On Jan. 22, the Center for the Study of American Democracy and the Integrated Program in Humane Studies co-hosted Michael Clune, an author and professor at the Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at The Ohio State University, for his talk titled “What is Viewpoint Diversity?” at the Community Foundation Theater. Recent discourse on intellectual diversity has prompted faculty and students to grapple with whether the institution’s emphasis on creating comfortable learning environments has made difficult conversations harder to have. 

In his talk, Clune argued that liberal arts colleges like Kenyon suffer from a dangerous homogeneity of thought. He warned that many students graduate having never seriously encountered perspectives that challenge their assumptions. Charlie Menzel ’28 put it bluntly: “There’s like no viewpoint diversity. This is an echo chamber.”

“If all we want to get from literature is confirmation, why engage with literature at all?” Clune asked during the event.

Clune offered two justifications for prioritizing viewpoint diversity: an epistemological argument — following philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill — that people cannot truly know their own positions unless they understand the strongest case against them; and a sociological one, that in a polarized democracy, students need practice engaging across differences to function as citizens.

Clune noted that despite the perception of academia as majority-liberal, “there’s greater diversity of thought than people realize.” He advocated for Harvard professor Danielle Allen’s concept of “broadening the spectrum of disagreement,” making room for discourse and disagreement on a broader range of issues. But this is easier said than done. 

Several faculty members said they have observed students avoiding conversations that might make anyone uncomfortable, even potentially productive ones. “Students have told me they didn’t speak up in class discussions about race and gender because they were worried that they would be criticized or outcast in the regular community,” Assistant Professor of Political Science Lisa Leibowitz said in an interview with the Collegian.

“Part of being an educated person is being uncomfortable,” Professor of History Glenn McNair said. “If you make it through a class and you’ve not been uncomfortable, then you have not been educated.”

McNair’s own awakening to viewpoint diversity came in law school in the 1980s, when his closest friend revealed he was a conservative Republican and introduced him to thinkers McNair had never encountered, despite majoring in political science. “I felt really stupid,” he said. “And I realized at that moment, I hadn’t really been educated at college. I had been indoctrinated.”

Leibowitz argued that students need to learn to distinguish between intellectual challenge and personal attack. “These conversations are going to be uncomfortable,” she said. “But we have to learn not to regard this as simply an attack on people’s identities.” She warned that treating discomfort as harm could lead to a progressive narrowing of acceptable topics. “Once we go there and start siloing off certain topics, where do you stop?” she asked.

In Professor of Religious Studies Vernon Schubel’s perspective, the issue of viewpoint diversity has more to do with accountability than censorship. “I believe we should be allowed to talk about anything, but you’re going to be held responsible for what you say,” he said in an interview with the Collegian. In Schubel’s course syllabi he includes this comment on viewpoint diversity as part of a larger discussion: “The diversity of scholarly pre-commitments and opinions among faculty is a tremendous opportunity for learning and something to be celebrated.”

At a small residential campus like Kenyon, the social consequences of saying the wrong thing extend far beyond any single classroom. McNair said he has more latitude than many colleagues to address difficult material because of what he jokingly calls his “melanin force field.” He explained that as a Black professor, he can say things about race that white professors cannot. “I’m actually using people’s prejudices to create this kind of space,” he said. “It’s like, if you’re going to give me all that latitude because I’m Black, well, I’ll use it to get us beyond you thinking about me as Black.”

McNair was particularly critical of what he sees as excessive sensitivity to language. “It’s like little children could take on full assault mobs, and you can’t sit in a classroom at 19 years old and hear a particular word without feeling that violence has been done to you…If we act like you’re fragile, you will think that you’re fragile,” he added.

In some cases, as Leibowitz pointed out, shielding students from certain discussions perceived as controversial or harmful only ends up detracting from their education: “I think it’s actually insulting to the students to think that they can’t listen to a different view and explore it and think about it.”

Menzel said most Kenyon students have learned to hedge their views. “We need to stop worrying about offending people in the classroom. We shouldn’t have to preface our beliefs or ideologies,” he explained, adding that he felt many students are “‘more worried about signaling a certain way than actually talking about the things we need to talk about.”

The question of which perspectives should be excluded from discussion came up repeatedly. Clune acknowledged the tension between creating space for disagreement and maintaining an atmosphere of mutual respect, but warned against top-down methods by universities of policing speech.

“Deciding what those are is not something I believe we can do in advance,” Clune said. “I think every academic community needs to work out how that happens.”

Leibowitz took a similar position, even on extreme cases. “I would try to not draw a line,” she said. “Because I think once we start drawing lines, it’s very difficult to figure out, well, what is on which side of the line and who gets to draw the line.”

Both McNair and Leibowitz emphasized that creating space for disagreement requires explicit groundwork. McNair tells students on the first day that he will never question their motives for any question they ask. Leibowitz suggested that regular debates bringing speakers from different perspectives could model respectful discourse on challenging topics.

Clune and McNair suggested that class diversity might be a way of getting viewpoint diversity that doesn’t mean specifically hiring or admitting based on political belief. “Political views about gender and race and so forth are often very different depending on your class,” Clune said.

McNair agreed: “If you have two different people from different races, but of the same class, and if you close your eyes, they’re saying the same thing. That is not really advancing the agenda.”

Menzel described his own evolution on these questions after returning home to rural Indiana during the pandemic. He saw white families struggling to put food on the table while protesters, himself included, chanted “Black Lives Matter” on the courthouse lawn. “I was the first to call those white people out for even risking being racist, but now I’m realizing that the effect of my virtue signaling is that a large group of people in the U.S. that suffer were left behind by my ideologies,” he said. However, he explained that even reflections like these can be difficult to voice at Kenyon.

Everyone emphasized that the stakes extend beyond campus. Menzel described a growing divide in national identity, with different groups viewing each other as threats. “Without having these conversations, we’re literally developing two different national identities that are at odds with each other,” he said.

Clune framed the issue as more urgent: “Right now, we’re in a situation where the alternative to creating a space for civil dialogue on these questions is a space in which things are polarized, and you’ve got situations of political violence.”

Leibowitz invoked the friendship between Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia as a model for engagement across ideological differences. But she acknowledged why students might resist questioning deeply held beliefs, especially when those beliefs are tied to identity. “Maybe you regard yourself as a good person because you hold this belief,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be better to discover it now before you’re 50 or 80 and lived your whole life that way?”

McNair offered students a challenge: “Colleges follow students. If you want viewpoint diversity, the school will find out how to get it for you. But you have to want it.”