These remarks are taken from the introduction by John Tomasi, the Stanley J. Bernstein Assistant Professor of Social Science-International Affairs, at a debate between author Dinesh D'Souza and law professor Frank Wu on Nov. 8, 1997. The topic was affirmative action. However, Tomasi addressed the very nature of debate and the dueling expressions of character on the Brown campus.
Debating affirmative action, in Asia America as elsewhere, requires that we take up a series of difficult, gut-wrenching problems: problems about merit and deserts, about democracy and opportunity, about the role of public institutions in a society that aims to be free, problems about social diversity and social unity, problems about our nation's history and about the future for which we hope. There may be no other issue that more dramatically brings together all those problems than does affirmative action.
However, recent events on campus surrounding this debate remind us that when we at Brown take up any difficult issue, we immediately find ourselves engaged in not one debate but two. For on this campus we are also actively debating how to debate at all.
Brown recently won a national award, for being one of those institutions which is best at building character. It was an ambiguous award. They did not tell us exactly what this award-winning character is - this type of character which Brown so distinctively builds. It seems to me that there are two main answers to this question, two different answers, each a rival to the other. Their rivalry forms the backdrop to many of the debates we have at Brown, and it forms the backdrop to our discussion about race tonight.
The first understanding of character goes something like this: Having character means having enough courage in your convictions to stand up for them - to stand up no matter what the opposition. The idea behind this ideal, I suppose, is that by the time that a you have reached the age of 18, or 19, or 20, or 21, you should have formed some convictions: for example, that racism is wrong in any form. So if someone tells you there is a racist coming to Brown, you should stop him, no matter what.
This first ideal of character is shown in an extreme, even caricatured form, by those protesters who screamed at our guests as we walked by them just now. This form of character was also shown by those students who pinned posters all around campus yesterday, and who passed around leaflets to you just now, with a photograph of one of tonight's speakers and the banner headline Stop This Racist. These people are not only unwilling to listen themselves, they are also unwilling to let you listen - they urged you not to come, or if you did come, to join them in shouting him down when he tries to speak a few minutes from now.
But in this, their form of courage reveals itself as fear. Whom do they fear? They fear you. You, the quiet serious ones. They fear what might happen in each of your heads if you do listen. They fear that if you are allowed the chance to think for yourselves, you may find that these issues are not as simple as their rigid doctrine requires.
This first ideal of character at Brown also reveals itself in more subtle ways, ways that I fear are familiar to all of us. This ideal of character reveals itself in the way we listen to one another, and in particular at events such as this. Do we listen critically only to the speaker whose conclusion we dislike? Or do we listen just as critically, or even more so, to the arguments of the one championing the conclusion we prefer? On this first view of character, to listen that way would amount to a kind of betrayal. The risks of being wrong, it is felt, are simply too great. Character means not taking such chances when the stakes are this high.
But there is a second, very different view of character, and thus a different understanding of why Brown should be recognized with this national award now. For at Brown today, as at some other universities in America, there is a rival view of character emerging, and at Brown this rival grows more visible every day.
This is a more demanding ideal of character. It is an ancient ideal, I suppose. But is as elusive as it is old and - as those of us who care about Brown know all too well - it is most of all a fragile ideal.
By this second view, character means independence of thought. Character requires not merely that one have enough courage to stand up for one's convictions. Rather, on this view having character means having so much courage in your own convictions that you are willing to question them, each of you, for yourselves. You do this, indeed you insist on doing this, because you realize how important it is that you - no one else but you - develop and deepen your understanding of these crucial issues.
This radical ideal of character was once famously associated with Brown students. I am thinking, for example, of those daring Brown students who conceived, and pushed though, the New Curriculum. Their idea, I suppose, was that people with character don't stop learning and growing at 19, 20, 21 or even at 22. Rather, having character means setting oneself on a certain course of life. The curriculum at a great university, these students felt, should reflect that. This is why the Brown curriculum allows - forces - each student to ask herself, each semester, again and again, what path of study she wishes to pursue.
This is a quiet view of character: It rattles no tin pans. Character, on this view, involves the most difficult thing of all, for it begins with something that each of us must do in silence, all alone, inside each of our own heads. We must do it not just once, not just twice, but again and again and again, in the way we live our lives.
This kind of character - character as independence of thought - involves listening to a debate, and acting when we must, with that special, dynamic strength that comes from an open mind. It means having the courage to form and ask questions that interest you, without worrying about how your question might fall on anyone else's ears. Character requires the ability to learn from insights, wherever one finds them, and however painful they may be to hold.
This is a form of character that I have seen at Brown.
So this is a debate tonight between two views of who we are, a debate between two views of this great University. It is a debate whose outcome has not yet been decided.
Shall we begin?...