Market Fundamentalists are an Existential Threat

I did not know when I was a young man that my field of study, economics, would some day become the basis of a religion, one powerful enough to threaten the very existence of human beings.

Neoclassical economics was rightly proud of one of the more brilliant proofs in the history of the world. The proof began with clear and focused inspiration by Adam Smith, carried on through the 19th century, especially with Ricardo, the Austrian marginalists, and Walras; was modified critically by Pareto; and was parsed and formalized by the modern general equilibrium theorists and greats such as Arrow and Debreu.

That proof said something extraordinary. It said that if certain exacting conditions could be fully met, a free market system is provably the best economic system imaginable, best meeting the needs of individuals in a society that embraces it.

This is not merely an ideological assertion. Not rhetorical. Not a point of view. This is the product of a massive compilation of mathematical and logical argument. It is not to be dismissed merely as a matter of politics -- at least, not by the rational.

Many took this quite seriously, as they should. Many argued very forcefully that capitalism must be assertively advanced at the expense of other, lesser, systems. The belief in markets, the belief in capitalism, took on a religious fervor. In its extreme form, it took on the form of faith-based dogma, a body of belief best described as market fundamentalism.

Good economists understood that the proof, nifty and clever as it was, is subject to those "exacting conditions." Good economists understood that the proof says IF those conditions are met perfectly THEN the case is made.

Unfortunately, two things are undoubtedly true, and all good economists know both.

One, those conditions are never met, and have never been met. That is, the proof in favor of capitalism is a proof in favor of one economic system over another in a fictitious world of theory only.  A world that does not and has never existed.

Two, and it took another profound proof to understand this, economists discovered the second best theorem that says, in short, that if you do not meet all those exacting conditions perfectly (say you meet them all approximately) there is no guarantee that the results will resemble the results of perfect competition at all. In other words, economic systems are subject to a form of chaos such that 100% of the conditions lead to something optimal, yet 99% of the conditions may lead to something awful. Catastrophe theory in action.

As the conditions are never met, there is no economic theory that says that in the real world there is actually a general case for capitalism. The case for capitalism must be made on a case-by-case basis, examining the well being of people before and after they move to and from capitalism to and from other economic systems.

None of this has stopped the Market Fundamentalists from carrying on, quite dishonestly, as if economists have provided them with a sacred text that says that unfettered markets are good for all of us. They fill the Congress, think tanks, and other places of influence, pushing for the interests of the few (capitalism does remarkably well for the 1%) but pushing for them disingenuously in the name of a political-economic system that they claim, feverishly, is good for everyone. But the evidence says this is palpably untrue. Some forms of capitalism in many places have done the poor grave harm; life-and-death harm is exceedingly common.

And it is not just about inequality. It is also about human survival, as capitalism allows powerful parties who are grossly enriched by unfettered environmental regulation to destroy our air and water and biosphere broadly for profit. They do so in the name of market fundamentalism, literally mocking those who would ask, can we not do better by collectively acting as if we all matter? If extinction by environmental devastation is the outcome on the one hand, we must surely consider alternatives to a system that is killing us (and many innocents who have neither say nor profit in our system).

As Naomi Klein says, "this changes everything." Political economic discourse must admit that capitalism, at least in its current form, may be lethal. Reasonable people examining alternatives may disagree. E.g., is Sanders' social democracy, what he calls democratic socialism, nearly enough?  But those who would trot out their market fundamentalism, and deny most of the scientific and other evidence before our eyes, in order to continue to profit from their special place in the system, are guilty of negligent homicide -- of entire species, homo sapiens, and many others. This is a hanging offense, but if we do not stop them, there will be no one left to hang them when we reach what the Cambridge University Center of Catastrophe Studies considers the limit beyond which the last 100,000 human beings, living in a stone age of sorts, can never be expect to bounce back. This tragic end to humankind may take place in the next century.

When the last woman standing pounds her fist into the earth and curses the rest of us, it will be far too late to say "I told you so."  Can the market fundamentalists be defeated in time?  We may have already run out of time, but our only hope is to RESIST today.  Even without our withdrawal from the Paris Accords we are behind the eight ball. The fate of humankind may well hang in the balance of the Congressional elections of 2018. 

