Legal Commentary

The other night, I attended a dinner party where most of the guests were fellow law professors. The conversation turned to the best way to handle offensive ideas in the classroom. What role should one's own views play in the response to homophobic, sexist, or racist sentiments, expressed either by students or in the class material itself? It quickly became clear that the guests had several differing views on the matter. The main divide seemed to be between those who felt a professor should never reveal her own personal views on contentious social or political issues, and those who thought it was not only acceptable to do so, but that not doing so would be dishonest and might even jeopardize the pedagogical project. Those who held the former view seemed to believe that a professor's personal views had no place in the classroom, as they would only serve to distract students from the substance of the material and unhelpfully focus them on the individual character of the professor instead.  Those who held the latter view indicated that they believed law professors have unique opportunities - and obligations -  to model ethical behavior.

The first view made me think of the way Freud described the approach of the detached analyst: "The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him." The analyst should never judge what is presented to him by the analysand, nor allow his individual personality to influence the direction or assessment of the analysand's speech. Rather, the analyst should limit himself to evoking and reflecting the analysand's memories, desires, and dreams. To do otherwise would be to inhibit the free flow of the analysand's thoughts, and thus undermine the psychoanalytic project of self-confrontation.

By contrast, the second view put me in mind of Sartre's endorsement of the engaged author: "The 'engaged' writer knows that words are action [,] ... that to reveal is to change and that one can reveal only by planning to change. He has given up the impossible dream of giving an impartial picture of Society and the human condition. ... the writer has chosen to reveal the world and particularly to reveal man to other men so that the latter may assume full responsibility before the the object that has thus been laid bare." Sartre decried the conception of l'art pour l'art; for him, to write was to intervene in the conflicts of politics and society -  to take sides, unapologetically. 

So when it comes to controversial ideas, which should law professors be, the detached analyst or the engaged author? Obviously our students are neither our patients nor our readers, but they are our audience in a conversation demanding constant analysis and interpretation. Should we let hateful sentiments simply play out without personal comment, in the hope that the revelations themselves will bring about enlightenment? Or should we reveal our own personal commitments as a way of signifying and respecting the values at stake?