Student protests aren't professors' fault, SMU religious studies professor Jil DeTemple writes.
Student protesters camp on the campus of Columbia University on Tuesday, April 30, 2024, in New York. Students demanding divestment, chanting slogans, and responding to death and destruction have themselves lived through the prolonged disruption of a global pandemic, a nation at war for the vast majority of their lives, and political polarization at a level as high as it’s been since the Civil War, writes Jill DeTemple.
The work of faculty in presenting these challenges, however, has become increasingly difficult as some states constrain teaching content and students are reluctant to share personal views, sometimes because they fear professor reprisal, but. We do have a problem with groupthink, but the problem appears to be less with faculty nefariously insisting on liberal views than with far larger and more powerful groups of youth peers and the present moment in American culture.
My students had a dialogue about Israel-Hamas this semester. They didn’t agree. They did come away realizing they needed to know more in order to develop more informed opinions. They also reported feeling more comfortable in the complexity that human differences create. For those worried about undue professorial influence, I did not speak, at all, during the dialogue.
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