Letter to the Editor

The recent and deeply ugly disturbances on campus involving threats and racial slurs have coincided with a national wave of dissatisfaction with college culture. So far, everyone at Duke has done his duty.

Dutifully outraged students have dutifully presented demands. The Chronicle Editorial Board dutifully harrumphed for a full week, bless them. The administration dutifully performed the Sacred Rite of Listening.

President Brodhead, reasonably, will heed the calls to "do something" so that he can get back to work. This "something" seems likely to be the insertion of a few warmly sensitive requirements into the curriculum: "Structures of Power in Society," or something.

This works fine for the administration, current students and alumni like myself. We will not have to take it. But, out of charity toward future students, we must resist this terrible idea.

No one believes these courses would realistically amend even local power structures. At best, there will be a Sensitivity version of Writing 101, to be grumbled through before the real classes. But at worst, some unsuspecting innocents might actually take them to heart.

We can see the result of the sensitivity regime from Yale to Claremont: silence. Not only does it condemn dissent; it condemns agreement. As a slew of resigned administrators can attest, even would-be supporters must weigh each word to avoid that dread pronouncement: It's not what you said, it's how you said it.

Externally, this is bad enough, but what if it's internalized? What if the silence were enforced not merely between students, but within them? What if they took Sensitivity 101 seriously?

If you learn to test thoughts on focus groups before expressing them, you will not express many thoughts. You cannot call Hamlet a noble or cowardly man if you are afraid to call him a man. You cannot reinvent the microchip while obsessed with the microaggression.