Ep. 223: Teaching conservatism on a liberal college campus

Summary

Summary of Episode 223: Teaching Conservatism on a Liberal College Campus

So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast
Host: Nico Perino
Guest: Professor Eitan Hirsch, Political Science Professor at Tufts University
Release Date: August 29, 2024

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Introduction

In Episode 223 of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, host Nico Perino engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Professor Eitan Hirsch of Tufts University. The discussion centers on the challenges and dynamics of teaching conservatism in predominantly liberal academic environments. Drawing insights from a Boston Magazine article titled "A Conservative Thought Experiment on a Liberal College Campus," the episode delves into issues of viewpoint diversity, academic freedom, and the evolving political landscape on college campuses.

Building a Course on American Conservatism

Professor Hirsch explains his motivation for creating a unique course on American conservatism at Tufts University. Noticing a lack of exposure to conservative viewpoints among his students, he sought to bridge this gap by designing a curriculum that explores contemporary public policy topics through a conservative lens.

Eitan Hirsch [06:34]: "I realized on many areas of public policy, students were just like majoring in political science and not really thinking about a full range of viewpoints."

His course covers a variety of subjects, including family policy, religion, welfare politics, capitalism regulation, guns and criminal justice, and affirmative action. By introducing these topics from conservative perspectives, Hirsch aims to foster a more balanced and comprehensive understanding among his students.

Navigating a Predominantly Liberal Campus

The conversation highlights the stark contrast in political ideologies between faculty and students at New England colleges. A 2016 study cited by the Boston Magazine article revealed that liberal professors outnumber conservative ones by a ratio of 28 to 1, a disparity that has likely widened over the years.

Eitan Hirsch [02:08]: "I don't know how to describe myself. I mean, I guess that sounds about right."

Despite these challenges, Hirsch reflects on his experience as a right-leaning centrist in a largely liberal academic setting. He notes that his political stance is nuanced, often aligning with students on certain issues while diverging on others.

Addressing Contention in the Classroom

Professor Hirsch discusses strategies for managing controversial topics in his classroom. He emphasizes the importance of introducing complex issues, such as the Citizens United case, to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of public policy debates.

Eitan Hirsch [00:40]: "Freedom of faith, fundamental rights, freedom of conscience, academic freedom, freedom of press, and the right to listen."

To foster a respectful and open dialogue, Hirsch incorporates trigger warnings and sets clear expectations for discourse. He introduces sensitive topics like circumcision to illustrate the personal stakes involved in political debates and to encourage students to engage thoughtfully.

Eitan Hirsch [10:29]: "Introduce that topic just to say like that's what every issue is basically like welcome to the club."

Institutional Neutrality and Campus Culture

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the concept of institutional neutrality in universities. Hirsch advocates for schools to offer diverse "brands," allowing institutions to align with specific values while maintaining a respectful environment for all viewpoints.

Eitan Hirsch [20:08]: "Universities should and can have a diversity of brands and that some of them that want to be like First Amendment style, free speech, private schools can have that brand."

He critiques the current DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) frameworks for sometimes excluding ideological diversity, particularly in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hirsch underscores the necessity for universities to balance moral commitments with empirical discussions to accommodate all perspectives.

Challenges Post-October 7th

The conversation shifts to recent events at Tufts University following October 7th, where tensions around the Israel-Palestine conflict became highly charged. Professor Hirsch expresses concern over the lack of support for conservative or pro-Israel student groups and the celebration of Hamas by certain student organizations.

Eitan Hirsch [25:47]: "If you're celebrating Hamas on October 8th and saying they're like these are, these are creative strategies, I think it's the equivalent to someone who's like a pro KKK person."

He advocates for stricter enforcement of campus norms to prevent the disruption of events and promote respectful discourse, suggesting that universities possess the means to address such cultural issues effectively.

The Role of Faculty and Academic Freedom

Addressing the fears of faculty regarding academic freedom, Hirsch highlights the challenges professors face in expressing diverse viewpoints without risking their reputations or job security. He shares personal experiences of encountering institutional pressures and the impact of public shaming on academic practices.

Eitan Hirsch [41:30]: "Faculty were calling each other out on like, Twitter if they didn't have the right number of female authors or minority authors on their syllabi."

Hirsch emphasizes the importance of support systems like FIRE’s Faculty Legal Defense Fund, which offers legal assistance to faculty members navigating disciplinary processes.

Looking Forward: Cultivating Civic Leaders

Towards the end of the episode, Hirsch discusses his initiatives to expand spaces for ideological diversity on campuses. He is in the early stages of developing programs aimed at diversifying curricula and speaker series, intending to cultivate civic leaders adept at navigating debates and disagreements.

Eitan Hirsch [42:34]: "I am at the beginning stages of trying to build something a little bit bigger in terms of creating space on our campus, but also as a model for other campuses to diversify curricula, to diversify speaker series to help students develop into civic leaders who are accustomed to debate and disagreement."

Conclusion

Episode 223 of So to Speak provides an insightful exploration of the complexities involved in fostering conservative thought within liberal academic institutions. Professor Eitan Hirsch's experiences and perspectives shed light on the broader challenges of achieving viewpoint diversity and maintaining academic freedom in today's polarized educational landscape. The episode underscores the critical need for balanced discourse and institutional support to navigate contentious issues effectively.

