Digifesto

I’ve been struck recently by a subtle shift in messaging at UC Berkeley since Carol T. Christ has become the university’s Chancellor. Incidentally, she is the first woman chancellor of the university, with a research background in Victorian literature. I think both of these things may have something to do with the bold choice she’s made in recent announcements: the inclusion of reason as among the University’s core values.

Notably, the word has made its appearance next to three other terms that have had much more prominence in the university in recent years: equity, inclusion, and diversity. For example, in the following statements:

In “Thoughts on Charlottesville”:

We must now come together to oppose what are dangerous threats to the values we hold dear as a democracy and as a nation. Our shared belief in reason, diversity, equity, and inclusion is what animates and supports our campus community and the University’s academic mission. Now, more than ever, those values are under assault; together we must rise to their defense.

And, strikingly, this message on “Free Speech”:

Nonetheless, defending the right of free speech for those whose ideas we find offensive is not easy. It often conflicts with the values we hold as a community—tolerance, inclusion, reason and diversity. Some constitutionally-protected speech attacks the very identity of particular groups of individuals in ways that are deeply hurtful. However, the right response is not the heckler’s veto, or what some call platform denial. Call toxic speech out for what it is, don’t shout it down, for in shouting it down, you collude in the narrative that universities are not open to all speech. Respond to hate speech with more speech.

The above paragraph comes soon after this one, in which Chancellor Christ defends Free Speech on Millian philosophical grounds:

The philosophical justification underlying free speech, most powerfully articulated by John Stuart Mill in his book On Liberty, rests on two basic assumptions. The first is that truth is of such power that it will always ultimately prevail; any abridgement of argument therefore compromises the opportunity of exchanging error for truth. The second is an extreme skepticism about the right of any authority to determine which opinions are noxious or abhorrent. Once you embark on the path to censorship, you make your own speech vulnerable to it.

This slight change in messaging strikes me as fundamentally wise. In the past year, the university has been wracked by extreme passions and conflicting interests, resulting in bad press externally and I imagine discomfort internally. But this was not unprecedented; the national political bifurcation could take hold at Berkeley precisely because it had for years been, with every noble intention, emphasizing inclusivity and equity without elevating a binding agent that makes diversity meaningful and productive. This was partly due to the influence of late 20th century intellectual trends that burdened “reason” with the historical legacy of those regimes that upheld it as a virtue, which tended to be white and male. There was a time when “reason” was so associated with these powers that the term was used for the purposes of exclusion–i.e. with the claim that new entrants to political and intellectual power were being “unreasonable”.

Times have changed precisely because the exclusionary use of “reason” was a corrupt one; reason in its true sense is impersonal and transcends individual situation even as it is immanent in it. This meaning of reason would be familiar to one steeped in an older literature.

Carol Christ’s wording reflects a 21st century theme which to me gives me profound confidence in Berkeley’s future: the recognition that reason does not oppose inclusion, but rather demands it, just as scientific logic demands properly sampled data. Perhaps the new zeitgeist at Berkeley has something to do with the new Data Science undergraduate curriculum. Given the state of the world, I’m proud to see reason make a comeback.