by Robert Jensen
talk to UT teach-in on war and civil liberties, November 1, 2001.
It might seem strange, given my involvement in antiwar work at a time when
most people support the war, that I would title a talk “Against Dissent.”
How could I be against something in which I seem to be engaged quite actively?
I am not going to argue against political activity that challenges the dominant
view, but instead will suggest a different way to understand that political
activity. The point is not simply semantic, but goes to the heart of what
it means to be a citizen in a democracy. More on that later.
Let me say up front that I believe that in light of what is happening inAfghanistan
at the moment, the topic of free speech seems, in some sense,trivial. I do
not mean that speech does not matter. I believe free speechis a good thing
in and of itself. But my main concern at the moment is notthe intrinsic value
of free speech, the way it fosters the growth and developmentof individuals,
which is one powerful argument for protecting free speech.Right now, free
speech is on my mind because I live in the nation that hasthe most destructive
military capacity in the history of the world. I livein a nation that has
repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to use thatcapacity to kill, andkill
civilians. And I live in the nation that at thismoment is using thatcapacity
again to kill civilians in a conflict thatis being sold to us asa war onterrorism
that will keep us safe, but is,I believe, primarily awar to extendthe power
of a particular segment ofU.S. society.
In other words, free speech matters so much right now not primarily because
it is good for us, which it is, but because without it citizens of this country
will have fewer chances to stop our government from destroying human life
abroad. Tonight I want to talk about why free speech and democracy are in
some sense more important than ever. In this sense, free speech is not atrivial
matter. How we defend and use our free speech is, quite literally,a matter
of life and death.
It is a matter of life and death for the Afghan child who sees the bright
yellow cylinder on the ground and bends over to pick it up; the child who
picks up the bright yellow unexploded bomblet from a cluster bomb dropped
from a U.S. plane; unexploded because 7 percent of the bomblets releasedby
a cluster bomb do not detonate at first; a bomblet that will explode when
picked up and send steel shards ripping into the child’s body. Andthen
the child will die. And then U.S. officials explain that we must keepusing
cluster bombs because they are effective antipersonnel and antiarmorweapons.
Our freedom to speak is not trivial to that child. So let us speak of free
speech.
Let us begin with a little history.
On June 16, 1918, labor leader Eugene Debs made a speech in Canton, Ohio,
in which he dared to question U.S. involvement in World War I. In this speech,
he said, “Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest andplunder.
…the working class who fight all the battles, the workingclass who
make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shedtheir blood
and furnish their corpses, have never yet had a voice in eitherdeclaringwar
or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably doesboth. Theyalone
declare war and they alone make peace.”
He continued: “They are continually talking about their patriotic duty.
It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There
is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing
line or chucks them into the trenches.”
For this, Debs was charged and convicted under the Espionage Act for trying
to discourage enlistment and promote insubordination in the armed forces.
Debs gave that speech knowing that it could land him in prison, and he was
sentenced to 10 years. During his two years in prison, he ran his fifth and
final campaign for president and won 913,664 votes. He was pardoned, notby
Wilson -- the allegedly liberal Democratic president who took the country
into that disastrous war -- but by Harding, the conservative Republican.
If Debs were alive today, I believe he would be part of this antiwar movement,
speaking about the hypocrisy of U.S. policy and the immorality of killing
civilians. The big difference would be that if Debs were speaking today,he
would not be thrown in jail. We are not being thrown in jail for makingantiwar
speeches this time around. At least not yet.
That’s progress. That’s a good thing. The space for free speech
in the United States has expanded dramatically since 1918. That space isnot
guaranteed forever, but we have it right now.
But that’s not where our analysis should end. We must think not only
about the scope of formal freedoms, of legal guarantees, but of the context
in which that speech happens. We must look not only at the actions of government,
but also how wealth and power in the private sector affects these questions.
We must ask about how free we are to gain access to the mass media channels
through which most people get their news. While celebrating the expansion
of formal freedom of speech, we must ask questions about how effectivelycitizens
can exercise those freedoms in the world in which we live.
If we ponder these questions, we come to a paradox: How is it that in the
United States we have arguably the most expansive free speech rights in the
industrial world and an incredibly degraded political culture? How did political
freedom produce such a depoliticized culture?
An op/ed
piece that ran on September 14 in the Houston Chronicle, in which I talked
about the history of terrorist activities by the U.S. government and itsimportance
to understanding 9-11, sparked many angry letters to me and universityofficials.
Let’s start with University of Texas President Larry Faulkner’s
public response.
