Transcripts For CSPAN James 20240706 : vimarsana.com

There is an opportunity to share a personal addition of an additional prize. For additional information, visit the website at studentcam. Org. Next, a discussion on stability and University Campuses with James Madison. They also touch on intellectual diversity, responding to harmful speech. John, long time president of James Madison university in virginia and lori lite, president of the university an enemy indiana. Just to level the audience, most of the folks watching me be aware questions of freedom of expression on campus for a while, the survey able to speak honestly in classrooms or campuses they feel they need to censor themselves when engaging with students. We have heard faculty from across the country expressed concerns about restrictions and scholarship and we have heard those concerns for a long time yesterday the American Association issued a report attacking these issues in florida. We got a lot of concerns with the canvassers or places where we can have honest conversations. Also more recently especially since the attack on israel in early october, we have seen concern on campus, social media students being bullied, jewish students harassed seemingly with impunity. This led to a high profile earlier this week when president of the nation most famous situation of Higher Learning harvard, mit testified for five hours antisemitism on campus. Its been extraordinary conversation about hearing and one thing most prominent is a sense of double standard. The campuses engaged in stifling and restricting with the broader orientation of faculty of free speech when its come to language interpreted as antisemitic. Lets talk about this, i dont want to put you in a position studio analysis, i want to ask all of you have fair some of the criticisms concerns and lets start with that. Thanks for this conversation. I would say citizens of scholars working with a number of institutions, we are struggling with two sets of complicated issues. One is trying to figure out the line between expression and intimidation, harassment and violence, how we figure that out and it looks different at different campuses in trying to figure out the length its difficult. Second, what is this consistent application modeling of debate and dialogue looks like on campus and how we ensure its done well in all those communities to do that effectively in both of those are really challenging in this moment and yesterday was one example of a. The institute persistence process launched an action, is that right . You got 14 remote lori and don are two of them and i want to talk about what it involves and how you are doing that but this is something i know you as part of the community of leaders have been wrestling with for the better part of a couple of years, are you thinking about what we are seeing and how do we start understanding the challenges looks. Lets start by being clear that antisemitism, his homophobia, racism, harassment against an individual because of the activities that hold and no place on College Campuses. We all agree with those values. Id like to in response to your question talking how i have come to view vertical issues and freedom of expression on campus and part of this is an scholars and other College President s. I grew up in San Francisco, california wonderfully diverse multireligious, multiracial, multiethnic neighborhood. I thought the whole world was like my neighborhood in San Francisco until he went away to college and realized it was not. Sadly we are in a society that is segregated by race, ethnicity, economics, religion and one of the first places are students see differences on College Campuses so its no wonder there are challenges that come back to those points i made. An undergraduate on the tail end and they were really there. I was there a little after so i do remember what what i most remember are the principles of free speech and if you think about what was happening in the 1960s, it was about the speech of young people, advocate against the vietnam war, advocate for the Civil Rights Movement and administrators try to find out ways for free speech for students. Third, as ive worked in Higher Education, one thing i have observed is that we are not giving students the tools to be able to engage in debate and discussion and if we cant figure out a strategy to help students develop the tools to be able to engage in this type of dialogue that they dont see many adults will go for them in one of the principles of Higher Education . I will stop there and im sure my colleague, john wants to jump in and there are a couple of values to mental and Higher Education, one is the importance of freedom of speech, academically under the Educational Mission so the name for the constitution is something to us in terms of our dna and we talked about will termination, how you balance those things. Some of your biographies. My training and background, i have worked previously in my career at the American Association of University Professors which shows deeply Academic Freedom and Higher Education for students and also the u. S. Department of Education Office for civil rights which is discrimination centered in Higher Education so an interesting career to think about that and how they come together and how to draw coastlines. False, everybody favors free speech as long as they agree with that but the challenge is when you get close to the lines what controversial and hard. Second, its important to remember in Higher Education we should expect there will be controversial speech. Our mission by definition is bringing diverse perspectives together to be shared, debated and discussed and have developed those muscles to do this well in community with each other to create a learning environment in which everybody can participate and be heard. Look up the same results were the students said they were afraid