**This is a gentle re-write of an earlier posting.

Tolerate the intolerant but not their intolerance

An important issue not well resolved (and it won't be here, although I wish to advance it a step or two) is the matter of the ethical demands on us to:

1) tolerate the intolerant;
2) tolerate intolerance.

They are quite distinct.

The three ethical traditions are, in their simplest form, about ethical judgment based upon (1) character (2) intention (3) outcome. I take this brief moment to be didactic for this reason: the third ethical tradition -- the one in which utilitarianism, for example, is situated -- says the ethical value of an action must account for its outcomes, its effects.

Tolerate the intolerant:

For a host of reasons, we can never be sure that our evaluation of others is not biased and distorted. So those we view as intolerant may not be in any objective sense. Further, the world changes and most of us understand this (except for religious fundamentalists) so what may be a very unpopular opinion today may actually be acceptable, even essential to our survival, tomorrow.

An argument can be made that a free society must tolerate the intolerant. We must make room for religious fanatics, racists, sexists, zealots of all sorts. We must protect their voice. (We must protect their right to speak -- we must not force anyone to listen to them -- a confusion of the radical right.) To tolerate the intolerant -- to give them a seat at the table, a plate of food, a vote -- seems to pass the character test (we give the same dignity to others as we wish for ourselves). It passes the intention test -- we intend to offer equality of opportunity to all. I has a tougher time against the oucomes test (by giving the KKK a parade permit, we may do harm to someone.)  By passing two and potentially failing one ethical tradition's test, we give tentative approval to the principle that we must tolerate the intolerant.

Tolerate intolerance:

It is very important to distinguish tolerating the intolerant from tolerating intolerance. To tolerate is to advance the social value that tolerance must take place even when the costs to the tolerater is higher than the benefit. (Even when I am repulsed by theocrats who would say terrible things about my gay family and friends, I must not oppress the intolerant theocrats.)

But must I tolerate their intolerance? On the face of it, and I think once we probe more deeply, no. Tolerating the intolerant -- giving them voice and a place at the table -- is not at all the same thing as tolerating their intolerance. If the social value is that I must tolerate them, the reciprocal is true: they must tolerate me. I must grant the religious fundamentalist the right to say his scripture criticizes sexuality or mixed fabrics or shaving or whatever else Ecclesiastes might offer up (and there is plenty -- much of it fodder for the modern secularist) -- but that fundamentalist is out of line when he tries to invade the civic sphere and impose his beliefs on me (seeks to regulate my behavior).

What of so-called intolerance toward intolerance? There is really no legitimate logical category here, although many seem to think so. The university, with special obligations to open discourse, is often criticized for showing intolerance to intolerance -- but that is in fact its job: promote tolerance while promoting critical and skeptical reception for all new (non-disproved) ideas. What the university must not do is (1) above -- show intolerance to the intolerant. That is, to their person, or to their rights as people. This includes the right to speak out. Universities must protect the right of minority views to be expressed, but not in any way condone the views, expressed, especially if they are themselves intolerant.

Note that no one is obliged to listen to the intolerant -- or to anyone -- speak. Leave the speaking hall empty, if you please. But don't block his right to speak.

But even here there is a caveat. When is it ethical to block a speaker? By the third tradition, it is ethically compelling to block a speaker who may cause harm: say one who advocates violence against some identifiable group in the university or surrounding community. This has to be exercised with great care, but this ethical duty does exist.

It is slightly outside this discussion, but universities have one more obligation: to allocate their scarce resources most effectively. Their scarce speaker monies and scarce university facilities need to be managed to best advance the mission of the university. Discourse in the university is supposed to meet a higher standard of evidence and rhetoric and respectfulness than in ordinary civic discourse. A university should not fall prey to inviting the most popular or most exciting speakers -- but those who have met the highest standards of scholarship and can raise the level of discourse on their campuses. Universities have the right and obligation, both, to turn away speakers who are popular because of their political positions but who have not demonstrated scholarly capacity and discipline. Those speakers have plenty of other outlets in our fact-free and logic-free society.

