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MOLLY BLAKEMORE: Hi, welcome back to Free Speech with CR. I'm Molly Blakemore, and I'm here with my co-host, Dr. Keith Flamer.

KEITH FLAMER: Hello, and it's great to be on Session 2. And John, I want to ask you, we last left this conversation about a card that your mom gave you for your birthday.

NATALIA MAGULIS: Yeah, we were--

KEITH FLAMER: Can you talk to us about that card?

JOHN JOHNSTON: Sure. Well, we were talking about why faculty-- why people come to become teachers and how academic freedom protects the work that they do as teachers. And I was mentioning that we become teachers because we want to have a positive impact on the world. We want to help promote the things that we think are good and true and beautiful. And academic freedom helps us do that.

And I was explaining that oftentimes, that can be a very intense motivation, where we believe we not only want to make the world a better place by teaching our subjects and our disciplines, but that we want to also shape the people who are in our classrooms into being particular kinds of people who hold particular kinds of values. And that's where I think we start to cross some boundaries between academic-- that define academic freedom. And I was explaining that early on in my career, my mother gave me a birthday card, and it has a picture of a 19th century dandy sitting on his desk in his office.

And the caption, I was meant to lead a revolution, not teach.

KEITH FLAMER: Teach.

JOHN JOHNSTON: And it's expressing this idea that we want to go out and we want to make the world a better place in our image, and we're going to use higher education to do that. And that might start to cross some boundaries on academic freedom. Because as we talked earlier, academic freedom protects our ability to teach our subjects freely. But not necessarily to advance our own particular worldview.

KEITH FLAMER: Interesting. That's true.

NATALIA MAGULIS: Can you offer a healthy alternative? By healthy, I mean because when you were speaking just now, you're going to use the words like, I think, duty and such like. And don't take it the wrong way. I mean, in the subject talking about the arts, it's all about talking about beauty. But in this context, it almost sounds like it has an air of frivolity to it, if you will. Because it's so subjective and beautiful.

And that was the point you were trying to make. That as instructors, we often inadvertently inject so much subjectivity into our teaching, that we may jeopardize the very principles of academic freedom in our own field and influence our students too much. Is that the point? Did I summarize it correctly?

JOHN JOHNSTON: Yes, sort of. What you just described, I wouldn't have a problem with. I think it's probably unavoidable just in the individual words that we choose, that we're going to be reflecting our own subjective perceptions when we teach our disciplines. That's different in my mind than coming into a classroom and saying, OK, I've got 16 weeks with these people, and my goal is to make them into a kind of person that I think people should be. And I'm going to use art to do it.

NATALIA MAGULIS: OK, well, it's very tricky not-- how do you say? Because art specifically, and I don't want to spend too much time on art, but art specifically responds so much to the world around it in the now. And it changes so much with the changing, let's say, political climate. That, how do you avoid, let's say, going there in a climate that almost calls for subversiveness, almost calls for revolution, if you will, right? By default, you will start very soon to circumvent strongly phrased ideas.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Right, but there's a difference between art as a discipline being revolutionary or calling for revolutionary and a particular art professor calling for revolution through the students. Right, so I just got asked this the other day. We were talking--

KEITH FLAMER: Was this in class?

JOHN JOHNSTON: Yeah, it was in class. It was an ethics class. And that's a challenging class to teach, because you're talking about things that are so deeply personal and of great importance to the individual students. And they always want to know, well, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? And I'm always hesitant to answer them, because what I'll tell them is, I don't want you to think that you have to believe the same way that I do, believe the same things that I do on this topic. I can tell you about these different ethical theories and how they might apply to these different ethical issues, but I can't necessarily tell you what the ethical thing to do is. I have my beliefs about that, but my beliefs are separate from the particular material that I'm charged with teaching.

NATALIA MAGULIS: Makes a lot of sense. There's the ethics, but then academic freedom. The ethics of teaching.

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: So, yeah, you've been teaching here for over 20 years, and you're here almost 10 years. And so my question is fundamentally, do you think that students change when they come to class, when they come and engage in your classes in college? So you can say that you want to change people or make them into better people or-- but as teachers, you must witness some of that. And do you?

JOHN JOHNSTON: I've seen it go both ways. One of the most common complaints that I would hear from students who don't have good experiences is that they have had a professor who expects them to recite back to the professor in their assignments' views that the professor has expressed in class. Those students change, and they change for the worse, because they lose confidence in higher education.