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Transcript

[Eitan Hirsch]

Just to take an example from a class on elections, you know, I have three lectures on money in politics, and almost all the students have heard of Citizens United and they almost had all formed opinions. And then we like, read the court case, including the dissents, and we have a discussion about it. And every student is like, oh, I guess it's a little complicated. I never thought about it. And, you know, that's a great part about being a teacher. You get to say, like, oh, here you thought this thing was simple, and it's actually quite complicated. But I realized on many areas of public policy, students were just like, majoring in political science and not really thinking about a full range of viewpoints. Freedom of faith, fundamental rights, freedom of.

[Nico Perino]

Conscience, academic freedom, freedom of press, and.

[Eitan Hirsch]

The right to listen.

[Nico Perino]

You're listening to so to Speak, the Free Speech Podcast, brought to you by fire, the foundation for individual rights and expression. Welcome back to so to Speak, the Free Speech Podcast, where every other week we we take an uncensored look at the world of free expression through personal stories and candid conversations. I am, as always, your host, Nico Perino. Our guest is Eitan Hirsch. He's a professor of political science at Tufts University and the author of the book Politics Is for How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action and Make Real Change. I first heard about Professor Hirsch in March when I read a long form article in Boston Magazine about a class he was teaching on American conservatism. The article, entitled A Conservative Thought Experiment on a Liberal College Campus, raised interesting questions about viewpoint diversity in higher ed, our ability to talk across lines of difference, and how to address contentious current events in a scholarly environment. As students returned to campus during an election year, with conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle east raging, I thought getting a professor on the show to discuss how he navigates these issues in real time in front of students and in a classroom environment might help us as citizens understand the current environment in higher ed and perhaps point a way forward. Professor Hirsch, welcome onto the show.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Thank you for having me.

[Nico Perino]

So according to this Boston Magazine article, you describe yourself as a right leaning centrist. Would you say that's accurate?

[Eitan Hirsch]

I don't know how to describe myself. I mean, I guess that sounds about. About right.

[Nico Perino]

This would make you a sort of outlier on college campuses, particularly in New England. The article cites the statistics from a 2016 study that found that liberal professors outnumber conservative professors 28 to 1. And I'm sure that delta between 28 to 1 has only gone up in the intervening eight years. What's it like being a right leaning professor on a New England college campus? Is it as terrible as the headlines would suggest?

[Eitan Hirsch]

Look, I mean I think like a lot of, a lot of people my politics are, are all over the place and have changed as I've aged.

[Nico Perino]

Join the club.

[Eitan Hirsch]

My politics are pretty downstream from religious commitments and I would say that issue by issue. It's hard to predict. You know, I mean it's easy for me to predict. I think it's, it's hard for students to kind of gauge where I am politically on some issues I think I probably aligned with them on the liberal side and on many issues I'm not. But I think being just a religious person of any faith on campus is increasingly of a rarity. And being kind of out of step with the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic party also puts me in a minority position. So I think like even, you know, I think if you're like in Massachusetts I might describe as like a Charlie Baker Republican that is, you know, something, or Mitt Romney Republican. You know, that would put you in the middle of the country, but that would put you to the far right of a university community.

[Nico Perino]

So among faculty though, does that even put you at a greater outlier? Is the student body at Tufts and other New England colleges more diverse than what you might find in a faculty environment politically in regards to like political science in particular as well, which I imagine is different than what you might find in economics or sociology.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Yes, I mean the way I look, I don't really know my colleagues politics but I suspect that if it tracks with other universities, which I suspect does that the humanities like you know, history and anthropology are, you know, almost overwhelmingly or entirely lefty. And then in the social sciences, sciences, political science, economics, the more math oriented social sciences you have a little bit more diversity and then even more as you go to the sciences and engineering. Look, it's hard to know. We don't really talk about politics even in our political science department that much I don't know everyone's views about everything. I think by the fact that I teach this course that I do some public facing research related to issues related to the Jewish community, that I'm now the advisor to the Student Federalist Society chapter. I think probably people make some guesses about where I am politically and they might be guessing right or wrong, I don't know. But, but, but I guess it's not, it's not a top of mind that people are evaluating each other's politics as far as I can tell.

[Nico Perino]

Why did you decide to become an academic?

[Eitan Hirsch]

Mostly because my politics are idiosyncratic. You know, like I, I, my first job in politics was as a Senate page, a Republican Senate page for John Chafee in Rhode island, who was like the left wing of the Republican Party. I worked after college for a year at the dlc, the Democratic Leadership Council, which was like the right wing of the Democratic Party. And, and I kind of thought that if I love politics, I love the idea that we have to settle our disputes through elections and policy making. But when you don't have such a strong partisan or ideological bone, it's sort of hard to fit in. As a young 20 something trying to get involved in politics, where would you go? And so academia seemed to me to be a place where I could go and I could have whatever views I wanted to have and not have a boss, most importantly.

