In the debate between Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder on one hand and Stacy Hawkins about diversity, academic freedom and harm, I’m much more sympathetic to Khalid and Snyder overall. But something feels off about the terms of the entire discussion.
Khalid and Snyder are responding to the suspension of an artistic show at Macalester College that some viewers found offensive until the gallery could be hidden behind frosted glass and warnings placed at the entrance about the content within.
Hawkins replies that respect for diversity and the protection of students from harm is sometimes more important than academic freedom. That case gets assembled in a way that doesn’t feel tremendously rigorous or consistent—Hawkins argues first that academic freedom is less important as a principle because it was built by primarily white male professors in primarily white male institutions, but as a basic point, that calls into question the entirety of higher education without making clear what the alternative mission or project of higher education might be. E.g., if the most important principle is protection from harm, then the acquisition of credentials based on challenging programs of training and learning that are aimed at professional or working accomplishment in a capitalist labor market doesn’t seem well suited to that principle before we even get into the details. And yet I suspect a four-year therapeutic and personhood-building institution would attract few people were it designed with that purpose first and foremost.