Several community members have recently asked me if my columns for The Dartmouth are designed to be offensive. In "Silencing Conservatism," (March 30), I attributed such questioning of motive to a "politically correct" speech culture that is often unreceptive to underrepresented viewpoints. This close-mindedness is a deep problem that largely stems from the temptation to think people we disagree with are malevolent.
Having spent a lot of time surrounded by NRA gun enthusiasts and "Tea Party" members, I fully appreciate that close-mindedness works in all ideological directions. My big problem with Ayn Rand and many unintellectual conservatives is that they unfairly portray people who disagree with them as monsters. While it can be rather deflating for conservatives to admit that President Barack Obama is actually a really cool guy and not the devil incarnate, the reality is that our ideological differences in no way amount to any kind of struggle between good and evil.
While I think the Dartmouth community is generally open-minded, there's definitely a lot of room for improvement. In his column "President Trump," (April 8), Chris Talamo made fun of Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) for the wounds he sustained as a prisoner of war in Vietnam a salient example of a tendency some of us have to unfairly attack people we disagree with.
Some community members seem to have a hard time distinguishing between often moronic "tea partiers" or "birthers" and calmer conservatives with legitimate intellectual arguments. Despite usually being in no way belligerent or "passive aggressive," my columns have apparently gotten under enough people's skins to lead one recent Dartmouth Review article to refer to me as "The Most Hated Man on Campus."
My critics have legitimately suggested that the emotional poignancy of the issues I've written about calls for an extra effort to show respect for people's feelings. While this is true, and while I now believe that in many of my columns I could have done a better job of sympathizing with opposing perspectives, it is also true that many people allow emotions to close their minds to easily.
Of course, it's human nature that feelings play an essential role in our beliefs. Indeed, my column "Explicit Signals" (Oct. 28), which took offense at the lewdness of campus culture, was prompted by an entirely emotional personal response. At first, I found myself at a loss about how to make people understand a point of view that I had never really thought needed to be formulated in terms of rational arguments. However, looking past my emotions and making the effort to explain specifically why I was offended enabled me to contribute to discourse in a more constructive manner.
While the Dartmouth Indian mascot might be hurtful in ways that I can't personally fathom, it's difficult to engage in meaningful dialogue when people with Native American ancestry can simply assert their offended status and expect all discussion to end there. It would be valuable if Native Americans shared personal experiences illustrating how Indian mascots or other symbols feed into ignorance of their ways of life. It wasn't very productive when a self-identified Native American woman reacted to my column "Mascot Without Malice" (Oct. 11) by simply declaring, "I am most definitely offended by the mascot and this article. That is an indisputable fact. I dare you to create a viable argument." After receiving intense denunciation despite a wholehearted effort to show sensitivity, I came to better understand the sentiments of one upperclassman who had warned me that the subject matter was simply too delicate to bring up under any circumstances.
Dartmouth can foster an intellectual climate in which people don't always feel comfortable even attempting to engage in civil discourse. Too many students have told me that they largely share my views but would never feel comfortable being so vocal about them. While we all have a responsibility to cushion our honesty in respect and even empathy, we must try to prevent our emotions from getting in the way of truly open dialogue about hard-hitting issues that reveal profound differences of opinion.
