Six hundred words. I figured that was all the space I needed to cover the StandWithUs assembly. My article was going to be a standard news brief, with straightforward, objective writing and a few quotes sprinkled in. It was just civil discourse programming: easy to cover and important to highlight in our newspaper.
Very quickly, I realized just how wrong I was. StandWithUs, the organization the speaker was from, was a polarizing group due to its pro-Israel stances and contentious history on college campuses. Allegations of doxxing, harassment—they were all listed in student-created online infographics and posters handed out in person.
Although the assembly itself lacked much public disagreement and the halls were void of heated debates, there was an underlying tension in every conversation I had about the assembly. Many students either refused to talk to me or would only share vague, impersonal quotes, fearing backlash or discipline. Many were certain that some huge schism within the student body was coming. Friends questioned why I was writing the article, and told me I was only adding fuel to the fire.
The apparent lack of civil discourse occurring around the assembly led me to hope my article could be a source of respectful but real debate. With that kind of opportunity in my hands, I knew I had a responsibility to frame the controversy accurately and share perspectives that students could engage with.
But when I began to actually write the article, I faltered. I chose the most equivocal, broad quotes of each interviewee. I obsessively rewrote framing sentences, inserting as many neutralizing words—can, could, perceived—as I could. Although critical views of the assembly far outnumbered praise, I allotted the same amount of quotes to each side.
Editorial neutrality is not always neutral. And my article, nonpartisan and palatable as I had tried to make it, actively presented an unneutral stance by trying to be perfectly neutral, stifling the potential for full discourse.
That article was, I hope, a standalone regret of this variety in my body of work at The Nueva Current. But I worry that the same process of suppressing disagreement is occurring on a larger scale than just one article—that in the very attempt to produce civil discourse, we often push its fundamental principles away.
When this happens, it is not as though people stop disagreeing with each other or stop voicing their opinions. Often, I’ve seen proponents of civil discourse emphasize that conservative voices get silenced in liberal-leaning environments, like academia or a school like Nueva. I believe our civil discourse culture has instead encouraged a race to the middle, where all sides may be pleased.
The most middling, general, and vaguely neutral-seeming opinions become all that is acceptable, whether they are presented through artificial processes like my writing or simply espoused in the face of conflict. We must condemn violence from both Hamas and Israel. There are issues within both the Democratic and the Republican parties. It’s not just X—it’s Y!
I understand why people parrot opinions like these and excuse their equivocation by calling it nuance. After all, they touch on basic logic and moral values that few people would cast away. They won’t draw backlash. However, they fail to interrogate the questions of “what next,” “how,” and “why” that invoke real controversy and are far more critical to consider.
We must actively support contentious, bold opinions over maintaining some semblance of perfect neutrality and peace. It’s time to focus on and expect actual discourse, while preserving guidelines of basic decency and respect to prevent debate that devolves into personal insults.
Under this model, let opinions be spontaneous, messy, and not account for every little nuance and exception to the rule. People are allowed to make mistakes, and giving people grace should be the norm. Emotional disagreement should be allowed and expected. And opinions are certainly allowed to develop and change through this process—that development should be the primary focus of civil discourse, not prettily packaged statements.
This discourse will rarely end in agreement. That’s all right. The alternative is far worse. For as long as we prioritize the appearance of neutrality or not ruffling any feathers over the messiness of real debate, we lose the chance to actually disagree with each other.
