Carnegie Mellon University must support and promote the existence of democratic culture on campus. If it is serious about doing so, the university should reimagine the structure of its “Deeper Conversation” series and repeal the “expressive activity registration” procedures announced in Aug. 2024. Let me begin with a critique of the university’s “Deeper Conversations.”
At the start of 2024, Carnegie Mellon University announced its “Deeper Conversations” series, which claimed to “brin[g] together new and existing opportunities to explore divergent viewpoints and take a broader view on some of today’s most challenging issues.” Yet, as it stands, the Deeper Conversation series events are typically lectures given by experts, or dialogues between such individuals. Students and faculty are relegated to asking questions which appear to be pre-screened, and are answered in very brief Q&A sessions. Indeed, I recall attending Teresa Bejan’s lecture on civility, during which audience members were asked to submit anonymous questions online. However, the most upvoted and incisive questions were not chosen by the moderator. Such questions asked Bejan to comment on Carnegie Mellon’s new expressive activity registration policy and on what recommendations she had for people of color, considering that they are often regarded as uncivil even when they are engaging in “civil” speech.
Certainly Bejan’s answers to such questions would have benefitted the campus conversation, but, again, they were not asked by the moderator. After the question and answer session, even Bejan expressed surprise at the organization of the event, indicating that she had expected and desired to answer audience questions rather than only a moderator’s. Empowering students, faculty, and staff to both ask questions and take a greater role in the “deeper conversation” would have addressed these problems by creating more comprehensive dialogue and loosening moderator conversational control. In short, if Carnegie Mellon is serious about having inclusive “deeper conversations,” then it must redesign events in the series to be more deliberative and mindful of the diverse perspectives on campus.
Yet, given the university’s latest “expressive activity registration” procedures, one has to wonder whether the administration and many higher-level university officials even welcome diverse communicative exchange. If Carnegie Mellon administrators expect students and other campus stakeholders to run their “expressive” gatherings by a Chief Risk Officer for approval, then the university appears willing to accept the chilling of speech that an approval process is likely to create. After all, research conducted by the Carnegie Mellon Community Think Tank previously found that student activists on campus were already wary of institutional retaliation for their speech even before the new registration procedure was implemented. If the university is serious about free speech, I implore it to heed the 500+ signature petition the administration received urging it to rescind the new expressive activity registration procedures.
In addition to suggestions I have offered above, Carnegie Mellon would also benefit from taking pointers from political theorists of democracy who offer principle and policy recommendations for enhancing democratic culture. Theorists including Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson argue that democratic deliberation and decision making should be as much a part of universities as they are in society. Systemic changes in the university, shifting from a model of faculty governance to a corporate model where administrators make almost unilateral decisions, risk what political theorist Chantal Mouffe might call the substitution of democratic deliberation with undemocratic bureaucracy. Lest Carnegie Mellon cement itself as an institution that offers technical skills in disciplines like engineering and business to the detriment of civic education and engagement, it must commit itself to protecting freedom of expression and democratizing its decision-making culture. Democracy, in other words, is a culture as much as a governmental system and, if the democratic governmental system is to be robust, the culture behind it must be robust as well.
By: Jimmy Lizama
Leave a Reply