to speak up and it wasnt because of faculty, it was we were afraid of offending students. Reserve the thanksgiving table discussion. Dont bring up politics and religion to your relatives. Its something we took to heart and part of the reason we joined was we got we need to work on these muscles with students to help understand the want you to be able to debate and disagree and hear different points of view you might not agree with but learn from and with each other how do you do that . That is the hard work we are engaged with working on that. This crucial tension youve all alluded to in different ways between exploring ideas and crucial debates at the same time respecting the community and ensuring it is welcoming to everybody. One of the things prominent in the conversation this week is the sense, the sense that there is a double standard and how many colleges addressed it. They have seen the aftermath of the killing of george floyd when it has come to issues like raised base omission, they are clear they think one side is right and use stability as a rationale for voice who disagree and it feels like in this most recent Development Following hamas attack on israel campuses say no no no, we cant possibly constrain or take a stance, we need to let rallies play out even if they feel threatening or intimidating or involve actual social media accounts of students being bullied. Is there anything reasonable about them in your mind or are these political attacks school . The way i like to respond is our principles of freedom of expression say two important things. They really reinforce liberal Arts Institution we were about to exchange of an idea and we want members of our community to discuss, debate, review and research, engage in conversation about ideas as part of our obligation to gradually. Supported, they belong to the institution the fact that i grew up in this multicultural environment in San Francisco, the reason i said that is because in my great multicultural network, we dont always agree on things. We are richer because we dont but when we disagree, they are not personal attacks so if you create a campus environment for members of Campus Communities feel supported, welcomed and affirmed, we can have Difficult Conversations that dont devolve into personal attacks. My campus students have been leading the way, jewish students and i think its because we have this commitment to principles of community that allow rich discussions on campus to occur. A couple of additional thoughts on that, i do think we are a microcosm of society and there are a lot of cost pressures played out on College Campuses. Many students think its okay to cancel speech of others with whom they disagree. We see a consumer mentality where this idea the customer is always right, students that say im coming here and my beliefs and opinions should be reinforced, i had a students a couple of years ago say to me they didnt want to get messages or have to read things they disagree with on particular topics. If you are not having that experience, you should ask for your money back because that is what should be happening in Higher Education so double standard, when i was at the office for civil rights, when we use the hard case to determine that line between protected speech versus something that is to conduct constitutes harassment or discrimination is the descriptive site okay, heres the speech or conduct at issue and it might be directed at this particular group. The descriptive and imagine a Different Group you might consider at the opposite end of the political spectrum or Something Like that. What findings would you make there . Is an exercise we did and our society has become so polarized we tend to demonize and vilify people with whom we disagree raven understand Higher Education, this marketplace of ideas is what we should be having not a bad thing. James madison wrote about this, they are going to be actions in society with different points of view so i call it muscles but how do you help students figure out how to engage constructively in civil discourse . Is a skill that can be taught and learned. Madison wrote federal, one of the most profound you sent the last few years trying to support and work with we just send a note to comes up. It is a reasonable concern, it is messy. All kinds of humans trying to work through these issues. I went to college and so on and so forth and pushing and pulling, thats what happens at colleges. Its messy and you will have times where things go offkilter and effective in back, that happens so part of the reason i was so excited about the overarching work and noticing there are many institutions blocking and trying to do the work well, try to get people while working through this. He just how to do this and one thing tried to figure out how so yes, you are seeing examples but we also see tons of examples and institutions who want to get it. One of the many sources of frustration is nobody seems to have a way forward, one of the criticisms, a dozen times was what either seems to be stained for members of congress or a sense that we are already doing the best we can. A lot of us this the best we can, we got a real problem so when you talked about the campus, freedom of expression and 15 plus universities leaders working on, what does it entail . What is the call for and how is this going to work . Great question. This work started with a broader motivation. When we have this conversation three years ago, i was seen in conversation from a wide array of institutions, a recognition of two things. One is higher ed lost its way in terms of sensory Citizen Development as part of core mission and we need to do that again. Related to that was this notion the pendulum is swinging too far in terms of higher ed seen as a private good. I pay tuition and get a degree and the skills to get a job, very important great Higher Education colleges