On the other hand, yeah, of course. When a student feels like it is safe in that space to be able to ask questions and to say, oh, I think I misunderstand, or, oh, I think I've changed my mind, or, oh, I don't know what I think about that anymore, those students change. I think they change for the better.

KEITH FLAMER: I saw you smiling.

NATALIA MAGULIS: No, yeah, I was just thinking I agree with that 100%. And the very reason we become teachers is because of curiosity. And right, it's that one quality that drives us to push further. And those students who share the quality of curiosity and can be OK with being out of balance for a little while, right, to sit, that being out of balance for the few weeks that we're together, they come away. The best experiences if the teacher is not overmolding then, if that makes sense.

KEITH FLAMER: Interesting.

NATALIA MAGULIS: Yeah, this is me echoing what John said. Yeah, no, allowing them to draw their own conclusions. Allowing that if there is change. Change is not a prerequisite of having a good experience in the classroom. But it's a kind of a byproduct of that beautiful sticky glue that gets generated in the classroom.

KEITH FLAMER: John, you made a comment about how other faculty may be--

JOHN JOHNSTON: Yes.

KEITH FLAMER: Conversation. And they may not agree with what we're talking about.

NATALIA MAGULIS: Why not?

KEITH FLAMER: But well, because the question is, how did the other faculty feel about freedom of speech and the freedom in the classroom and the climate that we find ourselves today? What's the general feeling of your colleagues?

JOHN JOHNSTON: So I can only speak-- I have only had interactions with colleagues here on campus, and you can correct me if you've heard differently. In our conversations. I haven't heard. In fact, I'll go this far. In my entire time at CR, I've not heard faculty express concerns about academic freedom because of pressures coming from outside the institution or from the administration. I've never heard that here. I have heard over the years faculty complain about other faculty impinging on their academic freedom.

So, for example, senior faculty telling junior faculty, hey, this is the way you have to do this. This is the textbook you have to use. So I've seen that. I've also seen concerns for faculty about students. Not threatening, but perhaps compromising academic freedom. So you have a student that comes forward and says, I don't like this book you're having us read. I don't like this assignment that you're having us do. I don't want to do that. And if you require me to, I'm going-- if you require me to read this book or do this assignment, I'm going to register a complaint.

And that is much more common. I think that--

KEITH FLAMER: It is common now.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Yeah, yeah, it is pretty-- and that is--

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: I was just going to say, is it getting more common? I have a feeling it is.

JOHN JOHNSTON: It is. Yeah, there was that book, I think we've all read it, The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff. And they do a pretty good job of establishing that since 2015, 2014 or so, that young people's perceptions of what is harmful has broadened. And so when they come into a classroom and they find something that's challenging, they might experience that as harm. And certainly, a professor is not-- under the guise of academic freedom, is not allowed to cause harm to students. But if a student's perception is this material is causing me emotional harm, therefore, I'm going to go forward and register a complaint, while I don't anticipate the administration coming back to the faculty and saying, hey, you've got to stop teaching that, I do think it's reasonable that a faculty member might say, I just don't want to have to deal with those kinds of complaints.

KEITH FLAMER: And so we have faculty self-censoring.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Yeah, there's a man named Eric Schlosser, and he wrote this essay for Vox Magazine, which is pretty standard. I don't know if it's stolen publication, but still. OK. Yeah, back in 2015, he wrote this article. He's a professor. And the title of the article was "I'm A Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me."

And so he goes through and he explains in this essay about the kinds of things that we're talking about, this real hypersensitivity to perceived harm. And this article, it exploded online. Not because people were complaining about what he was saying, but because this rush of professors coming forward and saying, oh my gosh, I have this exact same experience. I can't teach Huckleberry Finn anymore. I can't teach To Kill a Mockingbird. There was-- I'm sorry.

NATALIA MAGULIS: No, no, I was just going to say. Well, to go back to this question of what's the word on the street, so to speak. Our colleagues are terrified. And this is-- it's-- they're terrified that their words will be used against them. It's just as simple as that. But it's also because the academic freedom as such, I see it is as a sort of internal, if you will, it's an internal condition that exists within academia, right.