[Nico Perino]

So let's talk about this course that you have at Tufts then. That was the basis for this Boston magazine article. It's a class on American conservatism. And the article makes it sound like this isn't a sort of course that you find across the country. You almost needed to build a course anew. It's not like there are syllabi that you could look at from colleagues from across the country. And thinking it through, what was your impetus for building this course?

[Eitan Hirsch]

I mean, I basically just saw my look, I have a personal angle here, which is I went to Tufts, that is where I now work as an undergraduate. And in the early 2000s when I went here, I found a very robust, intellectually, ideologically diverse community. I was, you know, it was like right after 9, 11, and, and I could process that as a student with people who are from the left and the right and everywhere else. Then when I came back as a faculty, I don't know, seven or something years ago, the student body had really changed such that I rarely encountered conservative students. I rarely encountered religious students of any of any flavor. And I noticed that when I was teaching my regular classes, like on elections, that students just had no exposure to conservative ideas. I mean, just to take an example from a class on elections, I have three lectures on money in politics, and almost all the students have heard of Citizens United, and they almost had all formed opinions. And then we read the court case, including the dissents, and we have a discussion about it, and every student is like, oh, I guess it's a little complicated. I never thought about it. And that's a great part about being a teacher. You get to say like, oh, here you Thought this thing was simple and it's actually quite complicated. But I realized on many areas of public public policy, students were just like majoring in political science and not really thinking about a full range of viewpoints. So when I started seeing like what is out there in other syllabi. There are number of classes at many universities on conservative themes or on conservatism. To me they mostly bucketed into two categories. One was more like political theory, history of political thought.

[Nico Perino]

This is like Machiavelli, for example.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Yes, right.

[Nico Perino]

And John Locke and.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. There's a lot of that. And, and then there were classes on sort of like the history of the Republican party or history of the conservative movement, but it was oftentimes taught from like how the Republican party got racist. Yeah, what I was interested in was actually neither of those things. I was interested in something contemporary and focus on public policy. So the class as is taught has basically like, you know, two weeks on family policy, a week on religion, a week on welfare politics, a week on capitalism regulation, a week on guns and criminal justice, a week on fire, you know, affirmative action, et cetera. So there are contemporary public policy topics top taught through learning about a conservative perspectives and then just straight social science that is, is part of the discussion, mostly from the right.

[Nico Perino]

And. And what was the response from your colleagues in wanting to do this class? It sounds like you got a thumbs up.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Yeah, I mean people don't usually say like don't teach a class. You know, it's a huge amount of work to teach a new class, especially one that there's not like a, you know, like a textbook. So I put a lot of time into it and I think my colleagues are, you know, I've heard nothing. I have some friends who are colleagues who like joke with me about, you know, you know, what we're doing to the students here. But it's all very, it's all very positive. And look, I mean I'll have 100 students in it this fall. So it's, you know, good popular, high enrollment classes that are going to help students learn new things. Like that tends to be a good thing.

[Nico Perino]

At the start of the course. You issue what Boston magazine describes as a sort of trigger warning, you know, that students, when you first try to articulate a position, you often get it wrong or it might come out wrong. In other words, you're asking for grace and goodwill. How did that go?

[Eitan Hirsch]

For the most part, it went great. One thing that like is a very early lesson in the class is not only is There obvious place political diversity in the room. Like in this room we for sure will have some conservative students and a lot of liberal ones. But even the ones who say they're, you know, two people who say they're liberal say they, when they engage in the material they realize they like strongly disagree about these things and they're trying to process that. A lot of students have this experience like, oh, I thought I was sort of like, you know, down the line liberal, but turns out I'm complicated. And that includes on issues where people have just really strong commitments. At the very beginning of the class, I introduced a policy issue that we don't talk about at all in the class, which is circumcision. And I bring it up because it's a kind of a squirmy topic. It's not something that's really politicized, but, but it's something that I know people in the classroom will have actually like strong disagreements on and to the point that will feel very personal. Right. So I, I talk about that, you know, in my tradition, like boys are circumcised when they're eight days old. And that's been my. For generations and you know, for, for generations and generations and generations and, and other students, students in the class might find that to be like child abuse. It should be against the law. And, and if they want to make something like that against the law, I would find that very threatening personally. And how do we work this out? And I say introduce that topic just to say like that's what every issue is basically like welcome to the club. You're walking around people who have views you think are vile all the time. And like that's, that's how we operate here in terms of grace. You know, for the most part it's so self selecting that kids do a great job. I mean, you know, I'm teaching this class this fall at 9am on Monday mornings. And if you know any college students, if any of your listeners know college students, you know, like that is not popular time.

[Nico Perino]

No it's not. And so more popular than the 8am class, but yes, generally not popular.

[Eitan Hirsch]

The hundred students who are taking a class on conservatism at 9am on Mondays, like are ready for this discussion and are more mature and frankly smarter than the average student. I will say. The Israel, Palestine stuff tested our classroom a bit, I would say. And so that was an issue that was so immediate, that is like some big thing happened and students were so obviously on very opposite sides and frankly like I don't know if they know exactly what I thought. But I was very affected by, by the initial part of the war, personally.

