This is Democracy – Episode 250: College Campuses

[00:00:00] Intro: This is democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you, a podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

[00:00:22] Jeremi: Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy.

This is our two hundred and fiftieth episode. I cannot believe it. Zachary, did you ever think we’d get to 250? Never in my wildest dreams. That means this is just about your 250th poem also. Yes,

[00:00:45] Zachary: perhaps even more. Um, but yeah, this is, this is quite a

[00:00:48] Jeremi: special moment for sure. I agree. I agree. Well, I am so proud to make this podcast every other week with you, Zachary.

It really is a joy. And, and, uh, I learned so much from you and I, I know our listeners learn a lot from you, Zachary, from your poetry and from your questions of our guests today. Uh, listeners, we are going to focus our discussion on college campuses. College campuses have been in the news continuously for the past few months, especially so since October 7th, since the Hamas attack on Israel and the controversies on college campuses over how to talk about these issues, controversies around antisemitism, around Islamophobia.

And around a variety of other issues, of course, there are the longstanding concerns that some people have about wokeism on campuses, about cancel culture, concerns others have about a true intellectual diversity, about academic freedom, a lot to talk about. We’re going to focus today on what democracy means on college campuses, what is really happening on college campuses.

And how we should think about these issues. Zachary and I are gonna talk about this, the two of us for our 250th episode. We’re gonna keep it to the two of us because first of all, we wanted to do that for our 250th episode, but also because we both bring, um, extensive experience on college campuses to this discussion, and we wanted to really explore that.

Zachary’s, of course, a student, a freshman at Yale University, and I am a professor at ut, as you all know, and I’ve been a professor for quite a while at UT and at the University of Wisconsin as well. So. We have a lot to say about what’s happening on college campuses and a lot to talk about. Zachary, you’re going to start us off with your scene setting poem as always.

Uh, what is the title for episode two 50 scene setting poem? Well, I

[00:02:35] Zachary: think, uh, maybe, uh, contrary to tradition, we’ll start with an abstract poem, something to, uh, to ground us. If you can ground through abstraction, uh, this is called to study.

[00:02:46] Jeremi: I like the verb. I like the encouragement to study. Let’s hear it.

It is

[00:02:50] Zachary: perhaps like walking on glass or opening the cuts that should always last. It is to ask the things that make you ache and sit with the words that make your world shake to remember the people. The world has forgot and re learned the stories you thought you’d been taught. It is to learn and never stop learning, to yearn and never stop yearning, to say what you think and think what you say, to listen well to each other each day.

This is what it means to be here in the now, to live with the wise, and struggle with how, to retell and rewrite your own invocation, to feel once again each poetic sensation, all music, each ephemeral wink, each midnight walk, each metallic clink. We love, and listen, and laugh, and somehow we live in the blink of an eye, a history ten thousand years gone.

[00:03:53] Jeremi: with a sigh. Hmm. I really like that, Zachary. It has me, uh, thinking and imagining, um, the different subjects we study on campus and how they fit into the larger flow of history. Um, what were you thinking about when you wrote that poem?

[00:04:10] Zachary: For me, I was, I was trying to understand what makes being on a college campus.

And the four years in, in some of our lives that, that we have the privilege of focusing only on these deep intellectual questions on practical problem solving, and I’m really immersing ourselves in the issues that shape our world. And for me, that means not only drawing. On a tradition, but also asking questions, a new and asking new questions and listening to each other, learning from each other.

I think college campuses, despite all the rhetoric surrounding them still are the sort of bastion of civil discourse in our world of political polarization. And to me, at least, that’s been perhaps a surprise, but also an enormous privilege.

[00:04:55] Jeremi: I think that makes sense. And I would agree. I think every day I see students of different varieties, um, trying to understand and talking through issues that are controversial.

They’re not always fully or even well informed, but I do think there’s an effort to talk and understand, contrary to what some people perceive as happening on college campuses. Why do you think there’s such a disjunction, Zachary, between The public perception of college campuses and the reality. How have you experienced that being someone relatively new to a college campus?

