Yale’s resources

Belonging at Yale resource page on “Free Expression at Yale” [as of 2023]

• Yale University’s statement on its commitments to free expression, followed by a list of resources and links to relevant campus services.

Politics in the classroom

Bail, Chris. 2021. Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

• A book that surveys the literature on political polarization, ideological and affective, and examines how social media distorts our views of the opposing party by rewarding radicals who are not representative of the average person and silencing those who are, fueling further division. The book further examines how interpersonal deliberation can overcome affective polarization, something college instructors can apply in a classroom setting.
• Tags: media, polarization, bias, controversial topics, extremism

Bérubé, Michael. 2006. What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and “Bias” in Higher Education. W. W. Norton & Company, New York.

• An examination of how political discourse operates in and out of the classroom.  See in particular Chapter 1, “Reasonable Disagreements,” which narrates an example of the author trying and failing to manage political difference in a course he taught.
• Tags: disclosure, ethics, politics, education, balancing perspectives

Fish, Stanley. 1994. There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too. Oxford University Press, New York.

• A book developed from an earlier essay of the same name that explains why the issue of free speech in the academy is central, contentious, and ongoing.
• Tags: free speech, campus speech, hate speech, academic freedom

Goldstein, Gary S. and Victor A. Benassi. 1994. “The Relationship Between Teacher Self-Disclosure and Student Classroom Participation.” In Teaching of Psychology 21:4, 205-256.

• A study involving 64 undergraduate classrooms that questioned whether the reciprocity effect would encourage student self-disclosure if instructors disclosed first; the study supported the hypothesis that participation would increase.
• Tags: disclosure, ethics, politics, education

Hess, Diana E. 2009. Controversy in the Classroom: The Democratic Power of Discussion. Routledge, New York.

• A book on how to discuss controversial topics in the classroom.  See especially Chapter 6, co-written with Paula McAvoy, on “To Disclose or Not to Disclose: A Controversial Choice for Teachers” (97-110). This discusses the ethics of whether or not a teacher should disclose their political bias in a secondary-school classroom, but a lot of the considerations they examine apply to the college classroom as well.
• Tags: disclosure, ethics, politics, education

Hess, Diana E. and Paula McAvoy. 2015. The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education. Routledge, New York.

• Examination of how politics unfolds in the classroom in secondary-school (with lasting implications for higher education); uses real case studies and includes a section that provides a framework for exercising professional judgment when making decisions about whether and how to approach politics in the classroom.  See in particular the chapter, “The Ethics of Withholding and Disclosing Political Views.”
• Tags: ethics, politics, education

Kim, Yonghwan. 2015. “Does Disagreement Mitigate Polarization? How Selective Exposure and Disagreement Affect Political Polarization.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 92:4.

• A study on the relationship between media consumption bias and political polarization, and how exposure to politically dissimilar content reduces polarization.
• Tags: media, polarization, bias

National Education Association (NEA). 2020. “Code of Ethics for Educators.”

• A statement on ethical principles that should guide educators in and beyond the classroom.  See in particular the first section on what we owe to our students.
• Tags: ethics, education, code of conduct

Palfrey, John. 2017. Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education. The MIT Press, Boston. 

• A book that newly distinguishes between “safe spaces” and “brave spaces,” the latter of which he claims as the realm of the classroom.  See in particular Chapter 2, “Flashpoints,” for an overview of the recent historical context of free speech on college campuses.
• Tags: free speech, campus speech, safe space, brave space

Walker, Tim. 2018. “‘Education is Political’: Neutrality in the Classroom Shortchanges Students.” neaToday.

• A report on education research into how neutrality in the classroom can marginalize certain students in the current political climate.
• Tags: education, neutrality, politics

Wansink, Bjorn Gert-Jan et al. 2023. “Discussing controversial issues in the classroom: Exploring students’ safety perceptions and their willingness to participate.” Teaching and Teacher Education 125, Article 104044.