[Nico Perino]

Yeah, I've got some. I've got some data here on topics that students believe are difficult to discuss on college campuses. So FIRE has this college free speech ranking, and the. The core of the ranking is a student survey. Last year we did 55 college students. This next one is 59,000 college students. So in the 2024 ranking, which precedes October 7th, the most hot button difficult to discuss issue was abortion. 49% of students chose being one of many options that are difficult to discuss. Beneath that, gun control, 43%, racial inequality, 42%, transgender rights, 42%. The Israeli Palestinian conflict was 26%. But this next year, it's 54%. By far the most difficult topic to discuss on campus. But on some campuses, 80% of students or more say that it's a difficult topic to discuss. That's at Barnard, Pomona, Brandeis, American Vassar. And then you have a number of other campus, like a dozen where between 75 and 79% of students say it's difficult to discuss. That includes, of course, Columbia. So that is obviously an issue that students feel is difficult to discuss. And they talk. In various surveys, we've looked at about feeling a good deal or great deal of pressure to avoid discussing controversial topics in their class. In our survey, 25% of students said that they feel a good deal or a great deal pressure to avoid discussing topics in their class. Tufts, it's right around there at 24%. So how do you navigate that?

[Eitan Hirsch]

I think that some issues are hard to discuss because you want to be sensitive to other people. So, like, in our class, you know, we have a week where we talk about gay marriage and trans rights, and we're reading conservative perspectives on these things. And students want to sort of like, learn how the other side thinks from their perspective, which is almost all progressive. For example, we read about gay marriage. There's a question before gay marriage was, was legal in the United States of whether, you know, it's good for kids. For example, are gay couples as good as straight couples? And it's complicated to think, even think about it empirically. Well, like, you know, are they adopting kids? Whatever. But. And there's some empirical evidence that leans in both directions. For example, gay couples with kids are much more likely to get divorced than straight couples with kids. And divorce is pretty bad for kids on average. And so we can talk about that empirically. And we can also have a view that, like I don't care if it's terrible for kids. It's a right. And so I think like just trying to work through on the basis of a shared text, how do we understand this? How do we break down the moral, how do we break down the empirical? That's fine. Like that's I think very productive. But, but on some issues there are issues that, like, there's an ethical or religious something perspective where people like understand the terms of the debate and maybe even understand the empirical terms, but like they just, they're on other sides of the issue. And Israel, Palestine has a bit of both flavors. There's empirical questions, you know, is there, is there a way for these two sides to get along? Did one side, who's, did one side commit crimes this time or that time or whatever? Um, but then there's also these, these moral commitments. And I think like, what's clear from the data is that many students don't want to be friends or in social company with people who disagree with them morally. Like they, like if you are on a campus and you are pro life, or if you support that a Jewish state should exist, then those are views that are, that are considered by, by many students to be like the signs of bad people. You know, you're pro life, that means you're a bad person. You support Trump, that means you're a bad person.

[Nico Perino]

Is that new? You said the dynamics on campus changed since you were an undergraduate in the post 9, 11 years. Is this something that's just innate to human nature or is it something that's developed?

[Eitan Hirsch]

Well, the student populations at these campuses have changed. I mean, I don't know exactly what our ideological diversity is, but it seems quite low.

[Nico Perino]

But what I'm getting at is like this kind of moral revulsion to being around and having relationships with people. Is that new? Yeah, I mean, because presumably in a previous environment, you could disagree with someone while still dating them or while still enjoying dinner with them. But what you're saying now is that students are, don't want to have these relationships.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Right. So there's. Right, we have this long like 50 year polarization happening where there are not as many conservative Democrats, hardly any, and liberal Republicans. And so social issues are highly correlated with politics. Right. So it could be There, you know, 50 years ago you could have a two Democrats dating, but one's pro life and, you know, religious and one is not. Okay, so there's that. I think since Trump emergence in 2016, the university environment and many business environments also have changed. So that what they Think of culturally as sort of like out of bounds has narrowed, that if you support, support Trump, for example, you're out of bounds, you're a fascist, you're whatever. And then I think that created a norm that infected classrooms, infected research seminars, infected, just like water cooler talk, where there is an assumption that we are all on the same page. And I think that's quite damaging because of course, we're not all on the same page. And when the issue is, you know, like the difference between, there's obviously different proportions of people on different sides of these issues, right? So when the university makes a statement in support of Ukraine, that might be very unpopular to a few, like Russian nationals, but it's so few that, like, they're not a major concern. But if a university has, you know, 5 or 10% of students and faculty and staff who identify as Zionist, and you say, okay, well, we think you are a bunch of Nazi genocidal people or something like, well, we don't think that.

[Nico Perino]

So you're speaking about institutional neutrality there. This, that is the idea that a college or university would remain neutral on issues of social and political import or controversy in the nation or not. As you suggest, they would issue a statement on Ukraine or they would issue a statement on the war in the Middle, Middle East. Do they find themselves in a quagmire when they start issuing statements or do you think they have a moral duty to do so?