[00:05:28] Zachary: Uh, it’s a, it’s a very hard question. I mean, I’m still struggling with this because the reality is that I can be upset. by the way that my friends, classmates talk about an issue on social media, or even how the university is portrayed in the broader national media. And yet at the same time, I can sit down with the same people who are maybe driving that sort of perspective of campus that is distorted and still have a very meaningful conversation.

And I think the power of a report on or understand. Is being in the same place and being forced to sit across from each other every single day. Um, and interacting with each other on a daily basis, even in the most mundane of situations, because I think it forces one to start from a basis. Of understanding and compassion.

And so I think even when we are at our most heated and we feel most strongly about things, we can still meet over a meal or we can hash out our differences and have a conversation. But obviously that’s not. national news to college students had a meaningful conversation, right? And I think that that that is lost.

And I think it’s also true, honestly, of our of our politics writ large. I think many of us know people I would hope who disagree with us vehemently politically, but with whom we can still have a meaningful friendship and real political conversations.

[00:07:04] Jeremi: Do you think that topics like the war between Israel and Hamas, do you think those topics bring out?

Hate and intolerance or have you seen some of the openness and civility you referred to as well? How would you describe that experience? I know it’s something you’ve thought about something and I’ve talked a lot about

[00:07:24] Zachary: I think it’s a real hodgepodge. I mean, I think the initial reaction is anger. I think a lot of us, certainly I felt angry for weeks afterwards, and there is a sort of retreat to what one knows, but I think there’s also a sense that what we say it’s difficult because I think a lot of us do and a lot of students do speak for as you said an ill informed even ignorant place that sometimes does seem to border on hate or at least seems to enable hateful rhetoric but I do think at the end of the day that like The sense that these world events matter, but also that we have a way of shaping them, I think brings people into the conversation in a way that as we’re going about our everyday lives outside of, of college campuses, as Americans, we don’t necessarily encounter.

And so I think a college campus can breed. The kind of sort of opposition and anger that is maybe sort of like quelled outside where the focus is less on sort of beliefs and positioning, but it can also be a space for people to think radically differently about different things and to sort of like learn to live with that complexity in a way that most of us just sort of paper over in our everyday lives.

[00:08:42] Jeremi: Right. No, I, I agree. I mean, what I would say is the vast majority of my colleagues, scholars, staff, students, undergraduate and graduate, the vast majority of them want to learn, study, as you put it in your poem so well, They want to hear different perspectives. They really want to understand whether it’s an area of expertise for them or an area of public importance, such as the war in the Middle East or Ukraine or American politics.

The vast majority of them want to learn and want to hear different perspectives. That’s what draws people to a university. I think the challenge It’s twofold. The challenge is on the one hand that there are a few individuals, a minority who don’t think that way. And those are the stories. Those are the voices that get covered the most.

But the second issue is, I think sometimes we don’t know how to talk about certain issues. I don’t think it’s as much political as it is ignorance, even among very well educated people about how one can talk about issues that are so emotionally raw. And I think in a certain way, yeah. Our discomfort can sometimes lead us to turn off conversations.

It’s less about cancelling someone. It’s more about being uncomfortable with what someone is saying. Have you experienced that, Zachary?

[00:10:01] Zachary: I think so. I mean, I know that there are certain people on campus that I’m never going to have a conversation with. a meaningful conversation about Israel Palestine with, but I also feel like there are a lot of people who I would never have expected to be able to have a meaningful, productive conversation with who, with whom I’ve been able to do so.

And I think that the value of a college education is that it. It is, is that it puts you around people who think differently and forces you to actually take their beliefs seriously and, and to meet them where they are at. And I’ve learned over the past few weeks. That, that can actually, I think, help at least resolve some of that anger and certainly goes a long way towards sort of reducing the ignorance and the sort of emphasis on empty rhetoric, which I think you hinted at.

Um, yeah.

