Must Everything be Political? – BCB #104

Also: a theatrical bridge-building workshop, and unexpected insights into incels’ politics.

Harvard will limit its statements on public policy issues

Last week, Harvard announced that the University and its leadership will not make official statements on any issues unless they pertain to “the university’s core function.” These new guidelines follow months of unrest on campus and the resignation of former president Claudine Gay, after harsh criticism for her statement in the wake of October 7. 

Advocates for various causes have long argued that institutions are complicit if they don’t join the movement (“silence is violence” etc.) Yet if we allow political conflict to seep into every facet of our lives—workplaces, schools, churches—the result is unending conflict that drains our energy, destroys social bonds, and reinforces political stereotypes that prevent us from actually seeing each other. Whether or not you agree with where Harvard has chosen to draw these boundaries, it seems clear that someone needs to draw them somewhere.

Harvard’s new policy is codified in a report from the faculty-led “Institutional Voice” working group and will apply to all administrators, governing board members, deans, and department chairs. Centers and clinics that advocate specific policies can continue to do so, they just need to clarify that they’re not speaking beyond their area of expertise or on behalf of the university as a whole.

This doesn’t mean the University will be “neutral.” Rather, the university will only make official statements on political matters that directly affect its mission of higher education. Though the report does say that administrators should make public statements when necessary, it adds:

There will be close cases where reasonable people disagree about whether a given issue is or is not directly related to the core function of the university … The university’s policy in those situations should be to err on the side of avoiding official statements.

It seems that Harvard wants to avoid getting mired down in controversy as it has in recent months, a mess that arguably prevented the University from focusing on all of the other useful things that it exists to do. On the other hand, perhaps there are some issues that you really do want everyone to weigh in on, and certainly some national debates that universities are deeply involved in even if they are technically beyond the institution’s “core function.” How will Harvard draw that line in practice? It’s hard to say. It seems likely that finessing this policy will require some amount of trial and error, and will doubtless anger some people along the way.

Still, we think it’s useful to set limits on where conflict can be waged. Society can’t function if every party is activated on every issue all of the time. You can disagree with where Harvard has chosen to draw the line but it’s striking—and helpful—that the University drew a line at all. Perhaps the best way to look at Harvard’s new policy is as a starting point for a conversation about what these boundaries should look like.

A theater program aims to animate our differences

Later this month, people from across the political and ideological spectrum will gather in Kenosha, Wisconsin for Braver Angels’ 2024 National Convention. This will include Mind The Gap, a program in conjunction with the New York Theatre Workshop that “will focus on the political divisions that may or may not exist between us”:

Mind The Gap is a free multigenerational theatre program that connects people across generations through the power of storytelling. Over the course of five days, participants interview each other, write or devise short pieces based on the material they gather, and then perform them in a script formed by the program leaders.

The focus of the production will be parsing and navigating group members’ political differences. To that end, their goal is to convene an age- and politically-diverse cohort. It’s not an acting or performance class, per se, and the organizers have said that participants don’t need experience in theater: “performance is merely the tool through which we mind the gap between generations.” 

The workshop is free for selected participants, and everyone will receive meals, as well as room and board as needed. Apply to participate here.

What we can learn from lefty incels

Do incels (self-identified “involuntarily celibate” people, mostly men) have left or right politics? Most people will associate them with the right, and it’s not hard to understand why. Much has been written about certain well-documented subsets of the incel community that openly espouse far-right views.

However, Date Psychology recently summarized research on who incels actually are and what they believe. A number of long standing stereotypes hold true. For example, incels are much more likely to be unemployed and living with their parents. But while the stereotypical image of an incel might be a white, Red-leaning man, a 2022 study found that self-identified incels are evenly split across the political spectrum and about 36% are BIPOC. 

(Source)

Participants for this study were recruited using social media and by “snowball sampling” where respondents were asked to refer other self-identified incels. Hence this isn’t a perfectly representative sample. Even so, it seems clear that left-leaning incels are common.

Despite their politics, Alexander adds, “On a list of out-groups, incels rated ‘feminists’ as the biggest enemy of the incel community.” The idea of being “anti-feminist” is stereotypically right-wing, but gender politics and political ideology don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. People are complex.

Aside from interesting insights into the incel experience (“incels were found to have a greater tendency for interpersonal victimhood, higher levels of depression, anxiety and loneliness, and lower levels of life satisfaction”) the point of all this, for conflict nerds, is to be suspicious of simple narratives that define who is “us” and who is “them.” The gap between the perception and reality of incels’ race and politics illustrates the power of stereotypes—and doesn’t help the conversation on how to address the societal problems that gave rise to the incel movement in the first place.

Quote of the Week

The principle behind our policy isn’t neutrality. Rather, our policy commits the university to an important set of values that drive the intellectual pursuit of truth: open inquiry, reasoned debate, divergent viewpoints and expertise. An institution committed to these values isn’t neutral, and shouldn’t be. It has to fight for its values, particularly when they are under attack, as they are now. Speaking publicly is one of the tools a university can use in that fight.

– Noah Feldman and Alison Simmons