[Eitan Hirsch]

I think my, my view is that like, universities should and can have a diversity of brands and that some of them that want to be like First Amendment style, free speech, private schools can have that brand. And those who want to be institutionally neutral, fine. But I also think there should be room for schools, for example, that have more, are more guided by like, religious ideas. Schools that have dress codes and honor codes and say, you know, we have, we don't allow technology here or we don't allow, you know, that I think there should be a lot of room for schools like that as well.

[Nico Perino]

And how would you draw the distinction between private and public? Do you think that diversity should be able to exist in the public context as well as the private context? Or are you just talking about private schools?

[Eitan Hirsch]

So I think public is trickier because you have that constitution thing, but in the, in the private market, I would say, I would, I would hope there would be a diversity that is, I don't think every school needs to be a free speech absolutist school because I actually think that the schools that say, say we have a brand that's Focused on, you know, modest dress and. And honor codes for not cheating and, who knows, like, other expectations. Like, you know, you have to work out every day, whatever it is, and that's fine. And that means that there might be schools that say we are the, you know, we're the leftist school that's going to try to. That's going to try to turn your children into. Into social justice warriors or whatever. And. And that's okay, too. I think where things go wrong is when the school tries. When the school promotes itself with one thing but offers something else. And I think that's where we've seen the most trouble. It's schools that say they, you know, one side of their mouth, they want to encourage free speech and debate, but on the other side, they only will recruit students who are on one side of that debate and only have guest speakers on one side of that debate and come down very hard on students who do this, but not that. You know, I think, like, if your brand is free speech, then you got to stick to it. But I do want to leave room for schools to not have that be their brand.

[Nico Perino]

Well, you actually don't diverge from FIRE really at all on that position. FIRE believes to the extent you have a private university and you want to organize around shared values, you should be free to do so. That's the reason that FIRE doesn't go after or do any casework at schools like Brigham Young or Yeshiva University. Right. They organize around a different set of values. You know, religious values, in many cases, gonna be young. You can't wear a beard. So I wouldn't be allowed to be a student there. And I think that's just part of a pluralistic society. And we are on the same page in the second part of your answer, too, which is that to the extent you advertise yourself as one thing, you need to have truth in advertising. You need to actually live up. Live up to those values. So if you, like, at Yale, for example, have the Woodward Report, which says that students and faculty should be free to think the unthinkable, challenge the unchallengeable, and mention the unmentionable. If, you know, you. You mention something that someone doesn't like, and the university comes after you for it, well, that would be an abdication of that principle or that policy. Although when one faculty member tried to cite that policy in a lawsuit against Yale, they disavowed it and said, this is just something that's aspirational, doesn't actually mean anything here, which you're seeing more of lately, unfortunately, particularly at private universities. But you see more colleges moving in the direction of that sort of institutional neutrality. Although I'm not sure Tufts has. I could be mistaken.

[Eitan Hirsch]

No, I hope they will, but I, I don't think they have made such a statement yet.

[Nico Perino]

What is your perspective on how everything unfolded post October 7th at Tufts? The article does make it very clear that it was a point of contention in the classroom.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Yeah, well, look, I mean, I think Tufts, like other schools, have created a brand that has been very unwelcome to, to conservatives, to religious people. So if you look at students across the country age 18 to 25 who are associated with university across the country, 30% are conservative. 30% of all university students across the country are conservative. About 30% also attend religious services at least once a week. And you know, you look like a place at a place like Tufts and Tufts is, is working hard to, and meeting benchmarks around issues like diversity around race, ethnicity, LGBT status and. But if you look at their religious and ideological diversity, it's just not, it's just clearly not been a big priority. And I think that has resulted in a situation with the war where like, there were students who were a small minority of students, Jewish students, who felt one way about this conflict, and then a very loud voice among other students who not only support Palestinian rights, but supported Hamas from the day from October 7th. The Students and Justice in Palestine group here on October 8th or 9th issued this celebratory statement. We're excited about the creative strategies used by Hamas. That group wasn't ostracized on campus. They were themselves celebrated and grew this big coalition of, of activists. Now do you think they should have.

[Nico Perino]

Been disbanded as an official student organization or do you think, you know, separate from that they should have just been ostracized?

[Eitan Hirsch]

My personal view is like, if you're celebrating Hamas on October 8th and saying they're like, these are, these are creative strategies, I think it's the equivalent to someone who's like a pro KKK person. Now if the school wants to have sort of like First Amendment style rights and we, okay, yeah, we have some KKK people, I guess, and we have some Hamas people and let's just all, you know, fight it out and have welcoming environments and everyone can say, but that's not how the school sees itself. Again, all the same issues that Harvard and Penn got wrapped up in. It's like, you know, do you have double standards where you are very sensitive around not saying calling someone by this name if they are gay or Say, but, but, you know, you're not sensitive about calling for terrorist attacks and rapes and whatever against, against Israeli civilians. And so I think sort of, you know, the same issues we had here, I think we had at many universities, I think that there are some things the schools, our school and many schools should do differently related to who they have as part of their community, like how they build that diversity of perspectives.