His letter in response to my op/ed made three points. First, he said he supported
my First Amendment right to speak, which is fine with me. Second, he pointed
out that I do not speak for the university in any official capacity, which
also is fine with me; I don’t want to speak for the university. Finally,
Faulkner said, “Jensen is not only misguided, but has become a fountain
of undiluted foolishness on issues of public policy. Students must learnthat
there is a good deal of foolish opinion in the popular media and theymust
become skilled at recognizing and discounting it. I, too, was disgustedby
Jensen's article, but I also must defend his freedom to state his opinion.
The First Amendment is the bedrock of American liberty.”
Many people, including a surprising number of faculty colleagues, have told
me they saw nothing wrong with Faulkner’s statement because he defended
my rights and then exercised his own right to speak. A slightly more sophisticated
analysis is called for.
First, let me be clear: None of this is personal for me. I don’t care
what Larry Faulkner says about me. I do care, however, how a person in power
on a campus misuses that power.
Larry Faulkner does have a right to speak. But that does not mean he is free
from criticism for his speech, any more than I should escape criticism. As
president of the university, Faulkner has considerable power -- the power
to hire and fire, to dictate policy, and to set the intellectual tone oncampus.
It should be a truism that with power comes responsibility. For example,in
the classroom I have considerable power. If a student were to make a comment
that I felt was foolish, it would be irresponsible for me -- the person in
the room with the ability to determine grades and set the intellectual tone
of the class -- to respond to the student by saying, “You are foolish
and no one should listen to you.” Even if I believed that, I shouldn’t
say it, for the obvious reason that it would inhibit other students fromspeaking.
Even if the student in question had the strength to challenge me,the incident
might lead other students to silence themselves.
The analogy holds for the president and the campus.
The first and most obvious point to make is that the president offered abad
model of intellectual engagement. I wrote an essay that made a politicalargument.
Faulkner responded with an ad hominem attack. I used to teach acourse called
Critical Thinking for Journalists, and I used a textbook calledAttackingFaulty
Reasoning, which defines ad hominem as a fallacy that “consistsin attacking
one’s opponent in a personal and abusive way as a meansof ignoringor
discrediting his or her criticism or argument.” If Iwere to gradeFaulkner
based on the standards from my introductory journalismclass -- well,perhaps
it is best not to be obsessed with grades.
But rather than simply criticize Faulkner, let’s think about what he
could have done. He could have issued a statement that said something like
this:
“Many people have been upset by the public comments of a faculty member,
and I understand their concerns. But at the University of Texas we take seriously
the mission of creating the most open, engaged intellectual atmosphere possible
in which people can explore ideas. As a public institution, we also hopethat
our faculty, staff, and students will be part of a broader public dialogue,
taking their knowledge beyond the campus as active and engaged citizens.Inevitably
in a pluralist democracy, that will produce clashes between peopleover deeply
held beliefs. We should celebrate that engagement, not try toshut it down.
Given the importance of the events of September 11, I encouragemembers of
the UT community to seek all possible venues for discussion ofthe political
and moral questions, on campus and in public. Now, more thanever, let usmake
good on the promise of democracy.”
Now, if he wanted to go on to disagree with my essay, he could have saidsomething
like this:
“In the spirit of that democratic engagement, I would like to offer
my critique of Jensen’s argument.”
What would come after that, I do not know, because President Faulkner chose
not to make public the reasons for his critical assessment.
So, we might can look around UT and ask whether, at the largest campus in
the United States, we see the maximal realization of freedom of expression.
No formal suppression of speech rights has occurred, but has the institution
supported free speech in a meaningful way? Has it done its job of creating
the space for that speech? In light of those questions, we might ask what
has been the role a statement from the president that endorses the formal
guarantee of freedom that also offers an ad hominem attack?
I also want to discuss the public reaction to my essay. Here I want to highlight
the difference between the messages I received from people in the UnitedStates,
which ran about 70-30 against my views, and the messages I receivedfrom abroad,
which were overwhelmingly either supportive of my view or interestedin arational
discussion of them. These are not adequate samples for makingdefinitiveclaims,
but the difference hints at a simple fact: The thingsI said aboutU.S. history
and politics that were so controversial in theUnited Statesare well understood
in the rest of the world. We come backto the paradox:Why is it that people
in the United States, with such expansiveformal politicalfreedoms, know less
about their own history and politicsthan people abroad?
Which leads to another question: Why did so many Americans not only disagree
with me, but become enraged with me? What is it about this political culture
that leads people to see a different political analysis not as somethingto
be argued with, but something to eliminate?
Again, we are left to ponder how the freedoms enjoyed in our version of democracy
have produced a culture that is so hostile to intellectual engagement and
democratic participation.
