Making Sense of Neutrality
CAT Executive Director Betsy Barre recently appeared on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast to discuss recent debates about political neutrality in the classroom. Although these debates tend to frame the choice before us as one between impersonal distance and the imposition of our personal views, Betsy urges us to explore the space between these binaries. She and host Bonni Stachowiak discuss the nature of neutrality, its significance at institutional and classroom levels, and strategies for treating students who disagree with fairness and respect. You can listen to the episode in the embedded player below or via your favorite podcast player.
Quotes from the Episode
“I think we could be more generous when we talk to people who disagree with us about pedagogy … and recognize the complexity of the decisions that we’re making.”
“Over the last few weeks … there’s been a lot of really somewhat heated discourse about whether it’s appropriate to share your views in class, whether it’s appropriate to save space in your class to process the election, whether you should be canceling class, [and whether any of these would be] a violation of your responsibilities.”
“It often depends on what your view is and who your students are. As with many things in teaching, everything is contextual … It’s very hard to have hard and fast rules.”
“As much as I think we can’t be [fully] neutral, there are also good arguments for neutrality … it’s trying to do something important.”
“Institutions are making choices all the time … about what to teach, about who they’re going to hire … If they’re choosing not to do a DEI, that’s not neutral. If they’re choosing to do DEI a certain way, that’s not neutral.”
“Teachers are in a position of power … [and] just like folks who developed liberal democracy were anxious about using state power to … coerce people to believe certain things … [or to] give advantages to some people and not others …we’re worried that we might use power to coerce [students] to believe [what we believe] or to treat those who believe what we believe better than others … we could argue grading could do both.”
“I hope the main message from all of this is, you know, if you’re anxious, there’s a reason you’re anxious as a teacher because this is all really complex.”
“I think remaining just a little bit anxious is good because it checks us if we might be going too far in one direction.”
“I’ll sometimes say, ‘within the context of this discipline, this is true.’ … [or] ‘if you want to be engaged in discourse in this discipline, you have to take these things as starting points’ … [or] ‘given the standards of evidence in this discipline, this is true.’ … You could [also] say, ‘if you want to challenge the standards of evidence that we use, go over there [to philosophy].”