Of course, universities should protect the right of unpopular but scholarly speakers from speaking when vocal student groups are intolerant of them or even their point of view (separate, as above). But if the speaker is himself espousing intolerance, it is a judgment call, as the outcomes (ethics) argument gives them at least one ethical leg of the stool to sit on. This is the grey area that has so many incensed and confused. There is no iron clad rule -- and certainly none following directly from the First Amendment, as much as the lazy would like -- to resolve this conflict.

Bottom line:

It is arguable that we should try to tolerate the intolerant (as people), but we must decline to tolerate intolerance in all people who wish to participate in our society, especially when the form of that intolerance could do harm.  

Universities have no faux First Amendment obligation to allow anyone to speak on their campuses.  In the civic sphere, everyone not inciting violence or espousing intolerance has the right to speak (but not necessarily to be heard.)  In academic life, a higher standard holds. Universities have the right and indeed the obligation to raise the level of discourse and encourage their students to engage with the highest levels of public intellectualism or scholarship they can attract.  A political litmus test on those potential speakers who meet those higher standards is not appropriate, however;  insuring that quality ideas and arguments advanced and received with tolerance and without violence can be heard by those who wish to hear them is a duty, however, that should be fulfilled. 

Ecclesiastes

I had a coffee today in one of those places that keeps perhaps one hundred old books on their shelves. I suppose it is not uncommon for someone to pull one off the shelf and leaf through the volume, reading a page or two before an overly loud couple gossiping unkindly catch one's attention, but as most books that end up like this were never very good and are now wildly out of style or out of date, that is not remotely their purpose in this reincarnation. Like a lace doily or an unremarkable painting of a fox hunting scene painted by a dowager who never saw one, they are there for theatrical reasons: they say "this is the set of a cafe in which our clients reflect on the classics as they sip."

But I saw a copy of H.G. Wells' The Outline of History: The Whole Story of Man on the shelf and I pulled it off. I consider Wells one of the last polymaths who could actually imagine he "knew it all." (The world changed too quickly after his generation.) Clearly, H.G. Wells agreed (re-read the subtitle if you have doubts).

As there was no gossip to distract me and I am a fast reader, I made some progress but then I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. On page 65, a map that Wells entitled (modestly): "Possible Outline of Europe and Western Asia at the Maximum of the 4th Ice Age." When the ice caps had frozen, the oceans fell -- not trivially, but so much so that Italy was connected by land to Croatia, to Sicily, to Corsica and Sardinia, Africa to Saudi Arabia, India to Ceylon; all that Adriatic and Mediterranean and Red Sea and Indian Ocean had shrunk away revealing and drying their sea and ocean bottoms for the thousands of years before the warming began.

Planet cools, water freezes, oceans recede. So much so that the world we know like the back of our hand is invisible. One giant block of Italy and Southern Europe and the islands of the Mediterranean. One giant block of Africa and the Arabian peninsula. One giant block of India and Ceylon.

It did not fail to strike me as poignant that I was looking at this old map by this long-gone genius, in a book published in 1920, on the day that the president of the United States was withdrawing from the Paris Accords.

Planet cools, water freezes, oceans recede.

Planet warms, ice melts, oceans rise.

That's not so hard to understand, is it?

In 50,000 BCE the ice age was surely tragic for many. It culled our own species, and in fact created a niche for the Neandertals in France (too cold for your Cro-Magnon ancestors -- I figure I'm Neandertal). But the scale of the tragedy was small.

This time -- this warming, this melting, this rising of the oceans -- and hundreds of millions of people living on the coasts of every continent but Antarctica, and dozens, perhaps hundreds, of islands and their inhabitants, will be driven out of their homes, losing trillions of dollars of value and many, many lives. Bangladesh alone will lose land that is home to one hundred million or more.  As if that is not enough, the dessication of barely arable land in Africa will lead to enormous crop losses by 2060.

To every thing there is a season, and we will soon find that it is the season to lose, and to mourn -- our unwillingness to embrace the family of man, and our refusal to gather stones together when we could.

***

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8King James Version (KJV)

3 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

The 2016 election changes everything

In my penultimate three-hour lecture to my college seniors each year, I exhort my students to see how the neoliberal globalization agenda has been disingenuous about the harm that has come to the working class in the US.  Neoclassical economists (among whom I am numbered) have consistently advanced a free trade agenda -- and for compelling reasons -- but we have failed to ensure that policy makers understand that there are losers as well as winners in the globalization game, and the case for free trade includes the requirement that winners compensate losers at the end of the day.

