Modern universities tend to worship at the altar of a certain romanticized understanding of free speech and debate; it’s a common refrain that the entire purpose of college is to hear opposing viewpoints and learn to productively disagree. The Chicago Statement on Free Speech, a guiding statement on the importance of free speech in universities, has been adopted by dozens of universities, including Princeton in 2015, and President Eisgruber has said that “Rigorous, respectful debate is not a barrier to change — it will make our ideas stronger and their impact more lasting.” Just this past fall, freshmen attended a mandatory orientation session titled “Free Expression at Princeton,” highlighting the university’s purported commitment to free exchange of ideas and the need to be made uncomfortable by opposing political ideas.
Political debate is indeed a good thing, and progressive students should celebrate and encourage events that engage in controversial topics in good faith. However, many student-organized debates are just the opposite. Such events fail to divulge their inherently conservative agenda and the ways that they assume a certain viewpoint before the debate even begins.
Prime examples of this phenomenon can be found in talks run by the Federalist Society (FedSoc)–a conservative legal organization embedded in campuses across the country, including ours. Princeton’s FedSoc chapter runs legal conversations and with deceptively neutral and open-ended titles, such as d “Are Racial Preferences in College Admissions Lawful?” and “The History and Role of Supreme Court Clerks.” The Society’s nonpartisan and generic advertising might lead one to conclude that they are a humble debate society, not a legal behemoth that has almost single handedly taken over the federal judiciary in the past decade. President Trump even stated he would only select Supreme Court justices deemed conservative enough by the group. Its purported apolitical status only serves to give it undue legitimacy and mystify its true agenda.
A recent campus debate, one run by an organization called Braver Angels, shows another way in which such events can mislead the campus community. The debate was centered on whether parents should have the primary say in their students’ education. On its website, Braver Angels claims to be “a national movement to bridge the partisan divide.”Framing itself as a home for those “heartsick about the rancor tearing us apart,” it claims that if one is concerned about polarization, “you need Braver Angels and Braver Angels needs you.”
This pitch neglects important context. For one, Braver Angels’ mission statement contains no ideas for where the partisan divide came from, instead serving to naturalize and excuse it through the complete omission of its historical origins. They write about polarization as if we are all collectively responsible for addressing it through mutual respect and debate. In reality, there is extensive political science research, notably from Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson of Yale and UC Berkeley, describing how increasing political polarization is driven by Republicans’ hard turn to the right, rather than both parties moving toward ideological extremes. This is most evident in the Republican party’s open effort to overturn American democracy and secure one party rule on the federal and state level through overturning elections and gerrymandering. Organizations like Better Angels and FedSoc push a narrative of both sides-ism that allows the Right to absolve itself of this authoritarian turn. By insisting that it is a collective civic responsibility to come together and heal the partisan divide, they reframe culpability for the ideological crisis they created. Once this is accomplished, they go right back to further polarizing the nation and attempting to weaken democracy, a pattern made evident by the fact that several members of the Federalist Society were involved in the January 6th, 2021 attempt to overturn the election.
Braver Angels advertised their debate as one engaging with a philosophical dilemma of how much control parents ought to have over their students’ schooling. This perspective obscures how the modern political debate over parental control over schools has been engineered by conservative elites such as Chris Rufo, who pushed the conspiracy theory that Critical Race Theory was being imposed on students nationwide in an appearance on Tucker Carlson. After this interview, the issue exploded onto the national scene, becoming a prominent talking point in the coverage of the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race and the 2022 midterms.
Braver Angels’ description of their event also does not give the essential context that the modern conservative attack on public schools is part of a long lineage of attempts to shift education towards privatized “school choice.” Education journalist Jennifer Berskhire has written extensively about how this school model allows wealthy parents to take their children, social capital, and resources out of public schools, leaving urban, disproportionately poor and minority students to languish in underfunded schools, all in the name of ‘parents rights.’ The idea that parents ought to be the final arbiter of everything that goes on in schools is used as a general attack line on the very idea of public school where students of different backgrounds come together to receive a common, secular education that benefits the entire citizenry.
This argument is then used to justify shifting tax dollars toward private schools run by the rich, or toward religious schools where conservatives can inculcate fundamentalist thought into students. Instead of discussing how this entire controversy is manufactured by conservative elites who are simply trying to gut a public service that mainly benefits the poor, Braver Angels opted to turn this political issue into a more abstract one, with fair perspectives to be heard from all sides.
Of course, this very well might have been the intention. While Braver Angels claims to be nonpartisan, the event was sponsored by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions (JMP) and the Princeton Open Campus Coalition, a “free-speech” organization founded in 2015 to resist the Black Justice League’s anti-racism efforts. JMP is funded by conservative mega donors such as the Olin foundation, and a prime example of a conservative “beachhead–” an in-house conservative think tank funded by corporate interests embedded on college campuses. JMP is led by Professor Robert George, who is also associated with the Federalist Society. There isn’t enough room to get into Professor Geoge’s conservative bona fides here, but recent examples of his prominent place in the conservative movement include writing an amicus brief in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health arguing for fetal personhood, which would outlaw abortion nationwide.
Given this background, it’s not hard to see how Braver Angels’ “non-partisan” framing serves conservative interests. This depiction presents a controversy created by conservative media elites as an intriguing, depoliticized, and philosophical question to pose in good faith. Through this method, radical conservative beliefs, such as the idea that children are being taught to hate white people in school or parents should be able to opt out of public school curriculum they don’t like, are laundered as mainstream. In turn, the political paradigm of what is “debatable” shifts right. Even if the conservative ideas promoted at these events do not convince attendees, they are left with a newfound respect for reactionary positions. After all, if they are being taken seriously by “apolitical” organizations like Braver Angels, they must be worth consideration.
All this prompts the question of what a leftist response should be. An easy answer is to boycott, as progressives shouldn’t lend legitimacy to organizations like the Federalist Society or Braver Angels through participation. However, this may not be the most effective option for combatting the conservative messaging of these events. At the Braver Angels debate, many attendees gave relatively centrist speeches on the issue and even appeared persuadable. More progressive voices might have created a real opportunity to move them left on education policy. Perhaps something was gained by not lending Braver Angels the support of both the right and the left on campus, but I can’t see how that outweighs the potential damage done as centrists were exposed to, and possibly convinced by, numerous conservative arguments outlining a radical, regressive version of school choice that would functionally eliminate public education.
There are two valid responses to this dilemma. The first is a public education campaign to inform fellow students of the true nature of these events. Listserv emails advertising them should be met with responses detailing the real motivations of Braver Angels and the Federalist Society, posters could be spread across campus, and progressive students could educate their peers on how propaganda disguises itself as nonpartisan debate. The second, complementary approach is to show up and advocate, both for the leftist position on the issue at hand as well as against the unfair framing taking place. This does run the risk of extending credibility to these organizations, but it also allows leftist students to make their case to people who show up open to being converted to a more progressive position.
In an ideal world, FedSoc and Braver Angels wouldn’t be running these farcical debates on campus. But the fact remains that for now, they are happening, and progressive students must respond. We must strike a delicate balance between debating and unintentionally legitimizing conservative views. Leftists can’t afford to indulge the faux bipartisanship of these debates, but neither can we afford to cede the stage entirely to reactionaries.
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