On the Death of Civility
By Jack Fencl ‘22,
The past few months have been chaotic. The whirlwind of the coronavirus pandemic, economic catastrophe, national unrest surrounding race relations, and a never ending stream of major news events has shattered any semblance of structure and normalcy. Factor in the ever-present disruptive effects of technology coupled with a complex stew of long-term social upheaval and we find ourselves in what can only be described as a world in disarray.
No one disputes that this is a tumultuous time, but I fear that it is also dangerous. This danger is the result of several distinct yet related phenomena converging in the most toxic way imaginable to create a foundational shift in the way we live our lives and interact with others. It is difficult to explain exactly what is occurring or why it is happening, but my observations and experiences from the past few months have repeatedly led me to one frightening conclusion: we are experiencing the death of civility.
Put simply, we are losing our ability to live with each other. Enabled by technology and furthered by human nature, people are balkanizing into ever-shrinking camps and increasingly viewing themselves not primarily as individuals but as members of their tribes. This, in turn, is raising the temperature of daily life because previously innocuous disagreement is now treated as a threat to one’s very existence.
This is not a unique insight on my part, and concern about its implications have been articulated by far more capable writers, but the past few months have, in my view, made it clear that we’ve crossed the Rubicon. If there’s ever been a time to be worried, it is here and now.
By the death of civility, I don’t mean the end of spurious pleasantries at dinner parties, though I wish that was the worst of it. Rather, the death of civility means that there are cracks in the liberal foundations on which society is built. These cracks are growing quickly, and too many people either don’t see it or do see it but don’t care.
To continue the metaphor, we can agree the house is falling apart, get our act together, and unite to repair its badly eroded structural foundation. This is the ideal outcome, but there is little reason to believe it’s the likely one. At the moment, rather than agreeing that there is a problem and working towards a solution, most people are sitting around and pretending the house is fine, that the problem lies elsewhere. Even among those who admit that the problem is real, far too many are more interested in assigning blame than in working to repair the damage. This is unsustainable.
The death of civility is evident on all sides on a variety of issues. Nationally, we see it on the left in the rise of cancel culture and all its unseemly ideological cousins. On the right, the populist sentiments that President Trump captured have proven to be uniquely hostile to the norms and structures necessary to have a thriving liberal democracy.
So too can it be seen at W&L in the debate about our institution’s name and future. As Lilly Gillespie and I highlighted in our recent Ring-Tum Phi op-ed, a petition that garnered nearly 5,000 signatures contains the line, “Civility will not do.” As we pointed out, this is in direct conflict with W&L’s mission statement, which calls for students “to conduct themselves with honor, integrity and civility.” Given this explicit and direct contradiction, it seems clear that the petition and the sentiments behind it are incompatible with the mission of providing a liberal arts education. If you believe, like I do, in the core liberal arts values at the center of a W&L education, this should be troubling.
Our denunciation of that petition and the reigning social pressure it represents resulted in a mostly predictable response on the part of the community. People opposed to changing the name and those who felt stifled by the pressure largely appreciated our call for civility, while those who support changing the name generally didn’t appreciate the criticism.
It is worth mentioning that many who believe the time has come to change our school’s name agreed with our article, and it would be wrong to imply that everyone engaged on this issue is acting contrary to W&L’s stated values. Many people on both sides have conducted themselves honorably and civilly. But while some may take solace in this fact, the forces of illiberalism need not be pervasive to be deadly, so even while most people are upholding and embodying our liberal arts values, the threat has reached a sufficient scale to be immense and immediate.
While the response to the piece on the whole was overwhelmingly positive, I do worry that our argument was slightly muddled by the polarized reaction it generated. Our point was that incivility and illiberalism should be rejected wherever they exist, whether it comes from the opposing side or your own.
Among those who engaged in thoughtful criticism of our piece, a common observation was that we focused too much on the illiberalism of those in favor of changing the name while ignoring equally unsavory tendencies on the other side. They are right. While the focus of our article was to highlight one manifestation of uncivil illiberalism at W&L, it is undeniably true that our liberal arts values are being attacked on other fronts as well. This is why we didn’t take a position on the name debate, and it is for the same reason I won’t take one here.