This is not a minor matter. In fact, as has been shown by Dani Rodrik and others, for every one dollar gained in free trade, five dollars are redistributed.  If anything, the true impacts of free trade are primarily about “redistribution” and only secondarily about greater overall efficiency and aggregate economic activity.

I remind my students that there is no honest economic case for free trade without an effective system for ensuring that the so-called Kaldor-Hicks compensations (transfers from winners to losers) are made in some form.  Further, the evidence is clear: those compensations are rarely made.

I have been working in this area for decades, and I show them carefully and extensively how the postwar bargain between the political elite and organized labor was prescient – some, with the help of an elderly Keynes, actually expected this to happen.  Shortly after World War II there emerged a thoughtful social contract, including social safety nets, to compensate labor for those expected gains to multinational businesses and investors.

Globalization would give business increased profit opportunities and political elites some insurance against a third world war (the decline in global integration in the interwar years was thought a contributory factor to WW2), and the post war social bargain would compensate labor for the loss of economic bargaining power and the increased economic risks they would endure over time.  Unemployment insurance, labor union protections (the UN Declaration of Human Rights soon followed, listing the right to organize into unions as a fundamental human right), continued old-age public pension programs (such as social security in the US), and health care programs (such as the National Health Service in the UK) were put in place.

I go on to show my students that from the end of the War until the 1970s, both free trade and the social bargain were largely honored, but since then the plight of the working class in the US has dramatically worsened. As expected, the decreased bargaining power of labor hurt them, but instead of the agreed-upon social bargain supporting them when they needed it most, that social bargain was badly eroded from the OPEC oil crises of 1973-1975 onward, with an escalation of that harm taking place under Reagan and since. (Reagan’s assault on the air traffic controllers was a pivotal moment in this degeneration.)

The business class and their political agents took their vastly improved economic wealth and converted it into increased political power. Citizen's United is just one recent channel for this effect.  It was not the first.

Notably, at just the time the economic plight of the working class became terrible, their political capacity to enforce the social contract was diminished.  This is akin to having your house burn down with your home insurance policy inside it.  At precisely the moment when the working class needed their contract with America to come through for them, they were told that policy would not be honored.

I take the time to offer the solemn argument that as the future economic and power elites of society, my students, economics students all, need to acknowledge that the economics profession has allowed itself to be used by the commercial elite against the working classes. We have taken the benefits and failed to pay a fair price for playing the game, leaving the working class to hold the bag. I exhort them to embrace the critical analytical and ethical tools needed to fight for more justice for the working class in America.

This is an exhausting endeavor. I cover enormous terrain - three centuries of thought and policy, dozens of books, many dozens of analytical papers, twenty-five years of my own work and the scholarship of the leading lights in the field. I construct my argument as carefully as I can, and present it with equal care.  I spent many years as a strategic management consultant, profiting in my own way from the benefits of the international economic system, and I must account for myself. For twenty years or more, I have felt the teaching has been worth it. In fact, I once said this was one of the two lectures that made it worthwhile for me to teach as a long-time visitor in an elite liberal arts college on top of my duties teaching graduate students at a state university and my private consulting obligations.

But last night, my second lecture following the 2016 presidential election, I realized that the message was now different. I was admonishing twenty-one-year old college students to embrace an ethical duty to the working classes only a couple of weeks after they witnessed the potential annihilation of the biosphere, corruption of the Constitution and their rights under it, and an erosion of their future prospects by that same working class and their apparently dangerous hero.

