on being/doing right

Things happen in bursts, people say – often, inexplicably, in groups of three. This is a group of only two so far, hardly a critical mass, but I can sense something larger brewing, and it worries me in ways that are difficult to articulate or process.

The first is that I asked (in a meeting about gauging educators’ and students’ perspectives on assessment protocols) what might happen for staff who consider themselves ‘conscientious objectors’ to Generative AI.

‘You just can’t be,’ I was told. ‘You actually can’t be a conscientious objector. GenAI exists, it’s not going anywhere, and by not teaching them how to use it, you’d be doing your students a great disservice.’

Hmm.

The second came in the form of some polite but critical commentary on my teaching – specifically that I’d quipped in class that looking back on the Bush era feels like a ‘golden age’, given the United States, and by extension the world, is now lumped with Trump. I’d also noted I was a fan of John McWhorter but that I preferred his writing on linguistics to his writing on politics. ‘I don’t always love his politics,’ I believe I mentioned at the time.

Both of my remarks were offhand comments – secondary but relevant to what we were covering in class, which is – in that particular course – contemporary models of grammar and how we can apply our explicit knowledge of English structure and style to making confident (and ethical!) choices in our writing. I try to read widely for that course and showcase a variety of approaches to writing, editing, and using language more generally. I try not to yuck anyone’s yum. But I’m not apolitical.

These two moments happened less than a week apart, and as someone who considers feedback carefully and seriously, I was thrown off guard. In my short-ish lifetime, I’ve learnt to tread carefully around certain people in my midst to avoid futile blow-ups: discussing the Palestinian genocide with my dad on Christmas Eve two years ago was one such memorable disaster. But my students? My colleagues?

I should contextualise this quandary by pointing out that I work with adults. I’m situated in a university where my students can range in age from eighteen to eighty. I teach into an undergraduate and a postgraduate writing program. I’m surrounded by grown-up people who care about words, about opportunities for self-expression, about upholding the integrity of individual perspectives and individual voices. In the classroom, I strive to create an environment where students feel comfortable to express their feelings and opinions, to make mistakes, to take risks, even to argue or engage in disagreement, as long as the vibes remain friendly and respectful. Never before have I been asked to keep my own opinions to myself.

So, my question is this, and it’s one I haven’t thought about so closely before, being the straight, white woman I am: as a university educator, must I present myself as politically disinterested? Should I refrain from expressing political views or personal aesthetic judgements in the classroom?Where is this expectation emanating from?

I’ve been reflecting on some occasions where I’ve felt uncomfortable about the ‘incursion’ of political ideology into a professional scenario.

Covid is probably a prime example.

Some years ago – at the height of the pandemic and when I was still employed by the public service – I participated in daily ‘stand-up meetings’ via Zoom. My line manager would often use this forum to think aloud about the secret and sinister origins of COVID-19 and the efficacy of our government’s response – at both the state and federal levels. A devout advocate of Sky News, particularly Peta Credlin’s pandemic reportage, they regularly espoused views I found both patently absurd and deeply troubling; I hated myself, half the time, for sitting in silence or turning my camera off rather than countering these impromptu tirades with questions or polite disagreement. On other occasions, I felt it was important to quietly think through my manager’s reasoning and try to understand why these conspiracy-adjacent theories could gain so much traction with a person who was otherwise curious, rational, and compassionate.

Was it a cop-out?

It's all too easy, I must learn repeatedly, to imagine that everyone else around us thinks and believes the same things we do. I’ve recently been dipping back into Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, after a long hiatus, and where she talks about our ‘digital doubles’ – those composite selves shaped by as many data points as the algorithms can metabolise – I find myself realising anew that my online world is populated primarily by a whole army of doubles: people (or avatars of those people) who seem to agree with my politics and apply a similar ethical framework.

For this reason, my Instagram stories typically comprise a mish-mash of cute animal videos (cats! raccoons! capybaras!), book industry goss, and drone footage of a ravaged Gaza. This is the frankly bizarre echo chamber I’ve constructed for myself via repeated engagement with certain media. There are worse things, I suppose. Over time, however, one consequence of paddling into this digital rip is that it's become not just discomfiting but genuinely shocking to encounter perspectives entirely different from my own. These ripples of surprise – my own, others’ – are what I worry about.

I want to say we should always welcome alternative viewpoints. That seems to be the correct answer, the correct approach. This perspective is elastic, magnanimous, fair. It gives me permission to respectfully express myself in the multiple contexts in which I work, as long as I welcome the same from my students and colleagues. Isn’t it healthy for students, especially, to encounter viewpoints that both align with and diverge from their own? Isn’t it healthy for me, too? If the converse means that classrooms must sustain a type of political neutrality – an ideological sterility – doesn’t that bleach the very nature of teaching and learning to the point of pointlessness, deny some of its most valuable outcomes – such as empathising with others and enacting positive change in the world?

I earnestly believe all this. I really, really do.

What I’m less inclined to acknowledge is that I’m usually comfortable to share my views because I’ve got into the habit of thinking I’m right and that others naturally agree.

I feel comfortable mouthing off about Trump because, as Klein puts it, vast millions of people have neatly ‘set aside the fact that Trump’s behavior – the philandering, the alleged sexual assaults, the lying, the cruelty – [violates] their professed values’. I don’t believe Trump supporters are stupid, but I find it dangerous to forget that Trump is a wilfully awful, catastrophically reckless man who sets a treacherous precedent for our wholesale return to fascism and world-wide war.

On the other hand, I don’t feel comfortable encouraging my students to ‘use GenAI responsibly’ because I’m not sure such an application is possible. How can we, in good faith, rely heavily on technologies that are known to be hastening environmental collapse, exploiting workers and vital resources around the world, undermining the productivity gains they promise to deliver, and lining the pockets of the megarich while depriving artists of the credit and remuneration to which they’re entitled? What about deepfake porn? What about AI psychosis? What about the existential threat that AI realistically poses to the planet, acknowledged by some of the world’s most respected scientists?

Here’s where I’m at: I think I’m right, and I don’t want to listen.

I know I need to do better. As my (maddening but lovely) father likes to remind me, it’s more important to do right than to be right.

But when the stakes are as high as climate crisis, AI apocalypse, and the most abject of human suffering, are fundamental misalignments in thinking something to welcome? Something to tolerate? To ignore? Explore?

For now, I feel cushioned enough in my work that I doubt I’ll be punished or even questioned for speaking my mind, even if mild grievances turn up in my teaching evaluations. My experiences look naive on the page when I consider that many Australian journalists, scholars, and artists have already been ‘let go’ or denied opportunities on the basis of their political beliefs over the last couple of years. It’s painfully obvious that I’m protected to a large extent by my membrane of whiteness and the malaise of a large organisation that simply cannot keep tabs on everyone, especially someone like me: conciliatory, mild, non-threatening.

This feels like the beginning of something else, though, and I can’t help but flinch when I think about what could be just around the corner.

We’re not all the same. We don’t think the same things. We can’t all be right.

But can we be ourselves?