When I arrived in Durham four years ago, I was already an ardent liberal, a card-carrying Democrat, a feminist, maybe even a socialist--though I barely knew what some of those terms meant. I helped U.S. Rep. David Price and Sen. John Edwards get elected, and at the activities fair on East Campus, I signed up for the Duke Democrats and Amnesty International.
Being on the left made sense. I advocated nearly every Democratic platform issue: I opposed the death penalty, supported a woman's right to choose and forcefully advocated higher taxes. At Duke, I agreed with Students Against Sweatshops and the NAACP boycott of South Carolina. I took pride in some parts of the University's history, like the 1969 Allen Building takeover.
If there had been a protest to support women's rights, employee relations or any other worthy cause, I would have joined in.
Above all, being liberal meant being open-minded and engaging in meaningful discourse. I devoted three years of my life to high school debate and found a liberal community able to discuss opposing views openly and coherently. And I assumed that anyone outside that liberal community could not.
Duke taught me differently. My first friend, a girl down the hall from Kentucky, was conservative. She was on the other side, advocating the government-sponsored killing of criminals and asking the poor to fend for themselves rather than force the rich to pay higher taxes. She even considered lobbying for the retail lumber industry after her freshman year. What she did not do, however, was throw every leftist argument I made back in my face. And she presented well-reasoned, conservative arguments in response.
I thought she was an anomaly, but I was proven wrong when I took a position at The Chronicle. Although the newspaper's Editorial Board is often mocked for its knee-jerk liberalism, we do have some Republicans. No matter how intense debate becomes, though, most conservatives present their arguments respectfully and listen to mine without laughing aloud or sneering.
Unfortunately, my personal education in tolerance did not parallel the growing political divide on campus. When SAS made valuable arguments in favor of sweatshop monitoring my freshman year, there were a few disdainful conservative students, but there was also intelligent debate on the core issues.
As time passed, that changed. Intelligent debate has been weeded out and minimized to rare conversations, replaced by public anger. Students yell at each other, but they do not listen to each other. They expect everyone to change their mind without knowing how to approach a conversation productively.
When liberals protest for workers' rights (i.e. the pickle boycott), they are laughed at by conservatives, who make no attempt to lay out their arguments diplomatically. Although some may consider the boycott silly, why is that? Is it because students are worked up over a small issue like pickles, or are there better arguments to make (like the fact that cucumber production makes up just 1 percent of the Mt. Olive Pickle Company's farmer workload or that the state, not individual businesses, should be enforcing labor regulations)?
In the same vein, the left forgoes its basic duty--one of its crowning principles--to remain open-minded and address conservative arguments with logical, in-depth responses. Do you have trouble understanding why conservatives are so insensitive on issues of race? Why not sit down and answer their arguments, rather than give up and label them offensive?
In the end, both sides lead movements full of complaints and lacking viable solutions.
Where does this public disrespect for discourse bring us? It creates an atmosphere that undermines debate itself, where people are afraid to speak about their own beliefs. Did anyone notice the hundreds of people who clapped for David Horowitz's arguments in Page Auditorium just a few weeks ago? Compare that with the number who spoke publicly in favor of him after last year's protests. The few who did, not surprisingly, did so in an extraordinarily inflammatory manner.
Conservatives are tired of being branded racist, sexist, homophobic or any other stigmatized liberal label. Likewise, liberals are weary of in-your-face discussion that so deeply offends them.
When the editorial pages of the campus newspaper are filled with sometimes-illogical and often-inflammatory rhetoric, it indicates a breakdown in campus relations. When people with radical opinions are unable to engage in dialogue, and the silent, reasonable majority refuses to speak up, we cannot move toward progress.
This dark picture of Duke's so-called community does not lack hope, however. After all, at this university, my stereotypes about liberalism have been ripped to shreds through the amazing people I have met. And at this university, some of the most stunning progress has been made through the very tools of discourse and persistence.
I have not changed my political affiliation, despite the stigma that surrounds the word "liberalism," both among conservatives and in my own mind.
And I am not asking others to change their stances. Instead, we must re-examine the way we push our causes and at what cost we do so. We must question our preconceptions about people with opposing views and open our discussions to them.
One of my close friends and co-workers aptly called this piece the "let's-all-get-along" column. Perhaps it is. But if we do not learn to get along enough to hear--really listen--to each other's arguments, we will remain divided. There are plenty of valid causes out there, both liberal and conservative. We must rise beyond our innate desire to reject views we immediately find unpalatable, for only after studying them can we solidify our own arguments. And only then can we expect our calls for change to be heard.
Ambika Kumar is a Trinity senior and editor of The Chronicle. Like her predecessors, she aches with the knowledge that she will never be either again.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.