But that question obscures a point that is perhaps even more important. More
distressing than the relatively small number of people who wanted me fired
or deported (I got a lot of offers of one-way tickets to Afghanistan), is
the much larger number of people who simply do not care enough to react at
all -- not just to react to me, but to react to the entire issue, beyonda
few patriotic platitudes. What does it mean to live in a society in which
the president can declare an unlimited war against unspecified enemies, then
begin to fight that war with extreme brutality and disregard for the lives
of innocent civilians, and a significant segment of the population simply
does not care? When I ask such questions, people often say, “You have
a right to your opinion; I support your right to speak.”
I think that indicates a fundamental moral, political, and intellectual crisis.
Free speech has come to mean not a process of engagement, but a right toshout
into the wind. People see no reason or obligation to engage. This tellsme
that we live in a political system that has democratic features but isnot
a meaningful democracy. I say that because I believe a meaningful democracy
requires an active citizenry. That is why I titled this talk “Against
Dissent.” Finally, I’ll explain what I mean by that.
In a meaningful democracy, citizens would be part of the process by which
pubic policy is formulated. That is, citizens would discuss issues and problems,
with access to the broadest range of information, leading to an exploration
of the widest possible range of solutions and responses. The views of people
would not only be relevant to the decisions politicians end up implementing,
but would structure the choices politicians could make.
Instead, we live in a system in which many people think they are participating
fully if they vote. Some will participate a bit further by working in the
electoral process. Others will work at educating themselves about the policy
options that politicians and other powerful people have laid out, so that
they can better choose among those options. But very few people understand
democracy to mean direct engagement in the process by which policy options
are formulated.
That is why, for example, so many Americans do not know what to think ofthe
movement to resist corporate domination of the global economy. Thosepeople,
such as the folks in the streets of Seattle, were asserting theirright to
be involved in the formulation of policy options, and it seemedstrange to
many Americans.
If that is what democracy could be -- an active role for engaged citizens
-- then we can see why the term dissent doesn’t quite fit. If we all
are part of the process of formulating policy options -- if we do not give
up the right to be involved in that process -- then we begin with the idea
that all policy options are open, and that the people will decide which option
they want the government to pursue.
If that were the case, then I, and others who offer an antiwar perspective,
wouldn’t be dissenting from some already-agreed-upon position. We would
be contributing a policy option to the discussion. That wouldn’t be
dissent; it would be participation in a conversation about which option or
options might be most desirable.
Now, after the political process has concluded and a policy is chosen, then
it makes sense to say that one dissents from that. But literally from September
12 on, my public speech has been labeled dissent. But it wasn’t dissent.
It was my contribution to the policy discussion. It was labeled dissent only
because this culture assumes that the pronouncements of the president and
other “important” people are the policy, and we the people then
have a right to either agree with it or dissent from it.
I have a different view of democracy. The antiwar movement has a different
view of democracy. The movement for a fair and just global economy has adifferent
view of democracy. In that sense, these kinds of movements arenot simplyabout
changing policies; they are about changing the system. Theyattemptto turn
a system that now is democratic in its formal structure intoa meaningfuldemocracy
in practice.
They are, quite literally, movements engaged in -- to borrow a phrase from
my colleague Rahul Mahajan -- the struggle for the soul of a nation.
Ironically, when we engage in that struggle these days we are called anti-American,
unpatriotic, or traitors. Let me respond to that, and close, by returning
to Eugene Debs. In Canton, Ohio, in 1918, under the threat of a jail term,
Debs said:
“Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned
about the treason that involves yourselves. Be true to yourself and you cannot
be a traitor to any good cause on earth.”
Debs was one of many Americans who fought for free speech. At the same time
these Americans were fighting for that right, they were not afraid to raise
their voices against illegitimate authority and for justice, sometimes in
the face of harsh repression.
We are lucky; we don’t have to fight those same battles to speak, at
least not at the moment. We may face the scorn of some of our fellow citizens,
or risk the condemnation of our bosses. Some may lose their jobs. But compared
to facing down the barrel of a gun or risking jail time, well, let’s
keep our hardships in perspective. Again, these freedoms we have won arenot
necessarily permanent; we have to work to hold them. But we do have them.
That means that more than ever, the question for us is whether we will use
our voices, our energy -- perhaps before too long our bodies in civil disobedience
-- to fight against illegitimate authority and for justice.
That child in Afghanistan reaching for a bomblet from an American cluster
bomb, the parents in Afghanistan who in the coming weeks will watch their
children starve because U.S. bombing has disrupted food distribution -- they
have a right to an answer. They are waiting for our answer.
What will our answer be?
Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at
Austin, amember of the Nowar Collective
www.nowarcollective.com, and author of the forthcoming book Writing
Dissent:Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream. He can
be reachedat rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.