John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty never lost its relevance, but we have witnessed a resurgence of interest in it. In the latter half of the past century, many conservative writers, most notably Willmoore Kendall, provided trenchant criticisms of Mill’s arguments. Mill, these critics wrote, undermined the claims of tradition and the demands of virtue in forming good public order. In celebrating competing viewpoints, the critics argued, Mill elevated opinion over knowledge, and this elevation simultaneously flattened all opinions, rendering them all equally valueless, and thus not really worthy of protection.
We now live in the middle of a Mill renaissance among conservatives. Just as Mill pushed against the hegemony of Victorian morality, so his contemporary disciples use Mill’s ideas to resist progressive orthodoxy, particularly on college campuses. Operating out of a defensive crouch, they offer “viewpoint diversity” as the magic pill for higher education’s ills.
Mill’s ideas have so permeated our way of thinking about the discourse of democracy that they have the sheen of common sense about them. Mill, more interested in avoiding error than in finding truth, restated the ancient observation that our tendency to believe we possessed the truth proved a constant source of error. Indeed, Mill claimed that those who vigorously pursued the processes of thinking and argumentation added more to our knowing by their errors than the correct opinions of those who came to those views by the wrong means. Only the light produced by the friction of disagreement could properly illuminate our path.
We all, Mill argued, “ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true [our opinion] may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.” Argumentation strips away the accretions of tradition and authority, recasting opinions into the metal of moral action. Kant had described “enlightenment” as “the courage to use your own understanding” without the guidance of an external authority. Mill, too, rejected appeals to outside authorities, such rejection laying at the heart of conservative objections. Mill warned against holding opinions on the whims of others, either social authorities or commonly held pieties. Such inauthentic convictions can lead to advocating falsehoods. No matter how well-informed, whatever that might mean, our opinions only become hardened and useful once passed through the flames of disagreement, which alone burns off all the impurities.
Mill opined that most people come to their opinions by faulty means. Too often we arrive at our beliefs idiosyncratically or because those beliefs are socially advantageous or because they satisfy some impulse of passion. “Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men,” he wrote, “are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions.” But, Mill rightly insisted, “he who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.” We might be right, but we might also be wrong. Only by throwing ourselves “into the mental position of those who think differently” can we really “know the doctrine” we profess. It is not enough for us to imagine what contrary views look like, we “must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them” and have a great deal at stake in those positions. If our views are to have any validity, we must know contrary views “in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
Institutions of higher education trace their interest in “diversity” back to the reforms of the civil rights era. These reforms rightly altered the composition of faculty and staff, allowing for women and minorities to enjoy opportunities that had been closed to them either by law or custom. It seems to me incontrovertible that most academic institutions were, in various ways, hostile to these groups and that the academy has improved as a result of their inclusion. But one should not expect any change to produce only salutary outcomes. Debates over affirmative action highlighted whether the interest in diversity should emphasize access or outcomes, and those debates occluded ways in which the interest in diversity expanded into an ideological program. Combined with other factors, the “diversity” interest became a fig leaf for instituting in both the curriculum and the administrative structure a whole set of progressive assumptions and reforms.
Whatever else is true of the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) complex, it is ideologically homogeneous and operates with the kind of self-evident conviction that makes criticism nearly impossible, if allowed at all. My own experience at a comparatively sane institution confirms the imperiousness of this ideology as it has penetrated every nook and cranny of the academy and subjected heterodox opinions to censure. In such a suffocating environment, the appeal of Mill’s idea become obvious. Enter the Heterodox Academy and its efforts to isometrically use diversity against itself.
Nor should we be surprised that others in that hothouse environment search for signs of alternative growth. Lauren Wright, a political scientist at Princeton University, a specialist in presidential politics, especially its “celebrity” aspect, a former Republican campaigner and occasional guest on Fox News and other outlets, seems uniquely suited to understanding campus dynamics. In a recent Atlantic essay, Ms. Wright opined, based off student interviews, that conservative students are well-served and liberal students poorly served by the leftist uniformity on campus. Echoing Mill, Ms. Wright observes that conservative students are constantly forced to refine their views and are also constantly confronting living, breathing examples of alternative beliefs, and this dynamic makes them more thoughtful, more informed, and more resilient, thus better preparing them for life after college.
In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt argued that conservatives and liberals both operate out of a set of moral convictions, but whereas liberals have difficulty recognizing that conservatives are moral actors, conservatives have far less difficulty ascribing morality to liberals. Furthermore, when asked to predict what people who disagree with them think, conservatives proved far more adept at this than liberals.
I’ve had my issues with Haidt’s book and argument, even though I’ve assigned it in classes, and believe that it is generally a step in the right direction, although I’m far less enamored of “viewpoint diversity” than he is (in his defense, he’s not a philosopher), but his study suffers from a serious methodological flaw: his data result from surveys that presented the subjects with moral vignettes and asked them to provide reasons for the choices they made. Their general inability to provide justification led Haidt to conclude that reason is nothing more than a powerless rider on the elephant of impulse and instinct. His survey subjects, however, were college students—not the most fully developed thinkers. Most people improve at moral justification as they age.
