Earlier this month, as I read through articles in The Herald debating the free exchange of ideas, I was struck by how little the conversation has progressed since the events of Oct. 29, 2013, when former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s scheduled lecture was canceled due to student protests in the auditorium, sparking months of campus debate. It seems to me that discussions concerning the free exchange of ideas inevitably reach a point where folks are either staunchly defending it as a right or arguing that certain types of speech can be considered harmful. These conversations leave me empty.
We cannot talk about free exchange of ideas without talking about the content. For me, this discussion raises critical questions about knowledge. Yes, we should have a free exchange of ideas, but we also need to discuss where we go with it. We must think of the free exchange of ideas as a means to an end. Do we want free exchange of ideas for the sake of pursuing knowledge? I would argue that ends in egocentric delusion and empty rhetoric.
Alternatively, do we want free exchange of ideas to pursue knowledge for the sake of progressing humanity? That vision is beautiful, but it requires a commitment to honest discussion that acknowledges lived experiences as archives of knowledge. If you are defending the free exchange of ideas while rejecting the lived experiences of marginalized students, then you are removing yourself from a critical conversation about humanity and absolving yourself of responsibility to this community.
To that end, the free exchange of ideas cannot exist independent of humanistic values. In practice, it requires recognition of our duties to one another as human beings. It is in articulating those duties, owning the impact of our words and actions and voicing our collective experiences for change that we may move forward in this conversation that is currently sidetracked by a focus on individual rights. We need to talk about the imagined community of Brown.
The Committee on the Events of Oct. 29 reports, which are currently collecting dust and have not been addressed directly with an action plan, are missing one crucial detail. Two years ago, I was cashiering in the Blue Room when I received an email from President Christina Paxson P’19 announcing the decision to not divest the University’s endowment from top U.S. coal companies. During that shift, I drafted a Facebook status calling on students to gather that night in the Underground if they were disappointed with the University’s decisions on coal divestment and Ray Kelly.
In the middle of organizing to protest the Ray Kelly lecture, over 100 students packed the Underground for hours, sharing their experiences with organizing at Brown and being promised avenues for change but given nothing in return but committees and empty rhetoric of engaged scholarship. There were stories of sexual assault not being addressed, issues with representation of faculty of color, questions of engaging with Providence and much more. That night was beautiful and terrifying — beautiful because the students’ emotional testimonies were cathartic, terrifying because it held so much raw potential for change. Folks even proposed forming a student union as an alternative to the Undergraduate Council of Students. The next two nights, the unofficial “Brown Student Union” continued to gather, but it quickly devolved as student activists were stretched thin preparing for the vigil and protest. The “safe space” was eventually co-opted by white students who claimed they felt oppressed by accusations of white privilege, while students of color walked out the door feeling their humanity was once again dismissed.
Those nights in the Underground ultimately led to nothing, but I let it go because I felt that internal healing within the student body needed to happen before large-scale student organizing could really take hold. In a journal entry from that week, I wrote: “They say to us students that we are incapable of thinking of a long-term vision for this institution. We need a VISION.” The administration’s moves that week sent a message, intentional or not, that student voices mattered very little in shaping the University. Students needed a unified vision, but we could not get past conversations about privilege and oppression among students. We could not engage with solidarity in a meaningful way.
To be subversive can be a difficult, emotionally draining and seemingly hopeless task to take on, but when I feel at a loss, I’m reminded of Rodolfo Acuña’s words: “It is difficult to introduce new knowledge when everything is deduced from accepted knowledge. It is in these instances where other knowledge must be induced through disruption.”
Brown and specifically the Department of Africana Studies forced me to engage with the question, “What does it mean to be human?” It has changed the way I understand knowledge and how I interact with the world. I was also lucky to know brave faculty members who stood alongside their students. I ask that faculty members continue to be brave and, if they cannot do so publicly, find ways to help, because students cannot stand alone. Students, there are faculty members who are on your side and who have the institutional memory that can help you untangle this power structure.
As I read the statements of solidarity written by students of color as well as white student allies, I am hopeful again, and I would argue that there is still room for this imagined community of student activists, organizing across identity lines and unifying to make larger structural changes. The lesson from the Underground meetings is that students must seek to understand one another and find that unified voice, even if it is painful and even if the imagined community is built with sacrifice. What is at stake here is student agency in determining the next 250 years.
The only people who checked in on Jenny Li ’14 that day two years ago when she worked in tears at the Blue Room were four undergraduate women of color. All gave her a hug over the counter and asked if she needed anything. No other customers bothered to ask what was going on. Li can be reached at jenny_li@brown.edu.
