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How should free speech work in the face of organized disinformation campaigns?
Lynn Pasquerella’s new book, What We Value, tries to answer that question through ethical reflection grounded in various areas of practice. In so doing, it exemplifies the position for which it argues; it’s a doggedly humanistic work, often giving the benefit of the doubt where a more cynical sort might not. I would have preferred a bit more attention to larger issues of political economy, but the book isn’t really intended to settle arguments so much as to frame them.
Pasquerella has championed liberal arts education throughout her career, whether teaching medical ethics at Brown, serving as president of Mount Holyoke or in her current role as president of the AAC&U. The book is a series of essays, each of which draws on a different element of her background.
The first essay is the strongest. It’s on moral distress among medical providers, which she roots in the conflicting imperatives to which providers are subject. For example, she notes that most health-care practice in the U.S. has been based on the idea of maximizing the benefit to each individual patient. When COVID peaked and hospitals had to start making decisions based on the good of the community, even if it came at the expense of individual patients, many doctors and nurses found themselves caught between conflicting sets of expectations.
She draws on some existing literature around moral distress to show the harm done to health-care providers when they’re saddled with conflicting expectations. Given limited hospital beds in a pandemic, do you write off the patients with little chance of survival to make room for those who are likelier to benefit from care? What if you have to be the one to break it to the family of the one you’re abandoning?
The health-care system generally is built to generate moral distress. Do you order the expensive test for the uninsured patient? Do you honor the wishes of the next of kin to keep someone alive at all costs, even if you’re reasonably sure that the patient is in terrible pain?
An essay on “snowflakes” and the culture wars in elite higher education follows, somewhat less successfully. The major focus is on campus disputes over “hate speech” and the difficulty of establishing inclusive and effective learning environments when people in positions of authority say things that lead students in minoritized groups to question their ability to grade fairly.
In reading that, I couldn’t help but reflect on the “religious freedom” movement and the recent legislative attempts to ban anything that makes white people uncomfortable. They rely on the same arguments about hate speech and inclusive environments. Saying yes to one side and no to the other requires much more explanation than the brief chapter attempts. And it presents a particular challenge for a liberalism that relies on equality before the law.
The book’s final essay is a bit of a stemwinder, rallying the troops to defend the idea of a liberal arts education. It’s a call to avoid the temptation either to reduce higher education to vocational training or to reduce the liberal arts to a frill for the very wealthy. She notes, for instance, that the ability to work well in situations of ambiguity is crucial in many jobs, as is the ability to communicate effectively. She even finds data showing that students with liberal arts backgrounds are less likely to harbor authoritarian leanings than students in other fields.
That moment stood out for me as one of the rare times the book seriously acknowledged the larger political context. For example, part of the reason that so many people are quick to try to reduce higher education to job training is the increasingly polarized economy, which, in turn, is the result of a series of political decisions made over decades. When fear of economic falling has a basis in reality, it shouldn’t be surprising that the prospect of economic security becomes more salient. The issue of the uninsured patient in the earlier chapter only exists because health insurance here is employer based, rather than a right of citizenship. What feel like individual ethical dilemmas are often symptoms of much larger structural issues; if those issues go unaddressed, moral distress is almost inevitable.
Still, the mark of a liberal arts education is the ability to make, and have, an intelligent argument. Pasquerella’s book provides one and provokes the other. In that, it did exactly what it set out to do.