But we're seeing now is that the very conditions, societal conditions for the existence of academic freedom are being reshuffled and threatened. Right, so it's like that-- if academic freedom exists here within academia, then the general larger discourse and the power differentials that are flying out there, they're reshaping the way and they're squeezing the field of academic freedom. I hope that makes sense.

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: So you might not get shot, but you still have, yeah, cushioned out--

NATALIA MAGULIS: Repercussions. And we're getting whiplash. A few years ago, prior to this administration, it was what John was just talking about. Students were being uncomfortable with a whole range of ideas. And I would say, oversensitized by the general academic discourse. And now there is whiplash going all the way the other way.

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: And when you talk about the administration--

NATALIA MAGULIS: The current administration.

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: The Trump administration.

NATALIA MAGULIS: The Trump. The Trump administration. Yeah, so it's like-- and so, yeah, it's a yo-yo thing that happened in the last few years. And we're just trying to find our footing, and it's pretty damn hard.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Maybe your experience is different. I don't think about the external pressures. I mean, maybe that's just because we are a small rural community.

NATALIA MAGULIS: Bless your heart.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Well, I think about the external pressures manifesting within. In other words, I worry more about what the students and what our faculty colleagues are bringing into a learning environment than I do about local politicians here trying to influence what's happening.

NATALIA MAGULIS: But all I see-- it's all 100 said these are permeable borders. Our students are reflecting-- the mindset of our students is reflective of the wider climate, et cetera.

JOHN JOHNSTON: That's exactly what I mean, yeah.

NATALIA MAGULIS: Yeah, 100%.

KEITH FLAMER: Yeah, because if I was teaching history, I'd be concerned.

NATALIA MAGULIS: Yeah.

KEITH FLAMER: Because what topics do I stay away from so I don't trigger a complaint? Do I talk about the 1960s--

NATALIA MAGULIS: Right.

KEITH FLAMER: --and say, how do we teach this?

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: When they're not even allowed to talk about it at the Smithsonian, right?

KEITH FLAMER: So how do we teach--

NATALIA MAGULIS: Just exactly. And there's just dominant topics in humanities have changed dramatically. Whereas I want to say a few years ago, the emphasis was on talking about intersectionality and gender, race. All these topics that emerged out of the '60s. Now, all of a sudden, the larger context and federally, these topics are being pushed to the side. And because again, like I've mentioned, art deals so much with what's going on sociopolitically. It's a tricky time. It's a tricky time.

KEITH FLAMER: So what's the answer? How do we get through this without breaking apart? How do we do this moving forward as a team?

JOHN JOHNSTON: Well, I'll go back to something I said in our earlier conversation. I think that with regard to academic freedom and how that protects what we do in the classroom, I think we have to be really mindful about wielding that power responsibly and maintaining the.-- I think there's a way to maintain the trust of the public in turbulent political times without compromising your values and without alienating people. And I think if we're honest about what our intentions are and we're honest about what our objectives are, then I think we can get through pretty much anything. Because we can be united around those things, even if we're divided over particular political issues.

NATALIA MAGULIS: My answer is really simple. You have to talk to people and listen to them. I'm sorry it's so hokey. But that's true.

KEITH FLAMER: No, actually, I think it's--

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: That's what we've been talking about.

NATALIA MAGULIS: Well, you have to. You can't if you have this intense political social divide. And you are talking at each other, whether it's a student or a colleague. The middle is not going to hate you.

KEITH FLAMER: I want to take the opportunity of segueing into your book.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Oh gosh.

KEITH FLAMER: It's because I read it. A couple times, actually.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Oh, very good.

KEITH FLAMER: So thank you for sending it to me two months ago.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Thank you for reading it.

NATALIA MAGULIS: Did it take you two months to get through it?

KEITH FLAMER: No, actually, I had to read it twice.

JOHN JOHNSTON: There's a reason when up late at night and can't fall asleep.

NATALIA MAGULIS: And I know that's--

KEITH FLAMER: That's not true. But I found it riveting. Truly did. Because I went to your class--

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: What's the name of the book?

KEITH FLAMER: Introduction to Formal Logic. And--

JOHN JOHNSTON: Gripping title.

KEITH FLAMER: John, I thought it was terrific. It's because I've been to your class three or four times, at least. And I didn't quite understand what you were talking about in class til I read your book.

JOHN JOHNSTON: That made sense to me.