[00:10:58] Jeremi: And I do think most people want to learn. I don’t think most people on a college campus are there. To, uh, espouse a particular ideology. I don’t think there’s an urge to indoctrination. I think that’s a totally misguided perception. Most of the people I know who work, live, spend time studying on college campuses, they’re there because there are a set of topics, or maybe even a small group of topics, if it’s the humanities, literature, uh, engineering, whatever it is that they’re intensely interested in and they want to study and learn about those topics, they’re not.

In a setting to indoctrinate and that perception that belief that people are trying to brainwash others and create automatize, uh, it troubles me because it’s so far from the reality I

[00:11:44] Zachary: agree. I think for a really good example of this is actually has to do with religion on campus because I don’t think there’s really a religious space.

In this country, quite like a college campus, because there are so many different religious groups that people are very passionate about, or maybe that people feel very disconnected from. But there’s a sort of emphasis on pluralism that even people who have strongly held beliefs or moral systems are willing to talk with others, are willing to hold sort of interfaith events or open their doors to others.

And this to me was very surprising, but I think it’s a much healthier approach. And that sort of emphasis on learning and being open openness is a sort of key to learning does not get portrayed in the media at all. And I think it’s sort of the exact opposite of indoctrination, but I would say that like what has really surprised me pleasantly about college students, professors, others is that.

emphasis or default to openness and to wanting to learn more, not just, not just being willing to passively go along, but actively wanting to get involved, to learn more and to interact with people who are

[00:12:51] Jeremi: different. Why do you think, Zachary, there has been so much controversy in particular around Israel, Palestine, Hamas issues?

Obviously, there is a terrible set of events. Uh, that began, uh, actually obviously long before October of 2023, but certainly came to a head with the horrible Hamas attack on innocent Israelis in on October 7th. And then obviously Israel’s retaliation for that those events, though. It’s not only those events that have brought this out.

What do you see? Do you see problems of anti Semitism and Islamophobia on college campuses? How do you think about this?

[00:13:28] Zachary: Yes, I mean, I do. I do see anti Semitism on campus. I do see Islamophobia. I think I was just talking with a Muslim friend of mine today. I mean, his fellow Muslim students are afraid to wear their hijab on campus.

And I know I have actually a very good friend who does not feel comfortable wearing his yarmulke on campus anymore. And instead wears a baseball cap. And so I do think there’s, there, there is a way in which the rhetoric and the sort of ignorant rhetoric creates an environment in which people do not feel comfortable outwardly displaying who they are, which I think is very dangerous.

And, and, and I do think that the media has captured that accurately. I think the difference is that when people aren’t meeting like protest to counter protest, but instead across a table in a dining hall, or across a seminar, a seminar room, or in a lecture hall, I think it’s, it’s a radically different inter kind of interaction that It makes the kind of sort of little spurts of protest and the sort of like very confrontational interactions that that we’ve seen really spike in the past few weeks since October 7th that makes them really more an anomaly than that the, the rule.

So for example, I think there was a lot of coverage of a very big and what I found offensive rally, a pro Palestine rally on the New Haven green, which is just outside my window two or three weeks ago. And there was a lot of coverage of that, but what they missed was that that same week, there was a vigil for those killed in Israel at which numerous Muslim students showed up.

And there was a vigil for Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza. And at that event, there were numerous Jewish students who came. And so I do think there is a sense on campus that, that, that people share a lot and actually have, do even on these issues where we disagree the most and where it becomes an issue of identity or worldview, that there are actually some basic things that we can agree on, such as mourning for those innocent lives that have been lost.

[00:15:37] Jeremi: Do you think, Zachary, that the approaches that have been advocated so far for dealing with anti Semitism and Islamophobia, do you think they’re effective? For example, some would like to ban particular groups. Others would like to ban certain speech. What are your thoughts on that? I,

[00:15:55] Zachary: I don’t think that banning speech or particular groups is the right attitude.

I’ve been very impressed, for example, with the Yale administration. I think they’ve responded very well. They’ve posted extra protection at the Jewish Life Center. And also, at least we’ve been told, I don’t know for a fact, but at the, at the Muslim Student Association events. And we’ve also, uh, seen a lot of sort of rhetoric of compassion and dialogue on campus.

