Are academics doing a disservice by constantly trying to be politically neutral?

Holocaust centers. His own people. Innocent people. With these phrases Sean Spicer managed to paint Nazi concentration camps as the equivalent of a visitor center, German Jews as not really German, and millions of innocent people massacred during the Holocaust as somehow deserving of their fates.

How could the White House press secretary make such remarks? One could argue that the attitude reflects the stance of the current administration in general — marking people (immigrants, Muslims), as not truly American and even using the slogan “America First” which itself harkens back to WWII and the desire of some to protect America at the expense of others.

{mosads}Another line of reasoning for why and how Spicer could make such remarks may lead us to something less obvious: our institutions of higher education.

Much has been made of liberal arts colleges specifically, and academia in general, as an echo chamber or a bubble. These allegations aren’t new, but they certainly have gained fervor under the current political climate. Spicer himself attended a liberal arts college in the northeast In fact, he attended Connecticut College, the very one at which I teach now.

He bashes institutions of higher education as encouraging special snowflakes to have a  victim mentality, and resistant to any opposing (conservative) points of view. This appears to be an especially indulgent pastime of conservative pundits. It seems to me that, in fact, we should wonder whether Spicer, the White House press secretary, a conservative and a graduate of a liberal arts college, has ever been challenged with views that aren’t similar to his. Or are academics so concerned with proving the allegations of a liberal bias wrong that they’ve allowed all kinds of (uninformed) opinions to go unquestioned?

Academia is not a liberal bubble. In fact, studies show that conservatives (students and professors) thrive even if the majority of professors lean liberal. But, when we allow this picture of academia to be painted — unrelentingly, and unforgivingly liberal, a place where conservatives must lurk in the shadows for fear of persecution — we allow the sharp edges of our social critiques to be dulled, our social commentary made more palatable, in order to prove this assumption of a liberal bias incorrect. In so doing, we do our educational mission a disservice by not exploring the consequences — social, political, legal and economic — of certain kinds of rhetoric and policies.

Spicer has already said many outrageous things over his still-new career as White House press secretary. It appears that the confidence behind such statements comes not from having had to defend his positions and making reasoned arguments — we might see stronger and more coherent arguments if that were the case — perhaps from never having had to engage meaningfully in a dialogue about the consequences of his views and positions.

I am certainly not arguing for academia to become a place where we convert conservatives. And I’m not arguing with the assertion that politics have no place in many subjects in a college classroom. But that is not true for many other subjects and disciplines, including history, sociology, politics, psychology, gender and women’s studies, philosophy or anthropology, to name just a few. Even disciplines normally considered immune to politics, such as the sciences, are currently wrapped up in many political hot-button topics, such as climate change.

So what is our obligation as academics? Is it to avoid taking an informed stance on any issue because we must be neutral in our teaching? When discussing sexual harassment and the normalization of harassment in our culture, are we not allowed to discuss a presidential candidate who talks about grabbing women because that would make us partisan?

Should we not talk about the effects of immigration policies on people and families unless we are able to do so in neutral terms? The current climate, and the claims of a liberal bias in academia, suggest that we should limit the scope of our teaching, and refrain from taking any positions, in order to appear nonpartisan. But internalizing that position can lead us to shy away from discussions of consequences on real human lives. Further, it compels us to limit the full scope of knowledge and discussion.

It is this emphasis on neutrality, so prized as an ideal for academia, that explains how Spicer can make the comments he made about the Holocaust. Somewhere along the line, his perspectives were surely validated in the name of neutrality in our educational system and our classrooms.

But there was nothing neutral about the Holocaust and there is nothing neutral about many of the policies that the current administration is pursuing. History, especially history of the Holocaust, has taught us that silence can be just as much of a political act as speaking out. When we fail to question, within our educational institutions, what a stance of neutrality means in highly unequal times, we end up with a press secretary who refers to Nazi concentration camps as centers.

For what could be more nihilistically neutral than the word center in that example?

Afshan Jafar is an associate professor of sociology at Connecticut College and a Public Voices fellow with the OpEd Project. She is the author of “Women’s NGOs in Pakistan”, and the co-editor for “Bodies without Borders” and “Global Beauty, Local Bodies.”

The views of contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.