It hit me slowly, late in the process. I am wedded to this message and, as an old war horse, slow to change my cadence, I spent too little time thinking about the implications of what had just happened.  But it slowly dawned on me that my students do not any longer owe the working class very much at all.  In their rage — ignorant by choice, as the influence of fundamentalist Christian ideology in America has taken on the ugly and self-extinguishing form of rejecting expertise and education — the working class, largely white working class men, has deeply compromised the future of my students. For twenty years, I have told young elite college students about to assume their place among the privileged elite that they should not allow market fundamentalists to disguise the power of the system to do grave harm to the most vulnerable; that they should be honest about the pros and the cons of market capitalism.  (The economic case for market capitalism is strong, but there is no case for it at all without a place for a strong government to play a number of critical roles.)  But in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, how can I ask my students to sacrifice for the men and women who did not take the time to figure out that a billionaire with a sordid history of exploiting others was not a working-class hero?  Or that a political party, the GOP, that has engineered and continues to engineer the destruction of the social contract – destroying unions, public schools, transferring up to 90% of labor productivity increases from working people to their employers, and restricting their recourse to defend themselves in court, and now, astonishingly, is threatening to destroy social security and medicare -- is not their ally?  Or that their choice to dine on Jim Crow rather than a real dinner (the insight courtesy of DuBois) made them vastly less worthy of our support?  Or, finally that their decision to ally with their own political and economic enemy because Mr. Trump helped them galvanize their uncontrolled anger – a decision that may well destroy their own and the capacity of many to survive retirement and provide a safe world for our grandchildren – made my students collateral damage in this war?

This lecture -- this critical lecture central to my long-time message about the deficiencies of neoclassical economics -- has been transformed by this presidential election. I am inclined to not teach the course again. The working class has declared war on all of us, and I must take down their flag. De minimus, it cannot be the ethical duty of young college students to sacrifice for those who would choose to do them so much harm.  This is not Schadenfreude — we need not wish upon them the self-inflicted suffering that is likely on its way; there will be suffering enough without our contribution.  Instead, it is time to scramble for economic, political and perhaps our literal survival.  I can no longer ask my students to do much else.

Hate Trumps Love

Hate Trumps Love
Ignorance Trumps Education
Deceit Trumps Truth
Religion Trumps Science

Some said they rejected statist solutions and embraced capitalism, yet they embraced an enemy of capitalism who will destroy trillions of dollars of economic value, despite clear and constant warnings from virtually all professional economists and investors.

Some said they were angry at government, yet they elected in droves the very people who broke government.

Some said they were angry at corruption, yet they elected one of the most corrupt men ever to stand on a public stage in American politics.

Some said they cared about the Constitution, yet they elected a man who has shown through word and deed that he neither understands nor cares at all about democratic Constitutional values, but will instead exercise violent, autocratic, anti-constitutional powers to seek vengeance whenever he pleases. And a man who will appoint to the Supreme Court men who will suppress the voting rights of minorities, the reproductive health rights of women and the civil rights of the LGBTQ community.

Some claimed to care about "reason" (too laughable to write without quotation marks) yet they voted for a candidate who rejects science and threatens to pull the plug on the Paris Accords, humanity's last chance to save the biosphere and ourselves from self-extinction.

What this candidate promised was hate, not love. Ignorance, not education. Deceit, not truth. And his own special brand of myth making (which the religious imagined resonated with their own views of God), not science.

The study of rationality talks about "revealed preference." It says we must discard what people say they want or think, and instead infer their values and desires from their actions.

Today, the American people chose to become an existential threat to the other 7 billion people on the planet and to half of their own citizens at home. No matter what they say of themselves, they chose hate over love, ignorance over education, deceit over truth, and religion over science. They showed us who they are. We must hold their feet to the fire -- they did not choose capitalism, good government, and Constitutionalism, no matter what they say of themselves. They chose an authoritarian populist, a liar, an abuser, a misogynist, a vengeful sociopath to lead them, just as so many foolish mobs have done to their grave discredit and later horror so many times in history.

When Hitler was made Chancellor in 1934 few had in mind Kristallnacht, Dachau or Auschwitz. Few had in mind Jewish ghettos and genocide. You want a Strongman, you take your chances. Be careful what you wish for.

In their defense, the Constitutional experiment that took place here from 1789-2016 has always been flawed, and it was doomed from the start. (The blind hubris of white men who deny the searing hypocrisy of our early history is not worthy of any defense.) A Constitution, notably, provides protections against minorities (its fundamental purpose in replacing a simple majoritarian system) because its founders believe the natural tendency of mankind is to do minorities harm. The price one pays for such protection against evil is that the Constitution, a slow changing document by design, is used by the enemies of progress as a weapon against change, and, notably, used by the enemies of inclusion to exclude those they dislike or fear. No matter how prescient the writers of a Constitution can be, the world will change too much for them to have anticipated its needs, and the Constitution will, like the leeches applied to poor George Washington on his death bed, become the millstone around its citizen's necks that finally drowns them.

