Shawna Shapiro, a professor at Middlebury College—where Charles Murray was shouted down during a talk last year—has supervised an undergraduate research project on Middlebury students’ attitudes toward free speech and ideological differences. What the researchers have found might seem surprising—unless you know many college students.
The project is called “Middlebury Students Engaging Across Difference”:
Students want to engage with ideological difference. As many as 89 percent of all survey participants, including 83 percent of left-leaning students (who made up 71 percent of the sample), said that it was “important” or “very important” to them to have conversations about controversial issues with people who have a viewpoint distinct from their own. …
Many students (58 percent) are having such conversations on at least a weekly basis. We asked those we surveyed to note all of the locations where such interactions tend to occur. They reported that they are more prevalent over a meal (78 percent) or in the residence halls (65 percent) than in classrooms (53 percent) or at public lectures (38 percent).
The majority (almost 80 percent) reported that such conversations, when they do occur, can be difficult to navigate. Many survey participants said the discussion too quickly devolves into a debate where, as one put it, “We’re talking at people instead of with them.” An interviewee said it’s easy to forget to “see the person as a person and not just a clump of ideas.” Students expressed a keen desire for interactions centered on empathy—not just “being right.” Many said they don’t feel heard, but they also admitted that they struggle to listen fully to others as well. …
A further complication is that fear of social marginalization is pervasive, particularly on a small, residential campus like ours. “The fear of ostracization is terrifying … of being the only one and a social outcast,” one interviewee explained. Some students claimed that this fear created a dynamic of “bandwagoning” in which “many people just seem to agree with one another for the sake of having the correct opinion.” One student framed the situation as “rhetorical gymnastics.”
Unsurprisingly, some students decide only to engage in these conversations with close friends, recognizing that probably limits the range of perspectives represented since “friend groups … often have similar ideas and opinions [as] mine.” Others feel differently: “I do not want to create a conflict with friends,” one said, adding, “It is also difficult to be in a relationship with someone when you disagree on most things political.” Students in this latter group expressed a preference for conversations in a more structured environment like the classroom.
I have no idea how representative the sample is, and of course this could capture only how Middlebury students think they think. But eighty survey respondents would be about three percent of the Middlebury student population. In any case, if this description is accurate, the typical respondent sounds … pretty much like everybody else who talks about politics under free conditions in a small community.
__________
Image: Postcard, “Lower Campus, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont,” mid-20th century. Tichnor Brothers Postcard Collection, Boston Public Library.
Blue Book Diaries 