In Wars of Words, a Role for Rules of Etiquette

I am always being told by outsiders how privileged I am to be an academic. People assure me that I don't have to work as hard as other professionals. They tell me that academics get to spend their time with friendly, supportive, like-minded people. If only they knew what they were talking about. I doubt that any of the folks who still believe in the ivory tower have been near a university in recent years. Have any of them ever attended a faculty meeting?

I suspect that if they were to spend as little as one day in the company of today's academics, they would rush back to the relative civility of their operating rooms, law courts, and stockholders' meetings. They don't seem to be aware that nowadays, faculties at many institutions are busy fighting wars -- over the curriculum, of course, as in the "culture wars" -- but also over affirmative action, hiring and tenure policies, faculty governance, even campus perks.

Weary after several years of warring over the literary canon, affirmative action, and the like, some scholars and administrators have called for more civility on campus. But we need to get beyond such abstract calls and look more closely at the rhetorical strategies used in campus battles if we are to improve the current, frequently low and unproductive, level of debate.

As in other wars, normal rules of conduct have been abandoned. Decorous pomposity has been replaced by intimidation, name- calling, and sometimes even threats of lawsuits or other legal actions. In the culture wars, for example, we find on one side professors who still believe that universities should be dedicated to the communication of knowledge, and that from such knowledge constructive social policies will be derived. On the other side are professors who believe (not without reason) that, because knowledge and conventional modes of teaching so far have not succeeded in curing the ills of our society, universities should become more directly concerned with making social policy.

The aim of conventional war is to disable the enemy's armed forces. But since in our wars the weapons are words, each side seeks to control and contain the enemy's speech and writing, in the hope of silencing him or her altogether. Because academics are used to overseeing the discussions in their classrooms, nothing seems to pain them so much as having their opinions contradicted. Even though the courts have found that campus speech codes violate the First Amendment rights of both faculty members and students, attempts are still being made to install and enforce them on some campuses.

Another strategy for silencing discussion is intellectual intimidation. In its mildest form, it is used to reveal another person's ignorance and to defend academic turf. These days people are prepared to say what our predecessors were content merely to think: "What business is it of yours? What do you know about my subject?" Such expressions of territorial hostility have been effective. Years ago, there were vigorous discussions about the content of courses, and substantive questions were raised. Today, the curriculum often is approved with little discussion. Nobody wants to ask a question, only to be told that he doesn't begin to understand what he is talking about. Part of the trouble is that faculty members today are more specialized professionally. Few humanists now have the qualifications to question the need for a particular biology course. But in addition to such legitimate concerns, faculty members also seem reluctant to question whether an academic's membership in particular ethnic, gender, or religious groups automatically confers professional understanding of those subjects.

When it comes to the question of the university's role in society, academics bring in the heavy artillery. The favored mode of intellectual intimidation then relies on charges that, in today's university, weigh even more heavily on the academic conscience than mere ignorance: sexism and racism. A suggestion that one of these words might be applied to oneself seals the lips of even a normally voluble faculty member. No one dares to question admissions or hiring policies, even when evidence is cited to show that the policies have not necessarily succeeded in achieving the high goals that we have set for them.

If intellectual intimidation doesn't work, debate can be stifled on these and other highly charged issues simply by claiming that statistics or, indeed, facts do not matter. Someone will pronounce in ringing tones that it has been shown that how one sees reality is largely determined by the norms of one's own culture, and that people from different backgrounds will see reality in different ways. Such claims, especially when stated at length and with sufficient complexity, are not necessarily easy to contradict.

If someone tries to insist that there is such a thing as objective reality, opponents need only resort once again to the most potent of charges: sexism and racism. Isn't the construction of scientific argument a procedure that was perfected by dead white males, the ancient Greek philosophers? Aren't there other equally valid ways of knowing developed by other cultures? Isn't anyone who ignores those other ways of knowing demonstrating insensitivity and Eurocentrism? Adepts at condemning the use of reason often cite theories, especially in unfamiliar subject areas. As a result, their interlocutors appear naive as well as ignorant.