KEITH FLAMER: And there is a page here that I get to-- on page 36, where it talked about how to think about arguments. Right, and then there's a way to judge whether a statement is true or false. And there are statements that are flowing in the media now that we seem to grasp on as treat. Right, so how can we teach students and ourselves, actually, to look at the arguments that are put out there to see? To get to what truth is. I think that's really the basic quality, is we don't know what truth is.

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: We don't agree with much.

KEITH FLAMER: Right, yeah. So how do we have a conversation that you were suggesting about talking and about the arguments and coming up with the truth, where we can all say that makes sense to us? How do we do that?

JOHN JOHNSTON: Well, I don't know that I have a great answer for you. I know the ways not to do that.

KEITH FLAMER: Talk to us about that.

JOHN JOHNSTON: OK. I know the ways not to do that is to think of the arguments that we encounter as weapons that we use in order to win battles against our opponents, whatever those opponents are. If we come together, though, and we say, well, we're going to make arguments, we're not going to have an argument, we're going to make arguments together as a way of determining what the most reasonable conclusion to draw is. And that requires that we not be combatants in an argument, but that we be conversation partners who are really going to figure out what the good ideas are and how we would justify our judgments with those ideas being better than others.

But I think that requires us to come together and say, so we've got this problem to solve. And the problem is not you. The problem is not me. There's the problem, and we're going to go at this together. And our job--

KEITH FLAMER: Agonism.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Yeah, agonism. Yeah, absolutely.

KEITH FLAMER: Which we talk about, yeah.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Yeah, so we're going to come at this. I used to teach a class at former college Yavapai College in Prescott, Arizona. It's called Technology and Human Values. And I taught it with another professor. And the way that we would prepare for class was we would sit down and we'd say, OK, here's the issue. You have to make this argument. I'm going to make this argument. And then we're going to see where that takes us.

And so what it did is it took the problem that was due to something that was being contested. And I put it over there. Not here, not there. I put it over there. And then we were able to come at that together as conversation partners. And I think that approach is ultimately going to lead to much better results than trying to win.

KEITH FLAMER: I can see the value of that.

NATALIA MAGULIS: I like that, yeah. I think that that's what you're-- what you're describing is the spirit of inquiry that has guided the topic of academic freedom to begin with. To dissuade our students from coming to class with foregone conclusions and saying, we're going to poke at this thing from here and here, here, here. Look at evidence, look at research, look at context. And we're going to delineate whatever that question is we're trying to answer or problem to solve together. In that way, they feel like there is a buy-in.

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: So it's they take the subjectivity out of it. It's not a personal--

KEITH FLAMER: It's not personal.

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: It's not personal, it's objective.

NATALIA MAGULIS: Or I'm going to say, acknowledge the subjectivitiy. Put the subjectivity on the table, and let's get it over with it, get it out. And because without-- everybody will bring this objectivity regarding. Some type of humanity--

JOHN JOHNSTON: Well, and I'm sure you've had this experience where you go into a classroom and you have a much broader and deeper knowledge base about the subject than your students do. But if you're approaching the conversation with the students in the manner that we're describing here, you've probably had those moments where you say, I hadn't thought of that. And the student is able to cause you to see something differently than you saw before.

NATALIA MAGULIS: I always say--

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: Which is good.

NATALIA MAGULIS: That's how I learn more from my students that they learn from me. It's always true for us. But you don't want to win the battle and lose the war, so to speak. Again, read the room, and move with increments that everybody is comfortable with. Leave space to say, I'm wrong. I mean, all the things that we--

JOHN JOHNSTON: Absolutely true.

NATALIA MAGULIS: --talk about. Wow, look at the time.

KEITH FLAMER: And so it sounds as though if we were to do it right, that we would have some hope. That there is some hope out there.

JOHN JOHNSTON: I have hope.

KEITH FLAMER: Do you have hope?

JOHN JOHNSTON: I do.

KEITH FLAMER: Why do you have hope, John?

JOHN JOHNSTON: Because I think that there are plenty of people who are able to avoid getting distracted by all of the noise. I think that there is-- even though it doesn't seem like this, and I could be wrong about this. But I do think there are people who are becoming concerned about the kind of conversation we're having as a country. Their class last week on the ethics of political violence and--

KEITH FLAMER: Interesting.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Yeah, it a very interesting conversation. And in the end, the ending question for the students was, well, what are you going to do? Not society going to do, but what are you going to do to make sure that the people you disagree with don't become your enemies? And they were very interested in that question. They wanted very much to know, how am I going to walk out of this room and go back out into this really chaotic, turbulent culture with all of this noise and conflict, and how am I going to engage with people? How am I going to have meaningful conversations with people?