and universities have a public good and responsibility. A significant portion is how we go about developing citizens and function effectively and be engaged in society so we needed the pendulum to swing back. The second notion we see is they were in an almost untenable position to take this on. Coming from students, faculty and administration, policy makers, it was so difficult it was hard to move forward and there would be strength in numbers so that is what led us to what was initially civic preparedness. When we decided it was time to go public in january of this year and focus on two or three major projects, the first one we said publicly quest campus call for freedom of expression say we are recognizing you can see the principles of expression they have coalesced around, who want to do it together, demonstrate examples for others, ask others to join us in this journey and recognize this is difficult and there is strength in numbers and moving forward in a path to join about what the motivation and we are lucky to have people like john and lloyd part of this work. Do you want to talk about what it means . The ball heard people say this stuff 20 of times so what are you doing to put peace in this . A couple thoughts James Madison university, one of the things we learned was Civics Education meets roundabouts in this country. Science and math are really important but need to focus on education. Jm you as part of the general Education Program we have a requirement, the American Experience that focuses on understanding americas government, Political Institution and values like freedom of speech and where they come from because students have grown up in the polls that show a large number of students that the democracy isnt necessarily the most important thing so theres a lot of work we have to do with our students. At jm you we talk about what we could do in terms of providing something for all of our students, not just some. We have lots of questions with debate but what are you doing for students in science and across . The first think we have done for us we had a question during orientation for all incoming students and transfer students to talk about the importance of freedom of expression said it was shot before students could respond to questions and realtime and seeks reaction across the entire group of students. Next year were going to try to rise that higher and have facilitated discussions because we want students leading these conversations and develop that responsibility that comes with that. Then we have what we call ambassadors, student democracy the lohse work with the curriculum and also with student organizations can incorporate these values across the curriculum. We have a policy summit or students to come to intimate policy issues of the day to come up with solutions on diverse teams and present them to legislatures and policymakers and that is the example of taking the values out like Political Science or philosophy and history. Academic the permit and units across the entire university so we are working with faculty and students to build these muscles think about debating issues of our time. The citizens president ial group and we learn from one another and Exchange Ideas some of the work weve been doing is similar to what john described and there are things we are doing that are also different. Similar to john, we have a module during orientation which introduced students to the principles and freedom of expression, adults when we talk about freedom of speech freedom of expression, young people dont quite know what that means so starting to educate them as first your students, what it means in the context of Higher Education. I also joined in classrooms, how do you do that . We do it when students arrive on campus all of our students go through a series together and faculty so we could talk about the volume of freedom of expression only here on my campus lacrosse all colleges and universities in indiana bringing students across the state and they can do what you described freedom of expression and civic ambassadors and participating in conversations like this and continue to reinforce the value to graduating young people we know are important to furthering democracy. Let me give you to your earlier question, a couple of ways in which specifically strength in numbers to address these issues. One of the president institutions in addition also said we need to bring faculty and from 18 institutions how to bring contentious issues and develop schools and transfer the skills to students, it is a pilot friday half faculty member great goes into classes. One interesting thing is different in terms of discipline, social sciences and 20 them so an Interesting Group of faculty, there was a pilot weekend because they say its all going together and see where we can go with this. Similarly we need to able to understand how we capture the effectiveness of this work, where are we measuring this work in other ways in which we can create a community to measure this Work Together . We have a whole class of work around measurement on Higher Education campuses around these issues. The comes from being able to have this in we are talking about a couple things the training faculty, i know us as ive taught, i asked to help practice what i preach so they came in and taught our students the art of working in teams and students to pick which side of the debate they were on. It turns out i was valuable and the personalizing helping students, how do i use this research to debate . The other thing empowering students, a lot of us weve been talking about, this. Pressure and students responding to other students last year we had 20 of these forms where students trained to lead hard discussions in Cultural Divide and as a result, it was interesting 90 of all students said they found Common Ground across political differences, 95 said they could express