There has been a lot of talk lately about\nsilencing. In particular, some claim\nthat conservative voices are silenced on university campuses, the very place\nwhere a diversity of thought ought to be fostered and valued. If this is true, it is a bad thing. I will not attempt to settle this (thorny)\nissue here. Rather, I will say a bit\nabout what silencing is, distinguish between some types of silencing, and flesh\nout what it could mean for conservative voices to be silenced on college\ncampuses. As we\u2019ll see, there are\nseveral possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
In the most general terms, silencing is systematic\ncommunicative interference. If a person\nhas been silenced, then that person has had her communicative capacities\ninterfered with in some important way. \nMoreover, silencing, at least as most analytic philosophers have\nunderstood it, is a systematic phenomenon. \nThis means that, if I am misunderstood on some particular occasion for\npurely idiosyncratic reasons, this may well be unfortunate for me, but it would\nfail to be an instance of silencing. A\ncommunicative mishap is silencing only when systematic features of one\u2019s\nenvironment bring it about. If, by\ncontrast, all women \u2013 or all women who look like me – would have been\nmisunderstood in the same way, then the miscommunication in question is (or\nmight be) an instance of silencing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are many different kinds of silencing and it\nis useful to distinguish between them. First,\nthere are instances of silencing where a person attempts to communicate but\nsome sort of recognition failure in the audience interferes with the success of\nthat communication. Suppose, for example,\na conservative student argues in support of a potential justification for death\npenalties in the abstract but her classmates take her to be supporting the\ncurrent practices in the U.S. and so they take her to be committed to the view\nthat non-white lives matter less than white lives. In this case, the position supported by the\nstudent is misunderstood and if it is misunderstood for (even locally)\nsystematic reasons, then this miscommunication might be an instance of\nsilencing. After all, if there are\nfeatures of the environment that systematically prevent others from\nunderstanding what it is that you mean to get across, then your communicative\ncapacities have been stunted and this is silencing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is another sort of example. Suppose that a conservative student chimes\ninto class discussion and she is taken as offering a (bad) objection, rather\nthan the supporting consideration she intended to offer. In this case, the content of what she said\n(or what she meant by what she said) was understood perfectly well, but the\nintended argumentative force of it was not. \nIf this sort of mistake happens for systematic reasons, then the\nspeaker\u2019s communicative capacities have been (systematically) impaired. Although this is a different kind of\nrecognition failure, it is (systematic) communicative interference all the same\nand thus a potential case of silencing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second, there are instances of silencing that occur\nafter successful communication has taken place. One way that this can happen involves a\nspeaker being given less credibility than she ought to be given. Suppose, for example, that a conservative\nstudent offers some factual information in a class discussion but her classmates\nare extremely sceptical of what she says and this happens because they believe\nthat conservatives tend to rely on fake news and echo chambers. As a result of this, the conservative\nstudent\u2019s claims are given little to no evidential weight. In\nthis case, the conservative student manages to communicate (that is, she\nmanages get her claim across) but her claims are given less credibility than\nthey ought to be given and this happens exactly because she is recognized as a conservative.\n This counts as a kind of silencing\nbecause her communicative capacities are (systematically) impaired in so far as\nthey are prevented from having appropriate epistemic impact. Thus, although she manages to successfully\ncommunicate her claims, those claims are prevented from having the standard and\nappropriate effects and she is thus silenced. This is sometimes called testimonial quieting\n(Dotson). It is also called testimonial\ninjustice (Fricker).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Third and finally, a person can be silenced before\nshe even tries to speak. Although this\nmay seem baffling, really it\u2019s not. In\nfact, there are many ways – even very familiar ways – that this can happen. A person might, for example, be silenced in\nthis way because she is gagged or ordered to remain silent. Especially interesting to me, however, are\ncases in which a speaker decides against speaking and she does so\nbecause of warranted beliefs about the harmful effects her utterance will have (and\nthese harmful effects result from mistakes that would be made by her audience). Suppose, for example, that there are negative\nfalse stereotypes about conservatives that are widely believed on some campus. Suppose, for example, that conservatives are thought\nto be ignorant of social justice issues, selfish, racist, and\ncold-hearted. If a conservative student\ndecides against speaking (say in support of a potential justification for the\ndeath penalty in the abstract) because she believes that these stereotypes will\naffect how her speech is taken up and it will do so in ways that merely reinforce\nthose very stereotypes, then she is silenced. \nShe is silenced because she is systematically prevented from\ncommunicating for reasons that are themselves unjust. Dotson calls this testimonial smothering. Discussion of this phenomenon has a long\nhistory in Black Feminist scholarship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As is typical of philosophers, I have merely identified\npossibilities and carved out conceptual options without really taking a stand\non the empirical issues. I\u2019m prepared to\ndo that now. I think these things happen\non our college campuses and it\u2019s a very bad thing. It is definitely troubling when certain\nviewpoints are systematically squelched and it is even more troubling when that\nhappens (as it does) in a space where the free exchange of ideas is supposed to\nflourish. Pause now to consider just how\nproblematic this is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, pause to consider how much worse it is for\nmembers of other groups. After all, conservatives\nare not the only group silenced on campuses in these ways. If you don\u2019t believe me, just ask a non-cis\n(or non-binary, or non-heterosexual, or non-white, or First Gen, or\nnon-wealthy, or alternatively-abled, or non-male) person. Moreover, members of these groups are also silenced\nelsewhere and they are likely silenced in many of the contexts in which they find\nthemselves. In addition to that, members\nof these groups are also systematically socially disadvantaged in a myriad of other\nways too. So, Yes, conservatives are\nsometimes silenced on college campuses and that should definitely not happen\nbut \u2013 to be blunt- other groups face that too and a whole lot more\nbesides. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Picture: Don’t Mess by Miguel Ugalde<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There has been a lot of talk lately about silencing. In particular, some claim that conservative voices are silenced on university campuses, the very place where a diversity of thought […]","protected":false},"author":1319,"featured_media":637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A post by Mary Kate McGowan on On Silencing Conservatives on Campus: Some Possibilities","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[7,170],"custom_author":[171],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-for-debate","tag-politics","tag-silencing","custom_author-mcgowan-mary-kate"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8KPlM-ac","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":149,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/openfordebate\/arrogant-pride-and-alternative-facts\/","url_meta":{"origin":632,"position":0},"title":"Arrogant Pride and Alternative Facts","author":"Alessandra Tanesini","date":"July 17, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Pride...is a very common failing\" (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice). 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