• An article describing the results of a sociological survey of various factors impacting a primary school student’s willingness to participate in discussion of controversial topics in the classroom.  In particular, they examined the impact of the Dutch Christmas tradition, “Black Pete,” which utilizes blackface, assessing factors such as identity threat, classroom climate, and interpersonal teacher behavior.  They found that students experiencing the greatest identity threat were actually most willing to participate in discussion.
• Tags: education, identity threat, politics, race and racism

Wansink, Bjorn Gert-Jan et al. 2023. “Navigating Multiple Perspectives in Discussing Controversial Topics: Boundary Crossing in the Classroom.” Education Sciences 13(9): 938.

• This article aims to better understand the strengths and limitations of showcasing different perspectives – both academic and personal – when teaching in a classroom setting.
• Tags: perspective, multiperspectivity, friction, controversial topics, boundary crossing

Vivienne, Son. 2023. Queering Safe Spaces: Being Brave beyond Binaries. Lexington Books, New York.

• A book that traces the use of “safe space” as a term on college campuses, and how it has evolved alongside “brave space” as an option for structuring difficult or sensitive conversations.  See in particular, Chapter 3, “The Safety Trap,” on how the safe space designation can create some problematic expectations in the classroom, and on what some better options might be.
• Tags: safe space, brave space, sensitive conversations, campus speech, free speech

Student political identity and academic freedom on university campuses

Berman, Paul (ed.). 1992. Debating P.C.: The Controversy Over Political Correctness on College Campuses. Laurel, New York.

• A collection of interviews and essays by professors and public intellectuals across the political spectrum concerning topics such as political correctness, free speech, canonicity and tradition in the curriculum, and contemporary controversial events on college campuses.
• Tags: free speech, inclusivity, controversial topics, campus speech

Bérubé, Michael and Cary Nelson (eds.). 1995. Higher Education Under Fire: Politics, Economics, and the Crisis of the Humanities. Routledge, New York.

• A collected work of essays including topics on academic freedom for professors, the changing demographics of universities, and identity politics.
• Tags: academic freedom, free speech, campus speech, identity politics

Binder, Amy J. and Kate Wood. 2013. Becoming Right: How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

• A sociological study that compares conservative student culture at a Western flagship university and an Eastern elite university, which demonstrate different kinds of political formation: large public institutions result in more activism, and small private institutions in greater emphasis on civil discourse and debate.
• Tags: conservatism, activism, debate, civil discourse

Chemerinsky, Erwin and Howard Gillman. 2017. Free Speech on Campus. Yale University Press, New Haven. 

• A book describing the history of free speech on college campuses.  See in particular, Chapter 5, “What Campuses Can and Can’t Do.”
• Tags: free speech, campus speech, academic freedom, politics

Fish, Stanley. 2019. The First: How to Think About Hate Speech, Campus Speech, Religious Speech, Fake News, Post-Truth, and Donald Trump. One Signal Publishers, New York.

• A book on how campus free speech debates have evolved since the 2010s.  See in particular Chapter 3, “Why Freedom of Speech Is Not an Academic Value,” for an argument about how different contexts create different constraints on what can and cannot be said on college campuses, and that not all constraints are automatically unreasonable.
• Tags: free speech, academic freedom, campus speech, academic values, professionalism

Flaherty, Colleen. 2021. “A Canceled Talk, and Questions About Just Who Is Politicizing Science.” Inside Higher Ed. 

• An article reviewing the case of a well-known climate scientist who was invited to give a public talk to high school students at a peer institution, but whose talk was canceled after students protested his history of speaking out against affirmative action and DEI efforts.
• Tags: social media, free speech, academic freedom, deplatforming 

Mayhew, Matthew J. et al. 2018. “Does college turn people into liberals?” The Conversation.

• A article examining the claim of liberal indoctrination in universities; they give a debrief of an ongoing sociological survey of 7000+ college students, with data that shows both liberal and conservative students tend to gain a greater appreciation for their opposites in college, while an equal number (about a third on each side) gain more negative attitudes.
• Tags: political indoctrination, campus speech

Pincoffs, Edmund L. (ed.). 1972. The Concept of Academic Freedom. University of Texas Press, Austin. 