[Nico Perino]

I think Harvard just added a new question to its admissions, its admissions program asking students how they would interact with someone who they deeply disagree with. And it seems to be getting at the idea that when you come to Harvard, if you are a student here, that is going to happen and we want to know how you're going to respond to it. Which seems like to me a smart way to approach admissions for a scholarly environment.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Right? Yeah. And then, and then there are things that have nothing to do with students or faculty. You know, I think there are staff here who really like thought that was part of their job to, to lead students in a revolution. So, you know, if you asked a staff member, you know, who runs something that has nothing to do with politics, some center for student life or something like that, you know, like, you know, with Zionist students, be welcome in your environment. So. Well, you know, we are, we are an anti oppression group here. So, you know, maybe not. So I think like, that's the kind of thing that like, in my view, like that person should not a smart person who has that kind of view, like probably shouldn't be employed in a job where they're supposed to be treating students without respect to a political view. But look, a lot of people here, I think believe that basically someone to the right of the Mitt Romney say is out of bounds like that, like they want to say that. I think they have a view, I think it's a very common view that essentially like something between the Hamas curious progressives and Mitt Romney, that's where they were happy to have a debate and disagreement. But then everything to the right of that is out of bounds. The person who is a member of Congress who voted against the certification elections, that's most Republicans in Congress, they're out of bounds. If you are opposed to gay rights or trans rights, you're out of bounds. If you're opposed to immigration, you're out of bounds. If you're, you know, and so, and so there. I think the one problem we have is that there's like a lot of people who think that just the, the bounds of appropriate discourse are very narrow.

[Nico Perino]

Yeah, well, let's question first principles here. I think we take it as dogma and you and I would agree on this, that viewpoint diversity on college campuses is a good thing. But why is it a good thing? I mean, what's the sort of first principle that you bring to that belief?

[Eitan Hirsch]

So I mean, let me say it from two perspectives. From an educational perspective. I can't emphasize enough how much of a delight it is to teach a class where you're exposing students to something they've never seen before. Like and of course all of us like learning in that same way. You know, a student has never thought about some issue like let's talk about religion. Like is religion good for society? Well, people who are religious tend to be happier, have much better physical and mental health. Does that mean the government should encourage it? How do we think about that? Let's read some different perspectives. What would it mean for the government to encourage it? Does the government currently discourage religion? If so, how? Like maybe that's an old conversation too. I think for a lot of our students who grew up in secular environments, it's a totally new conversation. And it's just such a delight to teach students new things. And that's one thing. But why would they want to learn it? I think they want to learn it because they're going to have to operate in a world where people disagree with them, you know, with the people in their family might disagree with them for sure, their future colleagues. And I think we want them to learn how to deal with that without their heads exploded. I think we do have actually some brand diversification where you start to see schools in the south, for example, public schools in the south say we really care about this kind of diversity and people want it, parents want it, kids want it. And you know what I would like to not see happen is for, for the older, say legacy private institutions in the north to lose an edge because they're thinking that people want something different than they want.

[Nico Perino]

Yeah. To say nothing of the truth seeking enterprise that many colleges approach. David Ogilvy, the great advertising executive used to say that you only get a spark when the stone and the flint are moving in opposite directions. And so often I've learn from talking with people who, with whom I disagree, forcing me to kind of reconsider my initial premises and positions. And when I went to college I was very much an anti theist in the old Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris mold, Richard Dawkins. And I started to question that when I started debating and engaging with religious students on campus. And I'M very appreciative for that experience. There was a conflict at Tufts last year, I believe, in September 29, where a chapter of the Federalist Society, a national conservative kind of libertarian legal organization, held an in person discussion, I'm quoting here from Boston magazine, between two male professors over the morality of abortion. And magazine reports that on the evening of the event, pro choice tough students frequently interrupted the speakers with noisemakers playing the sounds of booze and cars honking. The protesters kept at it even after campus police arrived. Only after a second officer showed up 45 minutes into the event did the disruption stop. How do you get students to remove themselves and engage with the idea rather than the identity of the speaker, or remove themselves and engage and put their identity aside when they're engaging in issue? Or should they even do that in the first place?

[Eitan Hirsch]

That's an interesting question. So first of all, on that particular episode, I should say in part because I'm an advisor to that federal Society chapter, they actually tried very hard to get lots of different people to be speakers for that event. And one problem that happens at universities across the board is that you have, like, why do you have so few debates and why do you have so few conservative speakers? Sometimes you'll say, the university will say, well, the students don't really want, you know, they don't, they won't come to a conservative speaker to a debate. Other times I say the speakers won't come because they don't want to be seen. You know, conservative speakers don't want to come to liberal campuses or liberal campus professors don't want to debate with conservative professors and give them a platform. And so there are a lot of problems with that. I think that are a precursor to why you have fewer debates like this. But when it comes to like gender and abortion, you know, at least up until Dobbs, there's no relationship between gender and your views on abortion. There was as many pro life women as men. You know, I think a lot of our students don't like to. A lot of students on the left might not like to, to think that, that, that there's no relationship between being a woman and being pro choice, but it might have changed a little bit since Dobbs. But before Dobbs, like, no relationship, okay? I don't think that the students should be forced to attend a debate like that, but I think that if they want to attend debate, they shouldn't be stopped by a bunch of, by a bunch of protesters. I think the protesters need to let events like this happen even if they Disagree with them if they want to be part of the community. If you're a campus organization or a professor and you reserve a room and people want to go, like, I would enforce pretty stiff penalties for students disrupting that.

