​Dialogue starts when voices have equal value

It has been a rough week for higher education, witnessing the resignation of a university system president following failures to address concerns regarding racial tension on campus, resignations of professors and staff who failed to acknowledge students concerns of bodily threats and the call for resignation of a residential House Master at Yale following an email students found trivializing and divisive. At Duke, we have suffered frequent reminders that despite enrollment at an elite bastion of higher education, we are not protected from the hate of the broader world. We face ignorant words, real threats and the reality that the comfortable belonging we seek cannot be taken for granted on arrival. In every trial, the valid concerns of students of difference—color, orientation, creed—have been played against the idea of an individual’s rights to free speech, no matter how threatening or invalidating it is and regardless of power relationships. But is free speech really the issue here? Perhaps what is really of concern is the authority that some kinds of speech and not others are awarded.

At Yale, administrators sent an email that advised students to consider the ramifications of certain costume choices for Halloween. Many students welcomed the message, while others were dismayed at the perceived control. Following up, an associate master of a residential house, Erika Christakis, sent an email to students questioning the need for “institutional exercise of implied control over college students” and suggested reflection on the offensiveness of costumes. For many students her email signaled that the discomfort of white students asked to think about not wearing particular costumes was more important than the discomfort of students of difference who might be offended by appropriative holiday garb. In a subsequent confrontation between students and House Master Nicholas Christakis, students argued that institutional racism was downplayed by discussions of free speech and that their feeling of safety in their home was being threatened by Erika Christakis’s call to engage with their perceived objectification. Dr. Christakis disagreed and initially felt personally accused of racism.

This exchange highlights the troubling devolution that often surrounds discussions of race, particularly at educational institutions where young students of color solidify their claims to equal voice. Important points can be diluted when discussions of oppression become discussions of free speech. Students asking to feel safe at home is not extreme or coddling. Though students are young, they are not without the knowledge that some will disagree with them; they have actively chosen not to stay silent in the face of rebuttal from those with much more power. Encouraging selfless activism and appropriate dissent is a goal of academic education, but at the end of the day everyone needs a safe bed to come home to.

Given today’s Community Conversation, we want interactive engagement from faculty and administration on a range of issues, but we want this engagement to acknowledge the position of privilege and power from which educational stewards speak. We want those whose guidance we have come to Duke in search of to recognize that though we have much to learn, there are many lessons we can also teach. We want dialogue that does not presume, does not direct but allows time for reflection. We are also at least as harried as those we ask for change. We ultimately want to be listened to before we are told that the world we were promised in brochures is simply not how things will be. Students should refuse to believe this from anybody, and their refusal will be what brings change.