• Essays from a conference on academic freedom: its nature, purpose, how it works within different conceptions of the university or of civil liberty, and how it operates within different understandings of academic community.
• Tags: academic freedom, free speech, campus speech, civil liberty, academic community

PiTV Documentaries. 2019. “Classism in Higher Education.”

• A short documentary featuring interviews with students at University College London in the UK about how socioeconomic class – and the silent assumptions made by institutional structures – affects their experience of university life and academic spaces.
• Tags: class and classism, institutional history, inclusivity

Shelby, Tommie. 2014. “Racism, Moralism, and Social Criticism.” In Du Bois Review 11:1, 57– 74.

• An examination of how racism and differential life outcomes based on race has been discussed in American politics for the last 50 years; Shelby argues that in conversations about race, we should give primacy to political philosophy over moral philosophy.
• Tags: race and racism, political philosophy, inclusivity

Thelin, John R. (ed.). 2021. Essential Documents in the History of Higher Education. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

• A collection of primary texts from the 18th century to the 2010s, including colonial era documents on the foundation of colleges, the establishment of disciplines, the broadening of demographic access, political movements, finances, and philanthropic endeavors.
• Tags: primary documents, disciplinarity, institutional history

The role of civics in universities

Ben-Porath, Sigal R. 2006. Citizenship under Fire: Democratic Education in Times of Conflict. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

• This book describes what a theory of “expansive education” can do within the more restrictive social context of wartime.  Expansive education protects democratic ideals from the corrosions of excessive nationalism, or “belligerent citizenship,” that wartime can encourage.
• Tags: education, civics, wartime, democracy, conflict

Ben-Porath, Sigal R. 2017. Free Speech on Campus. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

• This book evinces the argument that political expression and civic development are not the primary purposes of a college education, yet classroom spaces must still be maintained as spaces for the free exchange of ideas.  See Chapter 4, “Putting Civility in its Place: Free Speech in the Classroom.”
• Tags: civics, political expression, free speech, campus speech

Ben-Porath, Sigal R. 2023. Cancel Wars: How Universities Can Foster Free Speech, Promote Inclusion, and Renew Democracy. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

• This book discusses university free speech debates as a signal of the increased centrality of the modern university to civic formation, with special attention to the relation of higher education to democracy at large.
• Tags: civics, education, politics, democracy, cancel culture, free speech, inclusivity

Bok, Derek. 2006. Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

• A book that examines whether undergraduate students are actually getting what we want them to be getting out of college in the areas of writing, critical thinking, quantitative skills, and moral reasoning. He foregrounds the ethos that universities play a central role in the civic development of our youth, especially as college graduates are most likely to go on to hold leadership roles in society.  See particularly Ch. 7, “Preparation for Citizenship,” and Ch. 9, “Preparing for a Global Society.”
• Tags: civics, education, politics, globalization

Cohen, Robby. 1985. “Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the Way for Campus Activism.” OAH Magazine of History 1:1, 16-18.

• This article covers the establishment of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s, which started in response to the university restricting public support for the Civil Rights Movement on the grounds that on-campus political advocacy was prohibited at the time.
• Tags: Free Speech Movement, campus speech, political advocacy

Du, Kane. 2019. “OPINION: STEM students need to get involved in politics too.” The Red & Black.

• This opinion piece, written in a nonprofit news publication for an audience of the University of Georgia in Athens, discusses the rates of voter turnouts among different majors at UGA and the lack of engagement in political debates by STEM students.
• Tags: political engagement, STEM students, civics

Kitchell, Mark. 1990. Berkeley in the Sixties. California Newsreel, San Francisco.

• A film documentary that chronicles the emergence of the Free Speech Movement on the University of California, Berkeley’s campus in the 1960s, with reference to San Francisco hotel labor strikes, Vietnam war protests, and the draft.
• Tags: Free Speech Movement, campus speech, political advocacy

Tierney, William G. 1993. Building Communities of Difference: Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century. Bergin & Garvey, Westport.

• This work challenges the audience to rethink implicit structures of power in the university as a precondition to building better, more inclusive communities.  It also exhorts us to think critically about what it means to be a member of the university community, and of the role we play in creating cultural citizenship.
• Tags: cultural citizenship, power, inclusivity

Political philosophy and critical theory

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. 1942. “After Ten Years.” Trans. Barbara and Martin Rumscheidt. In Letters and Papers from Prison, Ed. Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge, Renate Bethge, and Ilse Tödt. Fortress Press, Minneapolis.