their views and 92 of conservative students felt their views were listened to so we do have good models out there and giving that sense of agency to leave these discussions is an important thing we should be doing. In terms of those students and faculty, what youre touching on crucial and also seems harder. The Surgeon Generals report, americans 18 to 24 said they spent 70 less time interacting with, 40 minutes of day interaction. One of the consequences talking to people and hearing their views and we spent more time on social media and one dimensional and where it is easy to say ridiculous things in positive feedback someone that is the water your students are swimming in and youve got to teach them seven engagement, it seems you really need in terms of the amount of time and coaching, how does that change the way i guess i am skeptical even faculty who knew how to do this, to do it in their seminar, it seems it needs more purposeful changes so curious how you think about that. I will say that generally more pacific, this has to be an institutional priority and it has to happen regularly, it has to happen in student mind. The president and administration has to decide they want to make this an area of focus and time and effort. For any of it to be durable, they need to be part of the culture and you understand this, you need to practice these norms and at scale is what makes it so difficult and one of the greatest values we bring frank this is week can learn from each other and create the scale for nonprofit providers we need to partner with multiple institutions. It is hard. I think it is hard and you referred to messiness and it takes time, its not an instant overnight so we have to be patient. Areas on campus we can lean on and whether it is an institute for ethics, there faculty campuses in their area of expertise and it has to be the entire campus, we are starting with a subset of students, a subset of faculty as you become converts, we will widen that but it has to be one 100 campus effort, we really have to be all in. Certainly the tone from the top matters about the importance of these issues all the time is crucial for students and parents and others to hear but coordination is also important in Civic Engagement leading efforts across the entire campus and provides tools and resources and student organization. One concrete example, the most undervalued leadership skill is active listening and one of the exercises in the class i taught, we brought in medications faculty and the points you made about social media and covid exacerbated this. Students didnt develop the skills and look them in the eye, we practiced in my class this exercise where you are standing a few inches away from someone else, no cell phones, youll get each other eye to eye and you practice for two or three minutes at a time just listening, not responding, listening. You have to pay back what you thought you heard thousand hard exercise. People should try it. It is rare in deciding. There are skills that need to be taught and reinforced and that is something we are trying to do and i would say we dont give our students enough credit. I have seen College Democrats Work Together in all sorts of ways and that is Something Else we encourage among these groups can come together and find Common Ground sponsored events together but the students want a better way and they are anxious to solve problems but sometimes they need good role models. Let them work out the messiness together. I think we are seeing that happened on a lot campuses. Implicate the way faculty are trained and organized. As a onetime academic, i know there was never one sent, i was always struck by the. We know there are campuses as you alluded to but for most faculty and institutions you guys are leading, teaching itself is priority so we have over the past few years and they are promoted and honored typically on research and the committees so is part of this we need to calibrate how we understand the role of faculty and how they interact with students or is that not part of the puzzle here . I would say we are Teaching Institution first, small liberal arts college. I understand what are saying, faculty member would not earn here they werent a great teacher as well. The current environment in which we are in and are faculty as jonathan said reading from the top a firm Academic Freedom and the right of a faculty member to pursue their particular interest and make sure when they speak out we support their ability to free in the way we would for our students and also give faculty the tools to facilitate what challenging discussions in classrooms, challenging topics, faculty are afraid if they Say Something that they are going to end up in a social media web and they are looking to president s to affirm the importance of work they do inside and outside of the classroom. We are an institution that focuses heavily on teaching. You wouldnt learn tenure at amu unless its something you focus on for having said that, we have to pay attention. Faculty of expertise and the specific disciplines, it doesnt mean everybody will be expert in terms of how you incorporate healthy debate and discussion so thats why we have centralized resources. Incoming faculty where we talk about these issues. Many have the center for faculty innovation and that is to provide tools and resources for faculty want to do things like this in the way weve never done it before and one of the great values in part of this campus call to the institute for citizens and scholars as we are sharing resources and ideas with one another across institutions we can share with faculty so one thing that is helpful to start with a coalition you have people that can service those to their colleagues to say great and interesting work and you will find it interesting that is one thing have found helpful, start with the shining stars and learn from them