[Nico Perino]

Oh yeah, and fire. While we don't advocate certain penalties for certain campus activities, we very much see the shout downs, the blockades, even the use of violence to stop different speakers as being antithetical to a truth seeking institution's mission and behavior that gets rewarded, gets repeated. So to the extent that students are allowed to blockade a campus event and prevent others from accessing it or prevent that event from moving forward, it needs to be investigated with all, you know, of course, due process provided and punished appropriately so it doesn't happen again.

[Eitan Hirsch]

I was going to say a lot of students want not, not all students. Right. But there are students who, you know, maybe they have some policy issue that's really tied closely to their identity and for that reason they want to explore it more. You know, and when they do it in a context of a class, it's such a beautiful thing because it sort of is a safe space. In other words, like, you know, we're going to read some like anti trans thing and some trans student might take that class, read that thing. And then the assignment for the class is like, you have to, you have to choose a reading to critique and then they get to like engage with this research. That's a, that's a very healthy way to learn about people who disagree with you and understand their arguments. It's a different context than like the speaker circuit on campus where you have more of an advocacy environment. Right. There's no advocacy environment in the classroom. I think that makes it special. But I think the advocacy environment where you get to see people actually debate is also very worthwhile and we should do more of it. I constantly been pushing the organizers of events here to have more ideological diversity because I think the students, it's good for them to hear from advocates too.

[Nico Perino]

Yeah. I've actually heard some anecdotal evidence that the Federalist Society organizations across the country are having a hard time getting the American Constitution Society organizations on certain campuses to co sponsor events.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Yeah.

[Nico Perino]

Which used to be very, very common. Right. That high profile speakers coming to campus speaking about legal issues.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Right.

[Nico Perino]

ACS and Federalist Society would collaborate on those events. And now ACs and a couple of instances that I've heard about is refusing to do so on, you know, sort of moral revulsion grounds that we were speaking about earlier. Which is sad because I Think everyone wants to see this sort of cross partisan discussion. And the idea being that just because you're sponsoring a speaker or sponsoring a debate does not mean you agree necessarily with everything that's going to be said there, but rather that these sort of discussions are important to an academic environment. Fires college free speech rankings from last year, 2024. More than two in five students said that students blocking other students from attending a speech is acceptable to some degree. So it's 45% of students, that's up from 37% the year before.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Yeah.

[Nico Perino]

And more than a quarter of students, that's 27% said that using violence to stop a campus speech is acceptable to some degree, up from 20%. 63% support shout downs, up from 62% the year before. These seem to me to be anti intellectual activities, anti scholarly activities, activities that students just do not understand the basis for objecting to.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Right. So yeah, that stuff is sad. You can see it. Even the students in my class on conservatism who are a self selecting group, many of them did support the shouting down of the, of the pro life speaker and trying to like disrupt the event. I think that if a university said our norms, we expect the following and like we're going to enforce this norm and that is like you're not going to disrupt someone else's event. Like that is, I think they could do it and they could do it very quickly. And I think that the selective schools actually have the greatest power to do this because by virtue of their selectivity they could say look, you don't want to be here. There's like thousands of kids standing in line waiting for your spot. Like if you are not mature enough to let someone else talk in to a group of people they want to talk to, like, like get out of here, then it doesn't mean the student, you know, deserves to go to jail, but maybe they deserve to go to another school. And I like to me like if the schools wanted to, they could change this culture very quickly. And I hope they want to, but I'm not sure they do.

[Nico Perino]

Well, there's that old saying in business management, right. That culture, if it's not set from the top down, will be created from the bottom up. And that everything that happens in an institution is either created or allowed by leadership. And I just, I think that too many of these leaders at many colleges and universities are acting more like politicians than like leaders of an academic institution and are trying to please everyone and as a result pleasing no one. I want to turn now to Talk about faculty. In 2021, more than half of faculty, this is 52%, reported being worried about losing their jobs or reputations because someone misunderstands something that they have said or done. Almost three quarters of conservative faculty feel that way, 56% of moderates and 40% of liberals. So you have this situation where over half of college faculty, taken in the aggregate across the political spectrum, are worried about speaking up, worried, worried about hits to their reputation, worried about someone taking something they said out of context.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Obviously, I teach sensitive topics, right? If a student doesn't like how I said something, they could file a complaint with the Office of Equal Opportunity and cost me like hours and hours and hours and hours of my life and maybe even having to pay a lawyer because the university's created this. This process of, I think ass covering is the only way to describe it. Where any complaint goes through essentially an office where there are, I think they're mostly like social workers, but they're acting as investigators, but they have unclear authority. And you can be wrapped up in some horrible thing because a student didn't like what you said. And so tenure protects you maybe from getting fired from that, from something like this, but it doesn't, it doesn't protect you from just wasting a huge amount of time and effort dealing with, with complaints like this. There's obviously also, like other forms of public shaming. You know, I remember I used to, when I was at Yale, I had posted my syllabi publicly. It's nice to be able to share a syllabi. A lot of faculty do it. But then I saw at some point, maybe 2016, 2017, faculty were calling each other out on like, Twitter if they didn't have the right number of female authors or minority authors on their syllabi? And I thought, why would I ever post a syllabus if there's a risk that if I don't hit some metrics that some bean counter is counting, like, I'm going to get shamed. So I've since then not published my syllabi.

