Leonard Cohen’s 1992 song lyrics suggesting that democracy might be coming to the U.S.A. have been very much with me lately.
Ever since I sat under the Payomet tent with several dozen others on a breezy mid-August morning listening to two brilliant lawyers give an unusual back-to-school-themed talk, I’ve been thinking about democracy, free speech, and this historic moment. Carol Rose (executive director of the ACLU of Mass.) and Donna Lieberman (director of the New York Civil Liberties Union) spoke on the subject of “Free Speech and Student Protests.” The conversation was about the crucial responsibility that institutions of higher learning have to teach and model critical thinking and about how free speech is the backbone of democracy.
In this era of misinformation, we ignore this at our peril.
They also made the point that free public education is crucial to a healthy democratic republic. Relatedly, squelching the open exchange of ideas undermines that.
But what’s hard to fathom is that right now, in this country, there are very real political designs to end free public education and liberal arts education.
It must be the word “liberal” that irks some people.
As the daughter of a newspaper man and union organizer and a person who graduated from high school in the mid-1960s, I have rarely had much trust in the rectitude of the powers that be.
This past school year’s protests and confrontations stirred deep controversies and are likely to be rekindled as the new school year begins. How could they not? The subject of the recent student protests is one of the most emotionally charged, historically complex, and gut-wrenching topics imaginable. But the women who led the conversation at the tent, both leaders of civil liberties organizations, did not talk about the issues behind the protests.
Instead, they reframed the topic of student protests away from the question of “which side are you on?” to addressing how college administrators handled them. That made it easier to see that free speech becomes crucial and civil liberties need defending only when those in positions of authority, those with the power to influence a generation, attempt to silence those with a minority position. This is where the rubber of civil liberties hits the road. Even though it might be uncomfortable.
We draw the free speech line at hollering “fire” in a crowded theater. We also draw the line at hate speech. But we must not draw the line at conversations or political positions that make some people uncomfortable. It has to be the responsibility of the leaders of institutions of higher learning to teach this not only to students but to alumni, boards of directors, and donors as well.
This last point reminded me that we all need to be willing to be uncomfortable as we figure out how to live together in multicultural, multiracial, multireligious communities. It’s not going to be easy.
But surely there is a line between being willing to be uncomfortable and being asked, as some friends are asking, to tolerate the constant and toxic barrage of micro-aggressions that I, as a white non-Jewish person, do not experience.
Confronting the rising tide of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in this country is urgent. And yet the call to defend civil liberties made me wonder if what I should be doing more robustly is listening instead of trying to prove I’m justified in the rightness of what I think I know. Is there such a thing as urgent listening?
Here I hear the lyrics again in Leonard Cohen’s song: “It’s coming to America first/ the cradle of the best and of the worst./ It’s here they got the range/ and the machinery for change/ and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst … Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.”
Cohen’s words still rouse me: “From the shores of need, past the reefs of greed, through the squalls of hate. Sail on! Sail on! Sail on!”
Deborah Ullman lives in Eastham and is a member of the board of the Payomet Performing Arts Center.