Last night, we drowned. Be cheered: it was our fate.

I apologize to all those who were victims of my belief over the years that mankind is fundamentally good. I was a victim of confirmation bias, trying to prop up my youthful delusion that, when I had to chose between Rousseau and Hobbes, my choice of Rousseau and the goodness of man in a state of nature made sense. Hobbes said we needed an absolutist, a sovereign protector who infantilized us with his power, and when push comes to shove, would chose such an ugly figure over democracy.

I also apologize to the rest of the world community for the grave harm that the American experiment, choosing to turn Fascist and denialist, will have on the rest of you.

Soon, Trump's America faces its own RÖHM PURGE. In '34, it took only three days to kill off all the opponents of Nazism and re-create the SS as its arm. (We will soon see increasingly militarized police in our inner cities if history means to repeat itself. The SS became more powerful than the German Army within a few years -- watch for signs of that.) Perhaps there will be some solace in the house cleaning that removes resistance and reason from Trump's path, as there will surely be Republican bodies that fall upon that heap outside the back door. Will Paul Ryan be the first to be hoisted on his own petard?

Those of us who can read and write and remember even an iota of history can see the writing on the wall. If you are young enough, make plans to leave.

Christian America Chooses to Self-Destruct by Following 15th century Islam's Anti-Scientism

One of the greatest ironies of our Age is that modern America is arguably a culmination of the ascendancy of the West and it seeks to destroy itself with the very weapon that made it possible. Those who paid attention to history know that as late as 1600, the Arabic world was far ahead of Europe. Arab science dominated European superstition. But the rise of a special brand of Islamic Faith forced the Arab world to turn away from science, lose their advantage, fall further and further behind the West, and ultimately turn over world domination to Western Empires, leading to the ascendancy of the material, technological, practical American version of Western Empire. Our version of the Enlightenment -- one of the practical inventor who drove standards of competition in industry ever upward, reined in by the practical policy maker who insisted that the blessings of the earth be shared democratically -- was arguably our sine qua non.

And now it is being destroyed.

Today, we face the rise of a new brand of Christian Faith that rejects or diminishes science, much as did the Arab world of the 13th to 15th centuries. The Arab world's scientific community today is a tiny fraction of what it rightfully should have been. Religion poisoned their destiny, relegating them in large part to many of the disasters they have endured during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. We are following in their path.

Today, nearly half of Americans repudiate science, expend enormous energy setting our understanding of the world and universe backward, fight to deprive children of an honest education, and suppress the use, much less the advance, of science. Today, while the CDC cries out that we do not have the funding to fight Zika's invasion of the continental US, many Americans apparently believe that Zika is a "government conspiracy." When the next virus comes along -- and it will assuredly come along -- we may be doomed to prevaricate and sermonize instead of blasting it with the might of modern science.

The enemies of modernity say the vast majority of climatologists and other scientists clamoring about changes in the earth's ecosystem are lying for research funding. Thus the Anthropocene Epoch, so named because we have caused an astonishing implosion of the biosphere, is apparently a political ploy.

Ironically, the very Americans who are, for a host of odd reasons, so anti-Muslim have decided to follow in the footsteps of the Arab World in the 15th century and hand over our leadership of the world, trading it in for superstition and nonsense. We are taking the lead offered by Islam in how to destroy the most advanced society on Earth in short order.

The passing of the American Empire is not the whole price, unfortunately. For with our obstinate passing we may take the biosphere with us. But until then, we get to prove that those who failed to pay attention to history are doomed to repeat it.

Safe Spaces are NOT in conflict with free speech and university discourse, but fundamental to them

The University of Chicago has taken a stand on students and activists demanding that university life protect them from political, racial, gender, orientation, and other forms of verbal assault from which they may take offense.  UC has announced that it will provide no safe havens (so-called safe spaces) for students who wish to limit discourse they deem excessively hurtful. The argument, it seems, is that a higher education demands a rigorous give-and-take and being protected from offense by those who disagree with us is counterproductive to that enterprise.  Perhaps some at UC, and those who support this position, think this is about the first amendment, a right that assures us that the government is limited in the threats it may employ in response to our public disagreement with it.