I reject the idea that there can be no neutral or nuanced positions on this question, but there are obviously two clear poles around which most of this debate is occurring. Just as I cited the petition as evidence of problems on the change-the-name side, I’ll cite a post on the Generals Redoubt’s Facebook Page as evidence of illiberalism on the keep-the-name side. The post reads: “It will be healthy for Washington and Lee University to eliminate tenure. It is better to have merit-based advancement for its faculty. Thus, fresh new talented faculty have an opportunity to grow and develop. Those who underperform can exit the system. Let’s get rid of tenure now!!!!”
While there can and should be discussion about the merits of the tenure system, timing suggests that this post is a direct response to the faculty’s vote to drop “Lee” from the university’s name. “Merit-based advancement” sounds great, but given that the W&L has many demonstrably excellent faculty members and the general competitiveness of the higher education job market, it seems that the status quo is helping, not hurting, the cause of meritocratic advancement at W&L. As such, it seems that the Redoubt’s post is not a call for a systematic reevaluation of hiring and employment practices in higher education, but rather as a specific call for those who criticized the university to be punished. This is decidedly hostile to the spirit of academic freedom, open debate, the liberal arts, and civility. In short, this is wrong.
Over the last few weeks, I have encountered similar arguments from the same side along the lines of “professor X wrote an article that insults the university and its students; therefore, they should be punished/fired.” While the context in each case varies slightly, this is a fair way to characterize the essence of the position. I fail to see a difference between this kind of thinking and that of the cancel culture mindset—both seek to punish those who engage in wrongthink, and both are appalling and dangerous. If it is wrong when one side does it, then it is equally wrong for the other side to do it.
This retributive mindset creates a chilling effect on free speech and open inquiry. It is antithetical to everything a liberal arts university like W&L stands for and needs to be unequivocally rejected, no matter which side is carrying its flag.
Among those who gave thoughtful criticism of our article, another frequent observation was that W&L has not always lived up to the lofty standards we profess to hold ourselves to. I agree. It seems irrefutably true that in the past W&L has failed to foster a culture of free speech in line with its professed mission of providing a liberal arts education. Even when it has, the benefits provided by such a culture were not equally extended to all members of our community. We must acknowledge this fact to add depth to our understanding of how we arrived at our current situation, but focusing too much on past failings will prevent us from unifying as a community today and making progress for a better tomorrow.
I’ve mentioned those who gave thoughtful criticism of the Ring-Tum Phi article, but I would be remiss if I didn’t address the unthoughtful responses as well. This type of response was found mostly on social media and always left me with the impression that the person criticizing the article did not actually read it. I say this not with the intent to deride anyone in particular, but simply to state a fact. The attacks largely took the form of ad hominems of various flavors or claims that could in no way be justified by what we actually wrote.
Take, for instance, the claim that “calls for civility are really calls for silence.” They are not. No one should be afraid to express their opinions, especially on important topics that affect everyone. In the past, members of our community may have been afraid to speak up out of fear of backlash, but it was as wrong then as it is now. A call for civility is certainly not a call for silence; indeed, a climate of mutual civility should be seen as just the opposite. We need a campus culture that actively encourages people to speak up when something is amiss and engage in thoughtful debate to make W&L a better place for everyone.
The article was also attacked on the grounds that it was a form of “tone policing.” A call for civility, properly understood, is in no way a form of tone policing, and I have yet to be shown where this actually occurs in the text (though I remain open to be proven wrong). A call for civility is not to say that an argument should be dismissed because it is made in an overly critical tone. Indeed, honest and direct argumentation is a pillar of civil discourse. What we were concerned about in “A Plea for Civility” (and what I remain concerned about here) was that the rejection of civility is a rejection of free discourse, rationality, and the liberal arts mission to which W&L is dedicated.