But I think the thing that made this all possible was the fact that our administration pretty much immediately after the attack on Israel.

And so I think it is actually appropriate for the, for university administrators to take a clear stance on that kind of violence. They don’t necessarily need to pick a political or policy stance. Like I think it would be very inappropriate for a college administrator to call for a ceasefire or condemn the idea of a ceasefire.

But I do think that university administrators have to take a stand and that not taking a stand is also a way of taking a stand. So I think that that was really helpful. Thank you. And then also just encouraging people to, to meet in non confrontational settings to talk about these issues. Yes. Yeah. I don’t, I think a friend of mine, Justin Crosby wrote a piece in the Yale Daily News lately about this.

And I think the point is that what really has to be recognized is that there’s a lot of pain on campus from both Muslim students, Jewish students, and, and others who care deeply about these political issues. And. that one group’s pain doesn’t exclude the others and that there has to be a way to sort of talk through these issues.

And that a college campus is a place to talk, not necessarily a place to grandstand, if you will. Um, so I think obviously like no protests should be prevented or banned, but. University administrators should encourage real dialogue

[00:17:51] Jeremi: on campus. I agree. I think what’s courageous is not grandstanding for one position or another, nor hiding behind a cloak of neutrality and saying nothing.

I think courage is actually doubling down on the mission of the university. Which is to encourage education, dialogue and exploration and sponsoring events where different voices are heard and setting guidelines, but guidelines that are designed only to prohibit disrespectful, hateful activities, but to encourage speech in the broadest sense beyond that.

And I think, I think few universities have been courageous enough to do that. What do you

[00:18:31] Zachary: make of those on? This is maybe a different issue, but I think it’s related. Those who do call for a sort of suppression of speech on campus, but often those are the same people who complain about a lack of free speech on campus.

I’m thinking in particular of conservatives in Texas or around the country who will sort of, I don’t know, from my perspective at least, cry wolf on the lack of conservative thought on campus. But then advocate for the suppression of dissenting thought. I

[00:19:01] Jeremi: was I was going to make it precisely that point.

I mean, I think it’s it exposes a hypocrisy, a dangerous hypocrisy when, as you say, and this has certainly been the case around the University of Texas, when people spend months and years complaining. That we aren’t allowing enough, uh, conservative speakers to come to campus. And let’s be very specific.

Many of these critics of the University of the University of Texas and other universities, they, they don’t think it’s right that we, um, don’t generally invite, uh, speakers who are anti LGBT. And we don’t generally invite speakers, um, who, um, are, uh, believers that. Climate change is not occurring. Uh, we don’t generally invite speakers who believe the bible is a guided guideline for politics.

Uh, those tend to be opinions that are out of the mainstream on college campuses. Many have criticized us not for broadening the range of discussion to include anti LGBT voices, to include Anti environmentalist voices, uh, but those same individuals, as you point out, Zachary, now want us to repress Palestinian voices of certain kinds and various others.

And I think that reinforces why free speech has to be a principle. I think it’s fair to say. That, uh, the university should do everything it can to make sure all groups feel respected, but the university should not be choosing winners and losers in the dialogue, and the university should be encouraging as wide a discussion as possible, so long as there is no violence or direct personal harassment of individuals that occurs, so I, I, I’m against doxing people, I’m against doxing Personally assaulting people in any way that prohibits them from conducting their work on campus.

But I think it has to be a space where people are tough enough and encouraged to engage in sometimes uncomfortable conversations about issues. Um, I want to hear and see all views represented, and I think that has to be our default. position and that’s what academic freedom is all about as well. I want colleagues of mine to have controversial opinions.

I want to disagree with them. Um, I want their opinions to be based on research and thought. I can’t police the quality of their research, but I, we should be policing that no one intimidates. Certain groups of people not to voice their opinions, um, that that’s going to create discomfort at times, but I think learning requires a little discomfort.

