Cosplaying Free Speech: How Religion And Politics Determine Campus Taboos
(ANALYSIS) I feel like I got into a debate or a disagreement with someone about politics or religion on a near daily basis when I was between the ages of 13 and 25. I would fight with anyone about anything and I would often argue positions that I completely disagreed with because I just liked the intellectual gamesmanship of the whole exercise.
In short, I was a pretentious jerk. I’m very glad that I outgrew that phase of my life.
But if I look back on the last decade of my life, I think that the pendulum has clearly swung in the other direction and in a really severe way: I hardly ever get into a disagreement with anyone about anything. (Insert hacky joke with the exception being my wife and sons). I really don’t get into any type of verbal conflict anymore. And I can’t say that I am pining for my teenage years when I seemed to be geared up to be a disagreeable snot-nosed kid on an hourly basis.
There’s a practical reason for that, by the way. I generally don’t hang out with people that I strongly disagree with on important matters. And even if I do manage to find myself in that type of company, both parties are smart enough to know not to talk about topics that will raise our blood pressure. We are middle aged, after all.
I also teach on a college campus. One of the most prestigious in the United States, empirically speaking. And it’s got students from all over the country (and a bunch of international students, too). They come from about every background you can imagine and they have very different political and religious experiences.
But they are incredibly reluctant to actually disagree with me (or other students) in class. It’s super frustrating because my understanding of the classroom is that it’s exactly the space where free speech should flourish. It doesn’t.
Everyone seems so afraid of saying something that will be recorded and reposted on social media. Thus, we sort of cosplay a rich debate. We don’t actually do it.
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Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.