[Nico Perino]

Yeah. And you also don't have as many faculty, tenured faculty, teaching on college campuses as you used to. Far, far more adjuncts than there once were. And I should note to the extent we have any faculty listening and you are reported for something you say in the class or outside the class, particularly in the class, when it's pedagogically relevant and you feel like this is a violation of your academic freedom rights or your, your pedagogical prerogative, reach out to fire. We have a faculty legal defense fund, and we provide attorneys pro bono to help navigate the internal disciplinary and investigatory processes. And we've helped a lot of faculty through those processes over the years. Many of those cases don't get reported publicly because we just help in the background to end here, what are you expecting as students return to campus this year? Do you expect it to be as contentious a year as it was this past school year? And do you think schools are better equipped to handle it?

[Eitan Hirsch]

Yeah. So let me say a few things. First of all, in case any of your listeners are interested in this, I am at the beginning stages of trying to build something a little bit bigger in terms of creating space on our campus, but also as a model for other campuses to diversify curricula, to diversify speaker series to help students develop into civic leaders who are accustomed to debate and disagreement. And so if you have listeners who want to help me do that, you can make an email.

[Nico Perino]

Does it have a name yet?

[Eitan Hirsch]

No, it doesn't have a name yet. We're very early. Well, it has a tentative name. I don't want to say it yet. All right. That's number one. What do I expect in the fall is that I'm continuing to create and build hopefully a bigger and bigger bubble inside the bubble. Right. So I always love this time of year. I love the fall. I love meeting the new students. And I, you know, to have 100 kids in conservatism and 100 kids in elections. And all I know is that for those 200 students, we're going to be learning in a way that is going to pick apart every argument on left and right both, and it's going to be a delight. And I don't control what happens outside of my sphere. So I don't know what the rest of the bubble is going to look like. But I know my bubble is going to be great in terms of what I expect to see. I expect to see the same kind of tensions around Israel, Palestine to suddenly reemerge as soon as the students are back on campus and to continue maybe until the, you know, I think if the, I think if Trump is reelected, then probably the attention will shift to that. But, you know, for better or worse, a lot of the activism is quite faddish. So that a few years ago, you know, if you'd ask students like their number one issue was police reform and criminal, you know, police reform is like the most important issue in the world. And then suddenly if you ask students now, like, that's not A big issue.

[Nico Perino]

Yeah. And then it was abortion and now it's Israeli Palestinian conflict. Such a contentious issue on campus. Fires said for a long time that the Israeli Palestinian conflict is like where tensions get to be the highest. Even we're even careful in how we talk about it. We don't use the word Palestine because it's not a recognized state. And if, if we use that word, are people going to assume that we're taking a political position on the controversy? It's so it's, there's a lot of landmines that you need to avoid stepping on and even just weighing in, I.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Assume the tensions are going to be similar. I think the schools are getting smarter. I mean, I do think at the administrative level anyway, schools are, I think, moving more in direction of institutional neutrality, moving away from a DEI framework in which Jews have a very precarious position. I mean, I think like one of the reasons why this year was very hard was that the schools had developed and hired a lot in their development of a DEI framework which they thought meant one thing. And then when it came to the Israel Palestine conflict and, and, and Jewish Americans and Israeli Americans and Israeli nationals, it didn't fit into how the DEI leadership thought about, thought about diversity, equity, inclusion because of a sense of who's an oppressor and who's an oppressed. And the Israel Palestine conflict showcased some of the, the real serious limitations and, and risks of schools going all in on, on that as an organizing framework for their institutions. And, and so I think they're, they're dialing some of that back.

[Nico Perino]

Well, we'll see how it goes. And I wish you all of luck. Luck in building your ever expanding bubble and teaching this course on American conservatism. Hopefully it points a way for debate and discussion across lines of difference and getting universities back to that core ethos of truth seeking. Professor Hirsch, thanks for coming on the show.

[Eitan Hirsch]

Thank you for having me. Nice talking to you.

[Nico Perino]

That was Tufts University political science Professor Eitan Hirsch. The Boston Magazine article that served as the impetus for this conversation will be linked in the show notes and is titled A Conservative Thought Experiment on a Liberal College Campus. I am Nico Perino and this podcast is recorded and edited by a rotating roster of my FIRE colleagues, including Aaron Reiss and Chris Maltby, and it is co produced by my colleague Sam Lee. To learn more about so to Speak, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel or substack page, both of which feature video versions of this conversation. You can follow us on X by searching for the handle Free Speech Talk and you can find us on Facebook. If you have feedback on this conversation or feedback on the show in general, you can send us an email to Sotospeak, the fire.org Again that is, so to speak, at the fire.org if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Reviews help us attract new listeners to the show, and until next time, I thank you all again for listening.