Since Wright’s study focuses specifically on the moral and intellectual universe of college students, using them as her survey group poses no methodological problem. However, according to her Atlantic article, her n is so small that one wonders how valid her conclusions are. Of Princeton’s approximately 9,000 students, she surveyed 28 who identify as conservative and 15 as liberal. I’m just not sure how representative this population is, and thus how valid her conclusions, especially since there’s nearly a 2:1 ratio between the groups.
Part of our epistemic difficulty results from the fact that studies that are brought to public attention typically have to be edgy or counterintuitive to get attention and are never retracted publicly when proved wrong. This often results in the corruption of public opinion. Add to that social science’s well-known “replication crisis,” and an intelligent consumer will be skeptical of any social science claim that gets made. I have a simple, but not absolute, rule of thumb when considering these studies: Do they conform or add to my own experience of the world? If they counter-indicate, they better check all the boxes.
Whatever the limitations of Dr. Wright’s study, her observations match my own. In my experience, there are different kinds of “conservative” students on campus. Some claim to be conservative but really aren’t. They’ll often find themselves aping the language of their opponents. Others are conservative but also opportunistic careerists who will not risk their “future” in open battle. These students typically self-censor (which might not be the only reason one does so). A third type is aggressively conservative—kids who want to start Turning Point chapters on campus and rattle as many cages as they can. Always in battle mode, they tend to cause a lot of collateral damage and often distract themselves from learning with their relentless activism. A fourth type is both studious and principled, not inclined to make trouble but also not inclined simply to go along. They genuinely want to learn and to pursue the truth, and they welcome all alternative ideas as opportunities for greater enlightenment. They are engaged and engaging, open-minded, thoughtful, hospitable, and unfailingly kind. Most of my conservative students were of this type, and I suspect these are the type of conservative Wright discusses in her essay.
Nietzsche believed that resistance led to development. We become stronger by the strength of that which opposes us. Operating in an inhospitable environment means conservative students face challenges that “impart educational advantages by forcing conservatives to defend their points of view. Liberal students, surrounded by like-minded peers and mentors, have less opportunity to grow in this way.” Her interviews confirm Haidt’s observation that conservative students are much more likely than liberals to know both sides of an issue, and thus also better able to defend their own. They are, Wright says, far more likely to see the holes in their own argument and thus anticipate objections and either formulate responses or adjust their thinking accordingly.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education annually produces a “college free speech rankings.” The list contains a good number of public and private universities, elite and non-elite alike. In general, perusing the list, one might say that the more elite the school, the more likely a chilled environment closes off disagreement. Using reverse coding, the survey asked more than 55,000 students how comfortable they were voicing their disagreements, and how much they feared either formal or informal retribution. The results are not encouraging. The overall survey also reinforces Wright’s contention of a conservative minority: only 19% identify as some kind of conservative while 48% identify as some kind of liberal, a disparity greater at the extremes where 19% of students identify as “very liberal” and only 5% as “very conservative.” Matters are much worse among the professoriate.
One of the more interesting findings in the survey is the identification of the college where students experience the most freedom to think and speak: Hillsdale College, with no other college coming particularly close. There is, of course, an issue of selection bias here, for only 5% of Hillsdale students identify as liberal, and their responses are not selected out. One wonders how Wright’s conclusion that liberal students are not prepared to defend their views might apply to Hillsdale students. Do they suffer from the same deficits, the same rigidity, the same dogmatism, the same inability to defend their views? Her essay and forthcoming book would benefit from the comparison. If Hillsdale students do show the same lack of ability to defend their views, then her overall thesis that ideological uniformity serves our students poorly carries more weight. But if Hillsdale students don’t display those traits, if in fact they prove unusually adept both at defending their own positions and that of their opponents, then the problem might not be a lack of diversity so much as a deficit within the liberal ideology itself. If that’s the case, then the problems besetting many of our campuses likely do not get solved by more “viewpoint diversity,” even if it does have a leavening effect.
One of the biggest debates in education today might be stated as follows: Should we solve ideological differences through a strategy of inter-campus or intra-campus diversity? Do we need more Universities of Austin? Which would be better for the long-term development of students, and also for our campus and workplace cultures? Wright’s study focuses on the experience of her students, but her conclusions really go to their life beyond college. As far as I know, there are no serious studies extant that detail, in a comprehensive and comparative way, how graduates of different colleges navigate disagreement in the workplace. I hope that’s Dr. Wright’s next book, but in the meantime, she might want to start looking at how Hillsdale grads, who arguably do not enjoy “exposure to different perspectives,” do at “building and defending coherent arguments” that “spur creativity and growth.” Then she might best answer her question: “Who is better prepared for life after college?”
