At an institution like Stanford, students hope that a speaker series course titled “Democracy and Disagreement” that promises to model “respectful, civic disagreement” would do just that.
Yet when U.S. Treasury Secretary and former Harvard President Larry Summers spoke at last week’s class session, he was interrupted by non-student protesters whose behavior was not just inappropriate, ill-informed and immature, but deeply ironic.
I signed up to take the course “Democracy and Disagreement” because I was drawn to its unique format. Debra Satz, dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, and Paul Brest, former dean and professor emeritus at Stanford Law School, would moderate conversation between scholars with opposing viewpoints on major policy issues including DEI, college admissions and Supreme Court reforms. After each conversation, students would have the opportunity to ask questions and share comments with the following standard written in the course description:
“The speakers in this course are guests of the faculty and students alike and should be treated as such. They are aware that their views will be subject to criticism in a manner consistent with our commitment to respectful critical discourse.”
This sounded to me like a refreshing alternative to the knee-jerk polarization found on social media and at family dinner tables across the country that leads to echo chambers, magnified hostility and a striking sense of rigidity and stifled curiosity.
Summers and University of California, Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez were invited to speak about socioeconomic inequality and the wealth tax. However, as the speakers were introduced, a group of protesters took to the stage, holding up signs reading “Larry, your time is up.” One heckler began yelling at Summers, saying, “You stole my future” and “You were one of the capitalists who sold our country for profit!”
As the class moderators asked the students to step down, one of the protesters shouted louder with further accusations: “All of [Summers’] deregulation is exactly what led to the corporate oligarchy that has caused the rise of Elon Musk! That is the speaker that Stanford has invited here to speak on the topic of the wealth tax!”
Members of the class voiced their displeasure with this unwelcome interruption, urging the protesters on stage to stop. But the protesters only leveled up their antics, suddenly breaking into a chant: “Tax, the rich. Tax the motherfucking rich! Larry, get off it, put people over profit,” they repeated. Amid this scene, one of the protesters tossed fake million dollar bills into the air that read “Toxic Mess Larry.”
As someone who was in the room that day, I found the interruption disgraceful, disrespectful and foolishly arrogant. The protesters’ actions demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of dialogue and, more concerningly, a rejection of the intellectual curiosity and openness that a place like Stanford should champion. They derailed the very discussion they purportedly wished to influence.
If these protesters disagreed with Summers’ views, they wasted an opportunity to challenge him directly, to engage him with difficult questions and to hold him accountable through dialogue. By opting for disruption and performative, attention-seeking outrage, they gave up power they might have had to get their viewpoints heard in a meaningful way and understand more deeply and completely the perspectives they took issue with. They should have aimed to understand the opposing view and engage in thoughtful discourse. Often, we need to be able to articulate another person’s position in order to better understand and wrestle with our own.
It should be noted that the protesters were not even Stanford students, but instead were part of an organization called Climate Defiance that aims to leverage “mass-turnout, non-violent direct action to force our politicians to take action.” An outside organization barging in on a Stanford course dedicated to combating polarization attacks the sanctity and purpose of the class. The word “force” is rather strong, and starkly contrasts the “non-violent” sentiment of the mission statement. It’s alarming to think of lengths this organization, and others like it, would go so policy makers will capitulate to their demands.
The term “free speech” is often tossed around when it comes to justifying campus protests, but there is a difference between the right to respectfully disagree and disrupting the rights of students to learn. A protest outside a lecture hall can be an expression of free speech, however actively preventing someone from speaking within a space designed for discussion is a disturbance that violates the Campus Disruption policy. The former is a legitimate form of dissent; the latter is a rejection of democratic values.
I believe that wealth inequality is a major issue both in our country and on a global scale, and protesting and expressing dissent is necessary to move any democracy forward. But how we approach addressing disagreement is just as crucial as beginning to tackle a tangible issue. The protesters weren’t interested in challenging Summers with hard questions or exposing flaws in his thinking through rigorous, good-faith exchange. They were interested in silencing the conversation, and their efforts were ultimately embarrassing, immediately turning people off. There is a time and place to be disruptive, and a sanctuary for meaningful and respectful disagreement was not that. This was not an act of discourse — it was an act against discourse.
It’s time we hold protesters accountable to this distinction. There should be consequences for those who disrupt learning on a university campus, especially those who are not even Stanford students. I am grateful that the professors of this course, along with the University, are taking action making it clear that this behavior won’t be tolerated in our classrooms and lecture halls.
The actions of last week should serve as a wake-up call: learning about disagreement in democracy is more essential than ever. If we refuse to engage with views different from our own, we are not preparing ourselves for the real world and the messy, difficult and often frustrating nature of living in a democracy. The goal of respectful civic discussions isn’t always to change another person’s mind. Sometimes, the better outcome is to have one’s own mind changed.