We Need to Talk
The Overton window is too damn narrow
Recently, I posted on Facebook that affirmative action in academic hiring is hard to justify. It’s unfair to other candidates, erodes public trust in universities, and unwittingly reinforces the pernicious idea that marginalized scholars are less qualified than white men. I concluded by suggesting that other measures—such as stamping out discrimination throughout the pipeline—might be less objectionable.
Maybe I’m right. Or maybe, as one academic responded, this is all just “massively misleading, hateful rhetoric.”
Several other academics interpreted what I’d said as a claim that hires are made exclusively on the basis of identity—as if search committees would happily pluck someone off the street if they had the right skin tone. One kind colleague patiently explained why this could not possibly be what my original post meant. No effect.
There were some good counterarguments too, naturally. A few great ones. I’ve come to believe that affirmative action is more complicated than I’d assumed—though still hard to justify. It’s great that my post elicited criticism, inspired debate, and helped some of us think more carefully about the issue.
It’s depressing, though, that so many people were unable to honestly and civilly confront a popular and reasonable criticism.
Instead, they cast skepticism about affirmative action as “harmful.” They seized upon uncharitable interpretations and refused to budge. They also accused me of being stupid, bigoted, and attention-seeking.
This wasn’t my first time at the bottom of a social media pile-on, and it won’t be the last. Why do I keep doing this to myself?
My Facebook dust-up is a microcosm of broader cultural dysfunction. Progressives find themselves in politically homogenous bubbles where contrary ideas go unchallenged. Part of a broader intellectual crisis, the Overton window has shrunk, and there is zero tolerance for conversation that strays outside it.
This isn’t about viewpoint diversity, as such. As Barry Lam observes in a recent essay about the Overton window, it’s possible to have “narrow ideological views” but allow a wide “range of reasonable disagreement.”
Progressives aren’t sending people to foreign gulags. But they are imposing disproportionate social penalties on people for reasonable and civil dissent. That the right is worse does not absolve the left.
Freedom of speech is sustained by laws and formal institutions but also by an informal social norm: that we give one another wide latitude to voice our views, even if they’re unpopular, and that the correct response to bad ideas is debate rather than sanctions.
Without this norm, our ability to seek the truth is hampered. If our views are mistaken, we’ll never know. Even if they’re sound, we can’t be sure until we’ve stress-tested them.
The thought police are arresting inquiry.
In a recent essay for Daily Nous, Elizabeth Barnes argues that having conversations across serious disagreement is also personally valuable:
“It’s very easy for me to confuse the truth of the propositions a person assents to with the content of that person’s character. It’s very easy for me to assume that if I disagree with someone on an issue that is extremely morally important to me, I’m thereby a better person than they are. It’s very easy for me to be kind of a judgy asshole. I suspect I am not alone in this, among philosophers. I have been truly humbled by many of the ways in which someone I disagree with so starkly can continually fail to be a cartoon villain. I’m really grateful to have been humbled in that way—it’s been one of the most philosophically enriching experiences of my life.”
Preach. Censoriousness frustrates not just our intellectual goals but our ethical goals too. A culture that chokes out disagreement is inhospitable to individual flourishing.
Such illiberalism has also poisoned our political culture.
Voters dislike Trump, yet they dislike progressives even more—that’s partly why so many were willing to hold their nose and vote for Trump in 2024 and why they continue to support his underlings in Congress. But the rot runs deeper, and it threatens to outlast MAGA.
Americans have legitimate concerns about left-wing ideas—about policing, immigration enforcement, youth medical transition, and more. Unfortunately, the dominant progressive response to these concerns is rage and scorn.
My post about affirmative action was an attempt to start a conversation—to invite people to confront this issue and come to a reasoned conclusion about it. Was it perfect? No, obviously. Was it a reasonable starting point? Yes, obviously.
For the sake of our political goals if nothing else, we have to learn how to confront the intellectually most serious arguments for contrary views. Many reasonable people hold them, and they live among us—family members, colleagues, parents of our children’s friends. If we hope to resist the tide of political regression in our country, why alienate them?
Academics of all people should be able to consider the best case against a practice and give sober counterarguments. Instead, they cultivate a breeding ground for counterproductive ways of engaging with the broader public.
Back to my post. Affirmative action in academic hiring has become a political lightning rod. It’s partly why universities have become a target of the Trump administration. My question was: do conservative critics have a point?
I can see why people don’t want to open questions like these. Universities are under attack—largely not for any good reasons but because faculty, administrators, and students are political enemies of the right. In the face of this onslaught, any concession can feel like sacrificing solidarity, particularly with those who are most vulnerable, such as marginalized faculty in targeted fields, untenured instructors, and politically active foreign students.
Fair point. I think this concern can justify choosing not to engage or challenging the terms of the discussion. One friend seemed to think that the topic might be worth exploring but wrote that my post didn’t set us up very well for it. They could be right.
Yet none of this justifies intense hostility or willful misinterpretation. It’s easy to imagine the same response to this essay too: “He’s saying he wants the right to speak without consequences. He’s mad because he made a bad argument and people pointed that out.” No, I’m talking about excess animosity and a deficit of charity, which impede reasoned discussion.
The purpose of such hostility, aside from pure expression, was to police what I say and think—and to send a message to observers. Policing can be warranted for speech that is beyond the pale; it’s fine for neo-Nazis to be shouted down and shunned. The problem, again, is that progressives have aggressively narrowed the range of opinions that we’re allowed to entertain.
I post on social media to express myself and to learn from criticism. Sometimes that means sharing ideas that are half-baked. As a learning strategy, it’s extraordinarily effective. My best Substack essay so far, on standpoint theory, was the result of writing up a half-baked social media post and then reflecting on feedback.
Another reason I post is to give some air to views that have become forbidden. I want to shift norms and expand the Overton window. Is this effective? Honestly, I’m not sure.
Focus just on those who aren’t resolutely on one side or the other. Some read my posts, see the wildly disproportionate responses, and update their views about the flaws in progressive culture and what should be permissible to discuss.
Others see the angry responses, retcon my post as offensive, and then conform to the implied codes—not just in what they say but what they think. More polarization, as usual.
I don’t know how effective my posting is at shifting the bounds of acceptable discourse at the margins. But I doubt it’s so counterproductive that, by my own lights, I should self-censor.
I try to be provocative but thoughtful. Sometimes, my responses are terse. But I never attack people—if I engage, I just explain why I disagree. That’s the right thing to do, but it’s also the best way to persuade interlocutors and third parties. Here as elsewhere, “respectability politics,” much-derided on the left, has a point.
Perhaps my strategy could be refined. But watering down expression would defeat its purpose—you can’t pry open the Overton window by squeezing through the crack. Ultimately, there’s no way to resist bad speech norms in progressive spaces without violating them.
See you in the comments.
In addition to being uncharitable and censorious, as you say, the responses to your post are just embarrassingly parochial. I spent the past year working as a tutor at an American-style liberal arts college in China, and often had to explain the diversity-signalling function of personal statements and the like to Chinese and other non-American students applying to US grad programs who weren't already inducted into the game. The whole culture war over race and diversity is an American phenomenon that's largely alien to foreigners, but the progressive proponents of AA don't realize how culturally specific their views and the terms of the debate themselves are.
I know perfectly well that some philosophy departments have hired a woman over more qualified men. I know this because I was on the hiring committees that did it. My colleagues and I did it multiple times, at multiple universities. And no, there was nothing special about those universities, my colleagues, or me. Anyone who denies that this happens frequently is just in denial or outside the philosophy culture.