Other rebuttals included the charge that the article is a form of gaslighting, which to the best I can tell is a total misapplication of what that word actually means. Similarly, another attack repeatedly levied against us was that our argument “came from a place of privilege.” This, of course, is an ad hominem attack which serves to distract from, rather than address, the substance of our argument.
One criticism of our article, and of calls for civility generally, stands out from all the rest. This line of thinking is so warped and so dangerous that I was surprised to encounter it on such a large scale. Basically, this argument concedes that people are currently self-censoring but that this is, in fact, a good thing. The logic of this claim manifests itself in different ways, and I have heard it expressed along the lines of “people with offensive views should not have a platform” or “people with offensive views shouldn’t be accepted by society.”
I find it utterly chilling that such claims even need to be rejected in the first place, yet that is where we are. There are greater minds than mine who have defended (and continue to defend) free speech and all that it entails, so for brevity’s sake I won’t go into an expansive defense of the principle here. However, the ability to share ideas and engage in thoughtful criticism – even when some people find it offensive – is the absolute bedrock of a free society. As George Orwell said, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
If we get to a point where free speech is restricted, whether by state enforcement or illiberal cultural pressure, then we will no longer live in a free society.
What I’ve been referring to as liberal arts values are a beautiful thing for the simple reason that they are universal. Every member of our community, regardless of skin color, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status or ideological background should expect the right to engage in open debate, freely pursue scholarly interests, and, above all, be treated with dignity and respect by virtue of their existence as a human being. Any deviation from these admittedly lofty standards is unacceptable and should not be tolerated, especially by those of us who believe that the values and goals of a liberal arts university are worth fighting for.
It is a bit ironic that a properly functioning liberal arts university, by definition, provides space for those with non-liberal worldviews to study, debate, and promote their ideas. This is, of course, a picture of a university at its finest and we should not be dismayed that some people find other philosophical traditions more convincing. I for one am quite confident that with all the cards on the table, liberalism will triumphantly emerge from the marketplace of ideas. Thus, my worry is not that the United States will explicitly reject its classical liberal roots or that W&L will cease to provide a liberal arts education. Rather, at the core of my concern is that America as a nation and W&L as a community will be consumed by our darkest passions, and in a race to the bottom we will let our collective commitment to liberal values, like civility, slip away.
That’s why I’m troubled when I see a widely signed petition with the words, “Civility will not do.” And I’m just as alarmed when I see the Generals Redoubt deride “appeals to civility and rational discussion,” as they did in a recent email.
I’ve had some well-meaning friends tell me that my concerns are overblown, too theoretical, or not the most pressing issue we face at the moment. Maybe they’re right; indeed, I hope they’re right. But based on everything I have witnessed over the past few years, and especially in recent months, I cannot escape the conclusion that the values of free speech, tolerance, and civility are under siege. The problem is manifesting both overtly and covertly, and it is being fueled by, and is in turn fueling, a toxic breakdown in our ability to live with one another.
Both at W&L and across the country, people are losing friends and ending relationships because we are building a world where large swaths of the population are so incompatible with each other that they simply cannot coexist. The rise in political polarization along geographic lines, the so-called “Big Sort,” might be the most visible example of this phenomenon, but it runs far deeper. We see it in rising levels of inequality, in the atomization of daily life, in the bifurcation of society along a myriad of social indicators, and in the general hostility of the current political moment, both at W&L and nationally. These are the direct consequences of losing our ability to live with each other. If left unaddressed, it is frightening to imagine where this ends.
This is the death of civility. We are watching, living it, and far too often fueling it. It’s a hard problem, one with no easy solution. But an illiberal and uncivil world is not one where I care to live. It is my great hope that by starting conversations, lowering the temperature of debate, and recognizing that we are stronger together than we are apart, we can move past this dangerous moment, for the die is not yet cast. We know that united there is no obstacle so great, no force so strong, no evil so wicked that we cannot emerge better for the challenge. The real question, then, is not can we banish this spectre of darkness, but will we? Only time knows.