in their offices and resources to help. Its also important on the resource and we provide professional Development Funding for faculty members as we ask them to utilize muscles or teach new courses and focus on Civic Engagement and freedom of expression so we have invested in that way sending a faculty member to the seminar and attend additional seminars so that can be one of those ambassadors you just described. Youre talking about the active listening component for instance. Making a part of the Onboarding Office for students when they join you. Part of this exposure and mentoring is not normally what we think of, is this to think differently about these activities engaged with students, how do you think through the on campus given existing routines and rhythm . I think this question and the one before get that something i am wrestling with, how does this look like scale on campus . Faculty and student life and coaches and so on orientation and Co Curricular and so on and its literally the most challenging exciting part of the work we are engaging on which is while doing this, a wonderful program. We are already doing this but it is a percentage of our students. I am a big fan of lighting a candle, get let. During a back a little bit, one thing where i sit, i raised this question for those of us on the right it feels like campuses are unfriendly and it is much more progressive in general the newest conservative someone we wrestle with these issues, and service letting yourself in the other shoe the data is about 40 of the students they they were on campus but its only about 10 on the abortion list so there seems to be asymmetry so as you work with faculty theres a lot of attention in higher ed and inclusion and belonging and diversity making sure different. [background noises] and perspectives are represented, it doesnt feel the same comes up on ideological conversation, issues about the role of family, how should we think of this . As you work with faculty and think about how to make sure there is room for folks to feel included, is it a challenge if faculty tends to lean and one direction . Is that not a big challenge because it is this approach . Im curious how you think about the challenges. A couple of thoughts i might start with, we have to be deliberate making sure the model the marketplace of ideas we talk about, not just from one side or be an echo chamber so that has to be a multifaceted approach. A couple of examples we have tried to do, hi sponsor the vision. Where we try to bring speakers from different perspectives, we have been deliberate docs because across the political spectrum. Sometimes students have been not happy about speakers at common because they disagree strongly with the speakers might stand for but the students find out you can engage in civil discourse, the speakers always have to answer questions and interact with students and faculty and sometimes they feature debates between people from different points of view and you can have people with different perspectives and can seek Common Ground even though they disagree strongly so part of it is holding up the models explicitly for students the other thing you have to practice what you preach when its hard. I could tell you last year at jmb we had student organizations that brought in anti trans among speakers on that side of the spectrum it was very difficult and painful for students and campus meter but we understood it we talk about protecting free speech and values and not have double standards we need to make sure we could demonstrate you can have speakers come to campus students might disagree with and say their piece and other students protest for their own counter programming, police prepared ahead of time and it all went off just fine and the students were quite mature about it but thats what you have to do, you have to demonstrate when the going gets tough we are going to double down on the values and be thoughtful and intentional. I agree with you and we say we are committed to diversity that means we are committed to diversity at large including ideological diversity political diversity and etc. A couple of things, i think it is important for us tomorrow we can engage in Difficult Conversations to year end a half ago invited to speak to campus whose viewpoints were probably different than my own and he and i shared the stage together and had a great conversation and took questions from the audience so i think we need to role model, we can engage in difficult dialogues and the lasting in terms of the ideological diversity faculty inspire those more conservative but often is not a lucrative salary came up this week in the house the president of diversity about the composition and there was a survey on this particular person and it strikes me that we are very conscious and higher ed today trying to understand representation. What strikes me on something that cuts on big important issues should campuses be interested in trying to make sure theres somebody who might come out differently from the others . Is that part of it or is it fishing for something . I think if you endeavor in getting expression and support faculty that is a faster way of getting at the issue. The faculty process know well, that is generational but how can we do this in a way where we work with faculty weve got and have gone through the incredible progress understanding their issues and so on and ensure we develop on the scales and support knowing we brother back create environments to allow any different perspectives . If we do that, i will be a faster way to get this issue and truly say we are creating places that are searching for truth and trying to prepare citizens to engage in that process. Theres any question that came in, dealing with these challenges, how do we thi about reluctance to engage as temperamental rather than temperamental . What if it is the skills or the nation . And curious how you guys are wrestling with this and the mentoring, hobby separate these two pieces of it . Part of the question youre asking, what is the preparation mechanism before students show up on campus . You and i have a webinar in the k12 division so i would argue getting what they are getting, but they are getting is a student body on social media to understand social media and cancer culture very well and havent had as much practice for any of these issues. I just want to lay that out that yes, they are dealing with the population coming in that doesnt necessarily have much practice so they are laying caps off. I think there are things we can do, but think about the classes that i didnt know where they were on the ideological spectrum because they were assigned readings that covered the gamut in terms of intellectual diversity so there are faculties that teach that. An education we are talking about making points based on fact and evidence and research, you could be an astronomer but if you say the moon is cheese and you cant back up with research, you probably wont get funding. There is Academic Freedom for further set Educational Missions so that something that is important returning to our mission think what is it we are trying to do . One thing i have found getting students to play devils advocate and i mentioned the key debate when students didnt get to choose what side of the debate they were going to be on but they used that evidence and research with what they could. What it did was took them away from personalizing every argument and they realized i need to learn these skills and not about my identity wrapped up in everything i am saying so there specific things like that but you can practice and maybe to a lawyer and i have a training but my best friends and i would argue all the time, i hate to see you guys fight at the tuesday right . Were just having a discussion and sometimes we would play devils advocate just to make sure we cover all the bases. Another version of this i think about is it seems without this weird economy where have a lot of attention making sure free speech on campus in the sense that protest but it feels from the Educational Mission were not necessarily listening or understanding, just chanting at yelling, in classrooms where we find students reluctant to speak up it seems we got backwards and we want students to speak freely or listen freely in classrooms and ill be okay if they were marching and yelling left and right in the campus but again i am curious where you sit and how we get from here today. What an incredible observation i have not thought about that way. When you are chanting and protesting, your largely in a crowd so there is some and amenity to that, not always but there is some and it seems to be the way students think you affect change either through change. Org petition were sitting in the president s office or merging of the streets, thats what this generation believes they need to do to affect change. Being in a classroom is a lot more personal and my colleagues have said what our students are most afraid of, it isnt so much using their voice, it is i happened to get it wrong or i am on the wrong side of what my peers think that i will be forever socially ostracized so a different experience than when all of us in college, trying to out anybody by age but we probably werent in college with social media so we have to be sensitive to the fact that our students are afraid, not so much of us but other peers going back, can we work to create an environment of people feel supported and safe by the way in which they defined it such that they can jump in to this marketplace of ideas. Im glad you mentioned, social media has come up several times and i do think it is one of the big challenges, you think about this practice where shame fellow students with whom they disagree, that kind of thing is very real so something in the classroom may not stay in the classroom. Im not suggesting people go but there are real challenges when it comes to social media, i didnt have that. I wasnt worried someone was secretly recording me or send a message to the world after class that they disagree with what i said that is something we need to talk about and how to create limitations. We could pull the plug on social media, who have healthier classroom conversation. Randomized controlled trial and into economics, west point i forget which. A laptop that significantly worse than students who had to go through, i always think theres something revealing about that. We are about the end of our time together, or to give a chance to share with folks and something to embrace how we start to move in the right direction. Join us, a Great Community for presence to share and institutions to share practice ideas with each other, thats what we need to do, we dont have to reinvent the wheel so that is one reason many of us we need to model the part of an effort like this. Tuesday a dialogue Going Forward so we can figure out how we can do this better than having coordination on campus, we have our center but that really does help make sure it is thought about on a continuing basis. I would just add i would encourage people to commit themselves to these principles as fundamental to our democracy and asking each of us to start with ourselves to be role models how we model respectful engaging difficult dialogues. It could be the last word my friend. There are many for various backgrounds who want to do the right thing. It is a fight for our democracy. Appreciate you making the time today. Thank what is left of it from the institution beginning at 10 00 p. M. Eastern. Or online at cspan. Org. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. We are funded by these Television Companies and more including cox. Friends dont have to be. Cox supports cspan. Giving you a front row seat to democracy. Has speakers pay trut