Don’t you agree? I

[00:21:30] Zachary: do. And I think that’s one of the points of our podcast is to force listeners or or to hopefully gladly bring them along on the journey of intellectual discovery that that brings different ideas together. I mean, I don’t think you. We would pretend that we are totally perfect bringing together a balanced set of voices, but we certainly bring together a wide diversity of voices and and perspectives that I think are missing from National media coverage and from our understanding of these issues that affect us immediately or maybe seem very far away.

I think that’s one of the goals of our podcast and something we should definitely continue in the next 250 episodes.

[00:22:12] Jeremi: Yes, yes, I agree. I think and I hope that in some ways our podcast models the kind of civil open conversation you discussed at the start and in your wonderful poem, the kinds of conversations that intentionally, as your poem does each episode, take us out of our set ways of thinking and force us to broaden our minds and see something different.

And then engaging in thoughtful discussion based on preparation, based on real research, based on real thinking, not off the cuff, seat of the pants, uh, or ideological argumentation, but argumentation that’s based on deep thought and, and, uh, a deep analysis of the issues. But argumentation and discussion that’s civil and that goes in directions that aren’t predetermined in any way.

I think that’s important. How could we bring more of that, more of that ethos from our podcast that we’ve tried to manifest Zachary? How do you think we could bring that onto college campuses?

[00:23:09] Zachary: I mean, to be honest, I don’t think it’s something that needs to be. artificially imposed on college campuses. I think it happens naturally.

I think what, what has to happen, honestly, is you need to have a diverse student body, which has gotten harder in recent years. And you need to force people from, from different groups and different experiences together. But I also think that happens naturally a lot on our college campuses. I think what we really need to do is get more people on college campuses and in the classroom and in a space where they can experience.

that kind of learning and focus on

[00:23:40] Jeremi: study. Yeah, I just spoke today at the local community college to a history course that one of my graduate students is teaching there. And what struck me was this is a very different student body from the student body at the University of Texas or somewhere else. But what struck me was the hunger for learning.

And the opportunity that can be provided to so many more students if we’re willing to create opportunities and spaces for them. I think one of the real tragedies of our time, Zachary, is that there are people out there discouraging young people from going to college. Um, and that’s not to say our colleges are perfect, but it is to say, as you’ve already reflected upon, uh, that our college campuses offer, uh, one of the best opportunities available in the world for engagement.

Uh, with different points of view for thoughtful, civil conversation that certainly doesn’t happen on social media and for a depth of discovery to really explore issues by hearing different perspectives and hearing them not in sound bites, but hearing them in a deeper, more thoughtful, more extended way.

I don’t think any other institution offers that. And it doesn’t have to be a fancy, famous place. In fact, some of the less fancy, less famous places might do this the best of all. It seemed to be happening at the community college here in Austin. And I’d like to see more people connecting to universities and supporting that endeavor.

And it saddens me that so many people who claim they want free speech and thoughtful discussion are turning away from our universities.

[00:25:15] Zachary: Yeah, I agree. That’s very well

[00:25:18] Jeremi: said. And maybe it’s because we spend too much time talking about the wrong things. I’d like to see us, and I’d like to see our university leadership talk a little less about football, a little less about how much money is being raised, and a little less about the latest invention, as impressive as that is, and a little more about the kind of society we want to and the kinds of civil conversations.

Even without full agreement, even without a predetermined outcome, but civil, thoughtful conversation, the kind that we need in our democracy. I’d really like to see campuses doing that. Um, do you see a way to encourage more of that, Zachary?

[00:25:55] Zachary: I mean, I think we’ve touched on it. I think I think the path is conversation and real conversation dialogue on campus.

We need to stop thinking that we’re going to get a sense of college campuses without. being on them or really engaging with the students there. And I think that to that extent we should allow communities to make mistakes sometimes and to sort of muddle their way through a lot of these problems because they’re not easy and sometimes it takes time to find the right answer.