Confusion in the media -- including social media -- is rampant.  This is apparently a complicated issue.  But it is a shame to see that even UC has failed to work out the nuances before announcing what appears to be blanket policy on the matter.

Notably, the First Amendment is itself a safe space creator.  It says the government cannot shut down our dissent of it without very good cause.  (We cannot, for example, incite violence or revolution without consequence).  The First Amendment thus creates a safe space -- a constitutionally-protected space, in which grievances of our government can be aired without fear of repercussions.  The fundamental protection of free speech in the US Constitution creates a safe political space for criticisms of those in power.  Anyone, anywhere is "free" to say whatever he wishes; one has the legal right to free speech when one is free to speak what is on one's mind without fear of government reprisal; that is, when one is free to speak safely. 

For speech to be free, it must take place in a safe space.

Notably, the First Amendment says nothing about our right to be heard without being challenged, nor about our right to hear or not hear others.  In public discourse we are not obliged to attend to anyone we don't like, but we may have those voices foisted upon us from time to time. So free speech neither guarantees us an audience for our ideas, nor protects us from others' reaction to our arguments.  We are under no obligation as citizens to hear each other out.  The common view that a right to "free speech" affords us to say anything without reprisal from anyone or, even more oddly, the duty to listen to anyone who wishes our attention, is simply right not.  The legal right to free speech allows us to speak freely, safe from government reprisal.  That's about it.  Free speech requires safety, and free speech of any other sort must be protected in other ways.

Notably, universities play a critical role in society that require that university communities obey rules somewhat different from those in civil society generally.

If universities are to meet their goal of open and honest discourse, there are times and places when and where we in fact must be obliged to hear other arguments -- beyond the obligation of the citizen to do so in everyday life.  We cannot teach and learn without hashing out opposing positions, on at least disagreements about salient features of the argument.  How shall we interpret the evidence describing society as it exists today and in history and what it means for tomorrow?  What obligations do we have to ourselves and one another as ethical citizens of a nation and of the world?  How shall we determine the proper roles of government, business, the ordinary citizen?  How shall we determine the truth of scientific theory and the meaning of scientific experimental findings?  There will always be disagreements about what we the meaning of what we are seeing in the world and what best might be done about it, and vigorous debate about values and practice are often both essential for arriving at the best possible understanding of it.

But we are only obliged to hear other arguments within reason. We are not obliged to hear all other arguments, no matter how ill-prepared, anti-scientific, hateful, dysfunctional, etc. This is not a simple dictum that suggests that "one must be nice" although that may be part of an effective, civil society.  There is something more to it than decorum.

There are constraints on the qualities of an argument in university life that comprise the quid pro quo that earns one the right to be heard.  Most people engaged in this discussion in the media seem to miss the fact that university life both requires that (1) we hear disparate and even disagreeable voices more actively than we do in everyday life, and (2) we have the right and duty to constrain those voices far more tightly, demanding that they meet logical, evidential and coherent standards of argument.  This is the point of education -- to take the naturally emotive, illogical, biased, and self-advancing positions of our students and teach them how to shape those opinions into defensible arguments, ordered by logic, supported by evidence, and articulated in a civil manner.  College discussions that fail to get beyond the emotional and illogical tone of social media do students a great disservice; this is especially challenging in on-line teaching, where students seem especially inclined to fall into such awful habits.  One of the most important roles of the educational institution is to teach and demand these thinking and communication skills -- in both their transmission and their reception. 

An often-missed piece of the safe space puzzle is that the academy not only has the right to ask us to listen, even to offensive arguments, but also the obligation to demand that the way in which these arguments be presented, as well as critiqued, meet reasonable standards of reason and rhetoric.  This is naturally challenging -- both emotionally (to hear the ugly) as well as intellectually (to prepare and to critique logically and fairly).  To make it feasible for emotional human beings to engage well in these efforts, everyone must at a minimum feel safe to do so.  Anger and fear may be motivating, but they should be set aside as well as possible by the rules and the norms of the game.  Faculty and other university administrators cannot demand that students "hear each other out" without discharging their own duty: to ensure that the rhetoric employed be both worthwhile and civil.  The quid pro quo for being obliged to listen is that those who choose to address us do so in sensible and productive ways and it is the role of faculty and university administrators to teach and enforce such intellectual and social skills.