In the few cases in which these tactics fail, personal abuse may be the next strategy. A speaker will proclaim as loudly as he can that his questioners' motives are evil, and that the questioners themselves (and not just their words) are sexist and/or racist. If anyone disputes the charges and asks for evidence, the speaker can reply that facts really do not matter, because what the opponent has said, done, or written could be used by sexists or racists to prevent desirable social progress. That last line of attack is usually decisive. How can anyone defend himself against what might possibly be done with what he might be understood possibly to have said?

One particularly effective strategy is to confuse the part with the whole. If someone criticizes an aspect of a course, its defender need only claim that the questioner is trying to eliminate the entire program.

How do I know about this particular arsenal of weaponry? All of it has been used against me, at one time or another, both on my own campus and at other universities, because I have been critical of the way ancient Mediterranean history is being taught in certain Africana-studies departments and academic programs. Of course, I don't like being called names. But what worries me far more is that we academics have made so little effort to use our debates for the purposes of education.

What can anyone, either students or other faculty members, learn from intimidation or ad hominem abuse, except to avoid debate, and, as far as possible, not even to try to think about controversial issues? As educators, we ought to want people to learn something from our controversies, and, if at all possible, to educate each other, so that our discussions progress to some better mutual understanding. For example, we need to find ways to make the curriculum more inclusive without distorting the facts and without doing injustice to traditional programs. We need to eliminate discrimination without infringing individual faculty members' academic freedom.

We might begin by considering the role of etiquette. All may be fair in war, but academic wars are only metaphorical ones, after all. Because they are, in reality, only intense debates, they could be conducted in an orderly fashion. In the past, even independent-minded professors willingly abided by the rules of parliamentary procedure laid out in Robert's Rules of Order. Although complex and cumbersome, the rules (if followed) guarantee that everyone will have an opportunity to speak, and insure that whatever action is taken has won the approval of the majority of people present.

In today's rough-and-tumble faculty meetings, we still observe the procedures for voting prescribed in Robert's Rules, where formal motions are proposed and then approved or defeated by majority vote. But we seem to have forgotten that the manual also prescribes an etiquette of debate. It mandates that during a debate, whatever one actually thinks, one must always show respect for one's colleagues. That is why Robert's Rules advises using formal language that distances us from the particular and the personal, titles instead of first names, and complex statements instead of swearwords. If we display respect, we will be less likely to make assumptions about our colleagues' motives. Rather, we will concentrate on the substance of their argument. If the argument is bad (which it would be if it were truly sexist or racist), eventually someone -- even other academics -- will be sure to notice it. If we allow several points of view to be presented, and listen respectfully to all of them, then all listeners will at least have the power to make educated decisions.

In our preoccupation with larger societal issues, today's academics seem to have forgotten that the fundamental purpose of debate is to provide information. The ancient Greeks (among others) were aware of this. Socrates taught by asking questions of an interlocutor, treating him or her with civility. Plato wrote dialogues, not treatises, because he had learned from Socrates that questions and answers are probably the most effective means of getting other people to understand complex problems.

Socrates sought not to impose his arguments, but rather to persuade people to agree with him, even if the process took hours or days. Like other Athenian citizens, he had spent many hours of his adult life participating in the public assembly. He had listened to the Greek dramas, with their intense debates, and had seen their resolutions on the stage. In conducting his dialogues, he was continuing the process of debate, but without the emotionalism and ignorance that, in his view, had brought about the decline of Athens.

That is exactly what we are supposed to be doing in universities -- even in faculty meetings. Instead, we seem content either to rage at each other or to sit on the sidelines, constrained by our failure to observe the easy and supportive rules of etiquette that make productive debate possible. If we do not change the structure and tone of our current battles, we will surely find that our minds, and our students' minds, have been corrupted by our assertions and our silence.

Mary Lefkowitz, a professor of classical studies at Wellesley College, is the author of Not Out of Africa (BasicBooks, revised edition, 1997).