Claire Shipman, the president of Columbia University, writes:

We believe in difficult conversations at Columbia—in a broad embrace of freedom of expression. It’s in our DNA. I intend to uphold that tradition for several reasons.

First, as a nation, we should be able to tolerate ideas, facts, and opinions that we don’t like. Tolerance is essential to building resilient individuals and a resilient democracy.

Second, it’s our mission. We have a responsibility to guide students toward intellectual rigor, to enable them to grapple with, and examine carefully, ideas different from their own. More broadly, a willingness to test assumptions is essential to our academic excellence in every field.

Third, and perhaps most important, universities—Columbia in particular—are uniquely positioned to help change the national tone. We can guide and model the art of examining complex, potent issues in a deliberate, respectful fashion. . . .

Our instinct might be, in such an era, to shy away from challenging events and speakers. The better course is to model how to do it well . . . Our statutes lay out quite clearly and sensibly that expression, on our campuses, does have limits, in particular as regards harassment, discrimination, or the threat of violence. Peaceful protest, civil discourse, a respectful exchange of ideas—this is our inheritance at Columbia, and I want to ensure that it is also our legacy. . . .

So, as this week begins, and as we continue to debate the affairs of the world and this nation on our campuses, consider this: at times there will be speech that each of us finds disagreeable, even abhorrent—and we still need to protect it. Maybe even seek it out. Such a practice makes us stronger.

I agree. And, although our president did not say so in this message, this policy of protecting and welcoming dissent, even when it is controversial or disagreeable, runs counter to some actions of our university in recent years:

• The delayed reaction to the sexually-assaulting doctor in the medical school, without any seeming consequences to the people at the university who enabled this behavior.
• The fake U.S. News numbers, where, again, there seems to have been very little interest by the university administration in finding out who did it and why. As with the medical school scandal, the avoidance of any serious investigation does not seem consistent with the goal of promoting free speech.
• Barnard College, a division of Columbia University, attempting to cancel the showing of a controversial film on campus. At that time, it seemed that everything was about avoiding offending anybody and about avoiding any controversy—really the opposite of the view that “we should be able to tolerate ideas, facts, and opinions that we don’t like.”
• Barnard College “mandating that students remove any items affixed to room or suite doors” under the rationale that they “do what we can to support and foster the respect, empathy and kindness that must guide all of our behavior on campus.” Empathy and kindness are fine, but, again, it contradicts the idea that “there will be speech that each of us finds disagreeable, even abhorrent—and we still need to protect it.”

As I noted the other day, Barnard College has also announced a new policy promoting free expression, and I think it’s a good thing.

I completely agree with the president of Columbia that “we should be able to tolerate ideas, facts, and opinions that we don’t like,” and I completely agree with the president of Barnard that “Colleges and universities need to reconfirm our commitment to nonviolent forms of disagreement — even when we are confronted with voices that disparage or dismiss identities and worldviews. This is also a time to foster more disagreement, not less.” I was getting very frustrated with all the happy talk and the official attitude that we shouldn’t be disagreeing. The university—and, of course, the country—has people who disagree with me on important issues, and people I don’t respect at all, for moral, intellectual, or political reasons. And I guess lots of those people don’t respect me either! Which is too bad, but we still have to exist, and we should have the right to express our views, both publicly and privately. We shouldn’t be fired for our nonviolent acts (except to the extent that they interfere with our ability to do our jobs), nor should be discouraged by the university from expressing them.

And, just to be clear, no one at Columbia has ever suggested or even requested that I keep my mouth shut in class or outside of class, including when I’ve criticized the government or the Columbia administration or anything else. I have nothing to complain about on my end, but I do think it was a mistake for them to crack down on dorm room doors, to try to stop the showing of controversial movies, and to keep quiet the bad behavior regarding the fake statistics and the terrible actions at the medical school.

I’m happy about this new policy and I hope the administration follows up by changing the dorm room door policy, apologizing for trying to suppress the movie, and starting and publicizing independent investigations into the U.S. News numbers and the enabling of the sexual assault at the hospital.

Also let me emphasize that by bringing up these earlier cases, I’m not criticizing the Columbia president Shipman, as these things were done before she took office. I also understand the desire to move forward rather than looking back; still, I think that a great way to reinforce the policy of enabling difficult conversations is to revisit some recent examples where the university had unfortunately avoided doing so.

“It’s in our DNA.”

One thing that jumped out at me when reading the president’s email was the statement that freedom of expression, especially in difficult conversations, is “in our DNA.”

My first reaction was the annoyance of the persnickety social scientist: calling it “DNA” is just wrong, and it indeed muddies the waters, as we’re talking about something social, not genetic.

But that reaction of mine was silly. Obviously no one when using “DNA” in that sense is taking it literally; it was a metaphor. And maybe we can gain some insight by taking this metaphor seriously.

For something to be in an organization’s “DNA,” that would imply that it’s not just a transient trait; rather, it has to be in some equivalent of self-replicating code. The idea is that freedom of expression and willingness to confront uncomfortable ideas are not just attitudes that sometimes has existed at Columbia, but rather that they are embedded deeply enough that they will persist. Indeed even if free inquiry and expression at Columbia are suppressed (as with the sexual assault, the fake statistics, the dorm-room censorship, and the attempt to suppress the film screening), the self-replicating aspects of our university’s rules and culture will cause them to return.

And, from that perspective, I do see something in our president’s analogy to DNA. Columbia has for many years celebrated the legacy of the 1968 protests, while recognizing that the other side at the time had legitimate concerns too. That is, Columbia has recognized the value of protest without implying that any particular protest action has to be recognized as being a good idea. We have the University Senate, which dates from that period, as well as generations of new students and staff who have exercised the freedom of dissent—even dissent that some can find disagreeable—and recognize this as a Columbia tradition.

Indeed, this recent statement by the president can be viewed as a consequence of that DNA, an expectation that our university is a place with diverse enough attitudes that there will be people who disagree with and even despise each other but still have the right and, at times, the obligation, to air these uncomfortable disagreements publicly.

Because the alternative, of simulating a nonexistent harmony, would be intellectually dishonest and politically dangerous.