And so to that extent, as much as like media attention on university campuses is a part of what makes them great. I think we also need to recognize that these are our communities and that people are still connected and in a process of healing and grieving and, and hurting, uh, all at the same time, in the same way that, that we are in our neighborhoods or in our cities.

And

[00:26:45] Jeremi: I think that’s probably a perfect note to close on. I think you said that so well, Zachary, and it connects so beautifully to your poem today and to the full range of the 250 episodes we’ve covered and the next 250 that we hope to produce over the next few years. Uh, if you’ll continue to do this with me, Zachary, which I hope you will.

We’ll see. We’ll see. I think what’s crucial is, just as you said, engaging and talking. We began 250 episodes ago with Franklin Roosevelt’s admonition that every generation writes a new chapter in the book of democracy, but they can only write that chapter, he implied, if they’re in the game, if they’re willing to participate.

And participating doesn’t mean shouting. It means rolling up your sleeves and connecting with people and trying to find ways to move forward, even in dark times like our own today. And, uh, universities offer an enormous potential for that and criticizing them or glorifying them, it seems, doesn’t help that process.

It’s getting involved. And whether you’re a student listening, Or a scholar or a citizen who’s graduated long time, a long time ago from a university or someone who’s never been to a university. There are ways to get involved. And, uh, if there’s anything our podcast is consistently about, it’s about getting involved in conversations to move society forward by looking at the past and thinking about how the past can better inform and better open opportunities for our present.

And we all can do that. Those of us who are fortunate enough to be on college campuses and those who are not, but have the opportunity just through their own efforts to connect with young people and connect with educated groups. So please listeners, if you do anything at all, Over the holidays beyond, uh, resting up and turning away from the news, please turn toward new groups of people to talk to, engage in new ways, find new audiences to converse with, uh, about these issues and open, difficult, but civil conversations.

Zachary, I want to close with you. Any, any final thoughts you have? Uh,

[00:28:47] Zachary: just ditto. I would say that the conversation is the race.

[00:28:51] Jeremi: Ditto. How 20th century of you ditto. Go ahead. What are your final thoughts?

[00:28:56] Zachary: Conversation, I think, is the way forward and, and I don’t know, I think, uh, we should have a little more confidence in our young people than, than maybe we do

[00:29:04] Jeremi: today.

Well, I think hearing you, Zachary, gives many listeners confidence in our young people. I hear that quite often from people who, uh, listen to our podcast, how, how you give them hope for a new generation of thoughtful, informed, and caring, uh, individuals. Uh, Zachary, thank you for making 250 episodes with me and thank you for committing to making more.

Thank you. Yeah, at least 251. Okay, good. At least 250 more. Maybe we’ll stop at 500. I love it. I love it. Thank you, uh, most of all to our loyal listeners. And before we sign off, we should also, uh, because we don’t do this with every episode, we should thank those who make this episode and make the work we do possible.

Zachary, you want to say something about our amazing liberal arts instructional technology staff? Well, I’ll let you

[00:29:50] Zachary: list off all the names. Since I’m not in Austin, I don’t see them all the time. But, uh, The LAITS studio at UT, the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Studio, is fantastic and they make all of this possible.

They do all the magic behind the scenes that turns this conversation across a thousand miles into something that you guys want to listen to. So, thank you.

[00:30:10] Jeremi: And, uh, There are too many names for me to listen because it’s such a lot list because it’s such a large team, uh, but I do want to make sure we thank each and every person who has and is and will work on our episode.

We are only able to make these episodes as frequently as we do because we have an extraordinary team of full time and student workers, uh, who not only convert our recording into a podcast for every episode. but also clean it up and help guide us in this work. And, uh, they are part of the machinery of democracy.

They are part of making our society better. So thank you to our listeners. Thank you to our staff and all those who make this possible. And, uh, we will go on to, uh, episode 251 through 500 and many more. And let’s hope our democracy improves as we continue to talk. Thank you for joining us. For this episode of This Is Democracy.

[00:31:15] Outro: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts ITS Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris Codini. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find This Is Democracy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. See you next time.