I’ve been told that after the University hands me a diploma next June, I’ll look back with fondness, even longing, at my undergraduate years. Staying up until 4 a.m. on weekends playing video games with greats and learning big ideas from solid professors.
But there are things I’ll be happy to leave on campus. The 8 a.m. finals, homework until 4 a.m. on school nights and everyone who has problems distinguishing between the realities of a real world and the sometimes incestuous, self-serving or just plain loopy rhetoric passed off as academic or otherwise intellectually meaningful discourse.
To be fair, the university setting is the Fertile Crescent of mindless rhetoric. Campus culture is to pseudointellectual flotsam as dorm shower floors are to bacteria (again, something I don’t and won’t miss).
For one, given that most students are just beginning their tenures in the arena of public dialogue, unjustifiable zealotry can usually be chalked up to the impetuousness of youth and novelty. Moreover, I naively suggest that students calling for an end to nanotechnology research because it has potential military applications, or for a stop to animal research because they believe it has no material value, do so largely out of concern for the quality of the world around them. (Professors promulgating irresponsible rhetoric don’t have this excuse.) But the road to the hell that is philosophical incoherence is paved with good intentions.
To wit: In January 2001, the University hosted a conference on social issues called: “Against Patriarchy: a step toward the abolition of male privilege.” Designed as part of “a movement towards the elimination of male privilege, domination and sexism” — which I politely read as ending gender discrimination — the conference’s central questions included: “How does male domination connect to other oppressions, such as racism, heterosexism, ableism, classism, capitalism, government and speciesism?”
Nevermind that advances leading to the extended lifespans, greater personal freedom and wider educational opportunities that we enjoy today are all consequences of the capitalist economic system (admittedly, among less fortunate effects associated with the free market that have more to do with individual ethical flaws than the system itself). Nevermind still that “speciesism,” however the word might be defined, probably carries the illegitimate oratorical baggage of devaluing human life.
In 2002, a letter to the editor of Eugene Weekly insisted that “In order to end (violence against women and minorities), we need to deconstruct patriarchy and all its forms of violence.” While the author clearly didn’t understand what deconstruction is, ending violence against all people is important, and there are many things that people can do to curtail that problem. However, misusing words and passing off empty rhetoric isn’t one of them.
In 2003, in a letter to the editor of the Emerald, a concerned citizen wrote that developing a “multiscale materials and devices center” in the East University area was tantamount to “ethnic cleansing” because it would displace families living there now. The ethics of the University forcing low-income families to move aside, a comparison to the worst sort of human rights violations is unwarranted and unjustifiable — it’s the same brand of despicable, offensive rhetoric that PETA used when comparing treatment of animals to the despicable treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. (In the interest of fending off concerns about disclosure, this letter was submitted to the Emerald before my tenure as editorial editor.)
Illegitimate debate does worse than pollute the realm of public argument: Laymen who recognize the fallacies in bad argument might associate the bunk logic or uncivil conduct with a wider movement. While this in itself is often a logically tenuous leap, the damage can be very real: Violent religious extremists detract from religious messages of peace and compassion. Likewise, ecoterrorists self-righteously destroying private property divert attention from the noble aims of responsible environmentalism.
What’s an intellectually responsible student to do? Take suspect rhetoric with a grain of salt. If you hear a bad argument at the lunch table or in the classroom, stand up and speak for yourself.