Barres is arguing that those like Larry
Summers who believe that the disparate representation of men and women
in certain fields flows partly from biological cognitive differences
ought not be allowed to express their views, at least at the
university. Such speech, he argues, is not "free speech" but instead
"verbal violence" and "should not be tolerated at Harvard or anywhere
else." What's more, he seems to be distancing himself from the view
that this lack of "tolerat[ion]" should extend only to counterargument
(though he himself engages in this): This view, he says, is what "Some
have suggested," while "In [Barres'] view," statements like Summers'
should not be tolerated and should instead be treated like verbal
violence (and violence is usually fought through tools other than
counterspeech) rather than speech.
([3]Click here for a footnote discussing possible ambiguities in Prof.
Barres' statement.)
The matter is a little ambiguous, because Barres' statement literally
refers only to "faculty tell[ing] their students that they are
innately inferior," which is not literally what happened with Summers;
he wasn't speaking predominantly to his students, and he wasn't saying
that members of his audience were inferior because of sex, only that
on average members of one sex might for biological reasons be more
likely to excel on certain topics. Literally telling individual
students, whether in class or in office meetings, that they themselves
are inferior for various reasons might be properly punishable on the
grounds that it's unduly offensive and highly unlikely to advance
serious discussion. (Just to take a less loaded alternative, I would
strongly defend every faculty member's right to argue that certain
murderers deserve the death penalty, but I don't think that, absent
highly unusual circumstances, a faculty member should tell a
particular student whose brother had been convicted of murder, "your
brother deserves to die.") But in context, it seems to me that Barres'
"faculty tell[ing] their students that they are innately inferior" is
meant to include Summers' statements and those like them, and suggest
that such speech ought to be treated as the equivalent of violence
rather than free speech, and not tolerated on campuses.
([4]Hide footnote.)
This strikes me as an extremely troubling proposition. Prof. Barres
may have the better of the scientific argument -- but here he seems to
be suggesting that we shut down the scientific argument, by refusing
to "tolerate[]" or treat as "free speech" contrary views. This (1)
risks suppressing true counterarguments to Prof. Barres' views, if it
turns out that Prof. Barres' is mistaken (at least in part).
It also (2) undermines the credibility of Prof. Barres' own views,
even if they're completely correct. As a layperson, I don't know who's
right on this debate. Prof. Barres may be sure based on his own
extensive research, but naturally most of the rest of us -- including
the rest of the colleagues who are deciding whether to condemn
statements like Prof. Summers' and "not [to] tolerate[]" such
statements in the future -- can't be.
If after decades of open and tolerant discussion Prof. Barres' view
emerges as the dominant one, laypeople like us can have considerable
confidence in its accuracy. (This is why, despite our general
openmindedness, we would indeed have little social and professional
tolerance for someone who urges the phlogiston theory of fire or
something that's been similarly broadly discredited.) If, however, we
know that Prof. Barres' view prevailed but only in a debate in which
rival views were not tolerated, and were punished as "verbal violence"
rather than protected as "free speech," then we can have no confidence
in the view's accuracy. For all we know, the view may be largely
wrong, and contradicted by important data, but that data has been
hidden from us by speech codes or by scientific peer pressure.
Of course, Prof. Barres' position (3) would also set a tremendously
dangerous precedent for other fields. Prof. Barres seems to also argue
that academics shouldn't be allowed to argue about whether there are
important innate racial differences, or innate sexual orientation
differences. Apparently one can investigate and debate whether sexual
orientation is partly or largely genetically caused, I take it, but
not whether it may be correlated with other genetic traits. There'd
also be some unclear limits on criticism of religion: Literally his
argument is only that faculty may not be allowed to tell their
students (or presumably give speeches, such as Summers', that students
may hear about) "that they are innately inferior based on ...
religion," and it's not clear what innate inferiority based on
religion might be (though I have seen discussion of whether a tendency
towards religiosity might indeed be genetically linked). But the logic
of his argument would suggest that harsh criticisms of certain
religious ideological systems that may make adherents of those systems
feel unwelcome would also be prohibitable. And those are just Prof.
Barres' specific examples; the same arguments could apply to
suppressing a wide range of supposedly dangerous academic viewpoints.
Now I understand part of people's concern about discussion of innate
gender differences: If certain students get alienated or dispirited
enough by such statements, for instance because they're insulted by
them or because they wrongly infer that such assertions about broad
populations mean that they themselves have no future in some field,
they may stay away from certain fields, or certain universities. I do
think there are social factors that push many girls and women away
from science and engineering, and I think those factors are costly for
universities and for society as a whole. Universities and other
institutions should work hard to diminish these factors, and to
encourage people with mathematical and scientific aptitude -- boys and
girls alike -- to go into math and science (plus encourage people
without such aptitude to nonetheless get some decent grasp of the
basics).
Such efforts on the part of university, however, should not come at
the expense of constraining academic debate about tremendously
scientific important issues such as the interaction of gender and
cognition. If some students are offended by scientific theories
faculty propose, they should be taught to respond with research,
analysis, and (if the theories are wrong as well as offensive)
rebuttal, not alienation. If some students are dispirited by the
implications of those theories, they should be taught to understand
the limits of those implications. If some students are concerned about
sex discrimination both in society and in their institutions, they
should certainly fight it (including by researching the matter, and
seeing to what extent any observed disparities flow from
discrimination, and to what extent, if any, they may flow from genuine
biological differences).
But students should never be taught that apparently dangerous ideas
about what is true ought to be fought through suppression, rather than
investigation and (when called for) rebuttal. And that brings us to
one other problem with Prof. Barres' proposal: (4) It would teach the
next generation of scientists the wrong approach to science -- an
approach that urges them to premature certainty rather than constant
doubt and inquiry, and an approach that urges them to suppress
contrary views rather than rebut them. That's a poor service to all
students, whether male or female.
References
1. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7099/full/442133a.html
2. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_07_23-2006_07_29.shtml#1153846314
3. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/volokh/posts/1153936816.html
4. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/volokh/posts/1153936816.html
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