Hence, safe spaces are not, as is imagined by many, antithetical to university discourse, but in fact part of the foundation of energetic, honest, and thorough discourse of the most unpopular ideas.  In university life, students must first be assured that they are safe from nonsensical, angry, hateful, invective attacks on one's person or position -- much less time-wasting attacks -- the very sort of behavior that all reasonable faculty forbid in their classrooms -- before the university has the right, and duty I would add, to demand that students hear one another out.  Universities are not caged "octagons," into which students are thrown together to fight in no-holds-barred, death matches.  No one, much less a young adult in college, should be expected to endure aggressive and sustained taunts about their race, sexual orientation, or politics -- nor should students be encouraged to engage in such counterproductive conflicts (which I fear the UC policy and other like it may unleash).  Learning how to participate in civil, educated discourse is one of the fundamental purposes of higher education, and it is the university's challenge to create the milieu in which university residents interact according to these productive behaviors.

We must treat civil discourse as the equivalent of a safe space and provide it to our students.

Of course, the idea of a "safe space" can be, and has been, misconstrued and misused.  Chalk signs of "Trump 2016" should not have been met with official condemnation at Emory (how was this uncivil or threatening?)  The professor enduring the shrieking Yale student is not what we wish for -- but the question is how to promote sense and sensibility instead of encouraging students to endure the tirades of those who disagree with them.  Trigger warnings can be excessive --some learning is admittedly quite uncomfortable (although I have my suspicions that many of those who promote the idea that learning is uncomfortable have not subjected themselves to much identity-threatening discomfort themselves).  Anything can be excessive.  But in a society in which it is still much harder for some people to feel safe -- it is indisputable that a young black man who insists upon his legal and civil right to see a police warrant before having his car or home searched is much more likely to endure illegal violence against him, for example (an eventuality the First Amendment most assuredly tried to protect us against) -- we cannot hope to hear from the marginalized, and have no right to demand that they listen to the majority.  This doesn't mean that everyone will feel perfectly safe when we seek to behave civilly and productively -- most of us don't like being confronted in the public square and young people are prone to consider disagreement with their values and ideas a serious offense, even when they are not communicated inappropriately.  But it does mean that universities are obliged to facilitate courteous discussion and forbid bullying in all forms. And it does mean that safe spaces are not contrary to the form of free speech that must be conducted in university spaces, but fundamental to them.

No one in civil society is obliged to listen to the angry, incoherent rantings taking place in the political rally of one's opponent, and no one in is obliged to do the same on campus merely because of one's status as a student.  Enrollment in a university comes with a social contract (apparently in need of clarification): the university ensures that civil, quality discourse populates the classroom and the commons and in exchange its students agree to engage (speak and listen) with integrity and engagement.  Only once the University of Chicago and other quality colleges and universities deliver their end of this bargain have they the right to demand that students deliver on their end of it.  But the idea that a safe space is somehow in conflict with "free speech" or the mission of a university is not correct.  I believe UC may have jumped the gun, failing to address its own obligation in this critical quid pro quo; it must first ensure civility and safety before it demand its students listen openly to all criticism of their positions.  At that point, they may insist that students endure the discomfort of vigorous disagreement about even their most sacred shibboleths, but until then students do have the right to insist that the university be a well-regulated, safe community in which this to-and-fro is to take place, one in which the civility and decency of classroom discussion shall be carried over into the university commons.

Note that social media and ordinary civic discussion may allow -- and perhaps there is nothing that can be done to stop -- nonsensical, emotive, partisan utterances, couched in invective, that pass for "speech."  But it would be disastrous to allow the nature and sensibilities of social media -- perniciously and massively influential in the formation of public opinion in 2016 -- to infect university life, where our duty is to do much better than this.

Indeed, create and support -- and do what we can to enforce -- an environment in which civil, sensible discussion takes place and its opposite banished. Then insist that each of us listen civilly to what the other has to say.  Do not confuse this with the confused desire to subject members of the academy to crude and hateful attacks under a very confused banner of "free speech" that has nothing to do with either freedom or speech.