• In particular, the section “On Stupidity”: an account of how authoritarian power comes into being through what he calls stupidity – and how this is much harder, in many ways, to combat than obvious maliciousness because it operates socially rather than individually.

• Tags: authoritarianism, stupidity, sociality of power

Butler, Judith and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. 2007. Who Sings the Nation-State? Seagull Books, New York.

• A wide-ranging discussion of politics and power, who has rights and who does not, and a reflection on the various ways these things are stable and unstable over time.

• Tags: politics, power, nation, state, rights

Freire, Paulo. 2014 (c1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. Bloomsbury, New York.

• An argument for why education, as a mutual process between instructor and student, is liberatory.  Freire describes education as the practice of freedom.

• Tags: liberation pedagogy, education, resistance

Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford University Press, New York.

• A book that defines and describes a category of injustice in which a person is harmed in their capacity as a knower; i.e. a person is not believed because of who they are, or because they lack the framework to adequately explain a broad pattern of experienced harm.

• Tags: epistemology, justice, injustice, testimony, hermeneutics

Fricker, Miranda et al. 2020. The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology. Routledge, New York.

• A collection of essays on the topic of social epistemology from perspectives as diverse as legal theory, science and democracy, feminism, and education.

• Tags: philosophy of education, social epistemology, feminist philosophy, science communication, democracy, disagreement

Johnson, Casey Rebecca. 2023. Epistemic Care: Vulnerability, Inquiry, and Social Epistemology. Routledge, New York.

• A book that uses the theory of care ethics to discuss what we owe each other as knowers both individually embodied and socially entangled. 

• Tags: philosophy of education, social epistemology, feminist philosophy, ethics

Nielsen, Cynthia R. and David Utsler. 2023. “Gadamer, Fricker, and Honneth: Testimonial Injustice, Prejudice, and Social Esteem.” In Epistemic Injustice and the Philosophy of Recognition. Routledge, New York. 63-87.

• This essay traces the lineage of “prejudice” as a term, and how it functions with regards to openness, listening, social power, stereotyping, and credibility.

• Tags: prejudice, epistemic injustice, stereotyping, testimony

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Nelson and Grossberg. Macmillan Education, Basingstoke.

• In this essay, Spivak evinces the argument that the subaltern cannot speak because there is no listening subject; the argument works to interrogate who has political power, and who has access to the processes of politics and the workings of capital.

• Tags: subaltern, politics, power, speech, capital

Tsosie, Rebecca. 2023. “Constitutional Law and Epistemic Injustice: Hate Speech, Stereotyping, and Recognition Harm.” In Epistemic Injustice and the Philosophy of Recognition. Routledge, New York, NY. 256-278. 

• This essay examines how hate speech works in the context of American constitutional law, within the framework of epistemic injustice.

• Tags: hate speech, free speech, epistemic injustice

Constructive political dialogue examples

Bring It to the Table. 2017. “Table Talks.” Talking Eyes Media.

• Interviews with people across the political spectrum on controversial topics designed to model constructive dialogue that gets at the values obscured by partisan discourse.

• Tags: controversial topics, dialogue, bipartisan discourse

 

Jubilee Media’s “Middle Ground” series on YouTube [ongoing series]

• Conversations on controversial topics between two people with opposing viewpoints, with the intent of finding common ground if possible.

• Tags: controversial topics, dialogue, common ground

 

 

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The Learning Community, “Teaching in an Election Year,” was designed and facilitated by Stephanie Ranks in Fall 2023.

 

This annotated bibliography was gathered together with the assistance and contributions of the Learning Community participants: Aseel Alfataftah, Leonardo Carvalho, Hobart Chen, Thaís Costa Teixeira Viana, Adam Krysztofiak, Artur Pericles Lima Monteiro, Nick O’Mara, Victoria Rai, Matthew Schilling, Samantha Tracy, and Tianyi Zeng.