They Represent Themselves

How serious are we about addressing climate change? On the one hand, world leaders, save China and Russia, are meeting in Glasgow to make promises for the future they are unable to keep. On the other hand, a climate scientist was disinvited from speaking at MIT, not because he didn’t have great scholarly value on this matter of grave world importance, but because of his views on diversity and inclusion.

What are those views that have made him such a pariah, so hated, such a threat of harm to marginalized people that he could not possibly be tolerated? University of Chicago professor Dorian Abbot explains.

I believe that every human being should be treated as an individual worthy of dignity and respect. In an academic context, that means evaluating people for positions based on their individual qualities, not on membership in favored or disfavored groups. It also means allowing them to present their ideas and perspectives freely, even when we disagree with them.

I care for all of my students equally. None of them are overrepresented or underrepresented to me: They represent themselves. Their grades are based on a process that I define at the beginning of the quarter. That process treats each student fairly and equally. I hold office hours for students who would like extra help so that everyone has the opportunity to improve his or her grade through hard work and discipline.

While there is room to quibble over whether anyone is owed respect, or respect is earned, for example, that too is within the parameters of the freedom to present ideas and perspectives. So what about this seemingly benign vision made Abbot not merely a choice whom some would find distasteful, but a pariah whose voice on the entirely different, and some might argue critical, subject of climate geophysics, had to be silenced lest the evil molecules that seep out of his words into the souls of listeners at MIT pollute their moral purity?

Is it his refusal to accept that favored groups must be treated more favorably? Is it his emphasis on individual achievement and responsibility? Is it his respect for “hard work and discipline”?

I run a large course on the politically charged topic of climate change. But I refuse to indoctrinate students. The course presents the basic scientific evidence and encourages students to think for themselves about the best solutions to the problem. I correct my students when they make scientifically unsound arguments, but I encourage the full range of political perspectives as students work out their preferred societal response. These practices reflect an understanding that the pursuit of truth is the highest purpose of a university and an acknowledgment that I myself could be wrong.

What makes the scenario that arose at MIT, of all places, significant is that the underlying subject, climate change, is an existential crisis to so many. This, we’re told, is a matter of such extreme concern that the future of humanity, of the planet, depends upon it. Whether this is correct is irrelevant; this is what many, including people far more knowledgeable on the subject than I will ever be, have concluded. So if true, would there be anything, any cause, any ideological tenet, more critical to humanity than to find the best science, the “truth,” to address this global catastrophe?

Apparently not. Better to silence Abbot on the subject of global warming than to allow his ideas of individual worth to pollute the infinite corridor.

It is true that someone will occasionally say something that hurts your feelings. But hurt feelings are no reason to ban certain topics. We are all responsible for our own feelings. We cannot control things that are external to us, such as the comments of others, but we can control how we respond to them. The ancient Stoics developed practices to discipline emotions and pursue rational thought. These techniques have been refined in modern times in logotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Instead of cultivating grievances and encouraging resentment, schools and universities can teach these practices and promote the principle that no one can truly harm us but ourselves. That principle allows for the expression of hurt feelings that does not involve restrictions on speech. This will have the added benefit of preparing students for a world in which anything can hurt their feelings—if they let it.

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that anyone who wants to find offense badly enough will do so, no matter what depth of intellectual dishonesty is demanded. Even if that means that a presentation on climate change must take a backseat to the horrors of objectivity and rigor, those signs of white male dominance.

Having purchased, with enormous pride, a brass rat for my son, the disinvitation of Dorian Abbot from speaking at MIT because of the views he espouses hit hard. Law rarely has answers, but only competing arguments that are pressed for the benefit of our clients in the hope that the marshaling of facts and reason will be persuasive. Science is a very different creature, one where its practitioners eschew the lies, emotions and rationalizations that prevent their calculations, their observations, their methods, from concealing their truths.

You don’t have to agree with Dorian Abbot’s views about equality and personal accomplishment. You don’t have to accept that climate change is an existential crisis of greater importance to humanity than whatever remnants of discrimination outrage you most. But if his views, that each person represents himself, are so horrible that his ideas on climate change cannot be spoken, even in a place so dedicated to scientific discovery as MIT, then what hope is left to fix the problems mankind has created? Each of Prof. Abbot’s students represent themselves. So do we.