Closing Down Open, Questing Minds

"For me, university was a place where you wrestled with new ideas."

"Sex, politics, religion, war -- we argued about all of it."

"But somewhere along the way, the climate changed. Students didn't just disagree with ideas. They felt harmed by them."

"And the only way to feel safe was to silence the people expressing them." 

Ric Esther Bienstock, film maker

 

"I want to keep my head down. I'm a student.

"I finally got in. I don't want to ask a  question because it might piss somebody off."

"I can't afford to lose marks or lose friends."

Typical response from students

 

"I'm worried about offending someone in the class with a reading, so I'm just going to change my reading list."

"[If they get reported they know the administration will not have their back]."

Untenured professorial class

BifBamPop!

 

A movie has recently been produced by Montreal-born Ric Esther Bienstock, resident in Toronto. She has had interview experiences with students, professors and administrators at such academic institutions as Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Stanford, Penn State, Evergreen State College, the University of Sussex, and New College of Florida. 

 

Previous film work to her credit include Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (with Samuel L. Jackson), The Accountant of Auschwitz, and Tales From the Organ Trade. The industry recognition she has received include two Emmys, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, and multiple Canadian Screen Awards. She is also an Officer of the Order of Canada. There is gravitas behind her image. 

 

"Students asking for safe spaces from emotional harm -- I found that just interesting, and I thought it would make for a good film." As an example ... former professor of evolutionary biology, Bret Weinstein, at Evergreen State College in Washington opposed the school's 2017 Day of Absence change that demanded whites leave campus. For this, he was called racist. "My filming began during a period of intense protests."

 

Her new film is titled Speechless, to be aired on both CBCGem and the BBC, focusing on the political upheaval that has transformed universities throughout North American and the United Kingdom. The film is a portrait of debates over race, gender and social justice escalating by way of 'viral outrage', 'reputational shrapnel' and 'institutional instability'. It also highlights the focus of campus concerns rolling out past university grounds.

 

New College of Florida, the first American institution to dismantle its DEI office and eliminate its gender studies program, initiates the film footage. "I worried about higher education and what's happening on campus. Higher ed is where we're shaping the minds of the future generation of citizens, leaders, doctors, lawyers, policy makers, politicians and teachers. If you can't engage with ideas that you don't agree with or that offend you, what does that mean?"

 

If questing minds who want answers or perspectives to help them digest information and reach informed opinions are shut down for fear of hurting someone else's feelings how does attendance at an institute of higher learning benefit either individuals or society at large? Where there is an imposition of firm self-censorship, free speech absents itself. Socially sensitive issues such as race, gender, terrorist violence such as October 7 must not be approached, as socially abrasive topics that must remain unquestioned.

 

A protest encampment at the University of Chicago’s Main Quadrangle, featuring a sign reading: “As you go to class, remember that there are no universities left in Gaza.” Photo by wabisabi2015/Flickr.

 

A conservative legal organization, the Federalist Society, with chapters at many elite law schools had invited Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to speak at Stanford Law School. Many of the school's law students protested his appearance, attempting to prevent the event from proceeding, lest Judge Duncan's rejection of same-sex marriage alarmingly disrupt those he would address, claiming the school should not be allowing him a platform.

 

This played against the fact that the Federalist Society chapter at Stanford's president is gay, and though he doesn't agree with the judge's views, he argues that, at a law school, students should have the opportunity to listen to a sitting federal judge in light of the fact that they may some day appear before him to argue cases ending up at the Supreme Court. Lacking that opportunity, they remain fixed in a silo of 'approved' views rather than being in possession of well-rounded information/viewpoint exposure. 

 

Film maker Ric Esther Bienstock, points out what should be obvious to anyone; living in pluralistic societies requires those with the opportunity to gain experience through being guided in a university setting to questions that perplex and answers that render all possibilities of explanations to sift through and find the responses that fit the jigsaw puzzle of appropriateness, exceptionalism, social constructs and a balance that results in that fine-tuning of opinion. 

"When I spoke to students from that law school who would not speak to me on the record in the film -- which says something also -- they said to me, 'why do I have to listen to someone who denies my existence, whose views I don't agree with?"

"I wanted to show you, and take you into that world, and then let viewers decide if they think it's good or not."

"If you want to live in a pluralistic society, you should expose yourself to different ideas, different views, different cultures. You can't have institutions that are all monocultures." 

Ric Esther Bioenstock, ethical/social filmmaker 

Filmmaker Ric Esther Bienstock discusses how bias plays into every conversation we have while she sits down with Piya Chattopadhyay in conversation. Watch Speechless on CBC Gem.