And the fact that that was the most important question to them, the question they were the most interested in, is what gives me hope.

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: It does seem like we're getting a sense of reckoning point where people recognize this can't go on like this forever. Everyone hopes.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Yeah, I mean, one approach is that you can beat up or kill your political opponents, and the other is that you can talk to them. And the rules apply equally to all sides. So you want to be really careful about what kinds of interactions you think are OK.

NATALIA MAGULIS: Maybe that if you want to see change and positive change, you have to embody that change and allow space for others to come in. And I heard this saying. It's the philosophy books that I took out. [INAUDIBLE]. An enemy is someone whose opinion you have not heard. Oh, and I don't know, it's just good for fun, even it's very strongly worded. But it seems in today's world, it's like, who is not with us is against us. It's like us and them.

But it's all us. All of it-- yeah, we're in this room, it's us. In this institution, it's us. In this country, it's all us. So if we allow a little bit of that softness and openness to seep in at [INAUDIBLE] and objectivity and balance all of these premises, I think there's a way forward. I'm an optimist.

KEITH FLAMER: No, it's good. What role does the institution have in this?

NATALIA MAGULIS: What do you think?

KEITH FLAMER: I'm asking.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Well, I think-- but I think you can look--

KEITH FLAMER: Because I will answer your question. Absolutely.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Yeah, I mean, I've communicated to you privately many times that I think your commitment to allowing voices to be heard and to promote viewpoint diversity, something you and I talked quite a bit about--

KEITH FLAMER: Yes, yeah.

JOHN JOHNSTON: I think that that's what the institution can do, is to continue that. I hope that's not dependent on you, because someday you're going to retire, I assume, and go off and do fun things. And I hope--

KEITH FLAMER: Now if we work at-- I'm having fun today.

JOHN JOHNSTON: I hope that your efforts in doing this over the last decade or more has become part of our institutional culture. And so that even if you're not here for leading that charge, that spirit is in the institution in all of us, and we're able to carry that on.

NATALIA MAGULIS: That's true mostly, John. Because the people will change in an institution, the buildings may change. But something of a pattern remains. So if structurally, with the kind of institution that has nimbleness, culturally, structurally, we have that nimbleness and that's stability built in, inclusivity, et cetera, then we can move forward.

KEITH FLAMER: What role-- thank you for that. I hear you. I often think about, what role does the college play in healing what our community is going through? Because the conflict is just not internal. We see it as we drive off campus. And we feel it everywhere we go. And I question, what role does the college have to help our community move forward?

NATALIA MAGULIS: We're a community college, right? When they start thinking about--

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: Will our students go back out into the community? Yeah, something that they aspire to be.

JOHN JOHNSTON: I think you're right.

KEITH FLAMER: Wonderful.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Yeah, I think the mistake we could make as an institution is to think that it's-- I think that it would be effective to use the institution outside of the college, outside of the classroom, to engage in those conflicts out there. That, I think, would be probably a mistake. I think the way that we're doing it, which is, you come here, we are here, you have these experiences. You are the members of the community.

Now, based on what you've learned and the skills and the knowledge you've acquired here, and now it's your job to go back out into the community.

KEITH FLAMER: OK.

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: That's like we have-- we're out of time.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Oh.

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: Yeah, we're out of time. We have to wrap.

KEITH FLAMER: Thank you. Thank you both for being here today.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Thank you.

KEITH FLAMER: Just, this has been the joy of my day. And I don't know if it's been as good for you, but I'd say this is an engaging dialogue that I deeply appreciate.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Thank you.

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: And where can people get your book, John?

JOHN JOHNSTON: They would have to go to the CR Bookstore, but I don't recommend that. Because actually, part of the deal is they can get it out for free.

KEITH FLAMER: Thank you for the free book.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Right, yeah.

KEITH FLAMER: It's--

MOLLY BLAKEMORE: People ask us what we have books on.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Yeah, we--

KEITH FLAMER: Yeah, thank you both very much. And Molly, thank you for engaging this problem.

JOHN JOHNSTON: Thank you, Molly.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

(SINGING) Promise that you'll never deep fake me

One small step for man

I remember