After the event, the president of Uncomfortable Learning, Keith, came up to me and introduced himself. “I liked your question,” he told me. “You seem like the kind of guy who should be a part of our group.” I met up with Keith soon after at the Williams snack bar. We talked about the future of Uncomfortable Learning and what speakers I was interested in. Keith was a senior, and he wanted me to get involved then so that I could help run Uncomfortable Learning when he graduated. I appreciated Keith’s kindness and intellectual curiosity, and I liked what the group stood for.
I dived right in, taking over advertising for the speakers who were lined up for the rest of that year. At the time, attendance at the lectures was averaging about forty to sixty students, and I saw that Uncomfortable Learning had more potential. If I was going to get involved, I wanted to transform it into something that would make waves and positively affect campus culture in a big way and push students to open their minds and broaden their perspectives.
I soon sensed that some of the other BSU board members felt I was spreading myself too thin and wanted the BSU to be my number one priority. They noticed that I hardly ever hung out with them at Rice House because I was too busy doing other things, and this was problematic for some of them. I wanted to be equally engaged with many groups at that time. Focusing exclusively on the BSU was not an option. So, out of respect for the level of commitment that I thought the board deserved, I resigned.
* * *
—
Going home soon after I stepped down from the BSU board for winter break was for once a welcome respite. I missed my family and had been so busy and focused at Williams that I hardly had time to text my dad once a week. When I arrived, things at home were relatively calm; with one less mouth to feed, my dad’s finances were in slightly better shape. It felt good to come back as a college student, and it was a little easier to appreciate being home after being away. Besides reading and writing, I spent time watching movies with my uncle Lee and hanging out with Nicole. On my way back to Williams, I thought about the kind of life I wanted to be able to give my own family one day and how my dad once told me that the upside of all his sacrifices was that Nicole and I would be able to do more for our kids.
Shortly after I got back to campus, I was having dinner with a few other students. We were discussing how racism and sexism operated in America. Many of their arguments were clear, strong, and compelling. The upshot thus far had been that patriarchy and racism were so deeply entrenched in America that mechanisms of the existing political system were inadequate to achieve racial justice. While I agreed with much of their analysis of the issues we face, I was less convinced by that conclusion precisely because it depended on there being a consensus about what a just world should look like.
We’d also been talking for an hour and had discussed injustice only from the perspectives of radical black activists and literary figures such as June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, and bell hooks. I’d learned a great deal from each of those thinkers, but I was unsatisfied with discussing race from only a far-left perspective. And I firmly believed in the potential of America’s political system to effect positive change. So I asked them what they thought of Condoleezza Rice.
They all looked vexed by the question.
“She’s an imperialist, who has chosen to forget where she came from.” The others nodded, and chimed in briefly. “She thinks rich white people actually like her.”
I could tell from the snarky comments and dismissive looks on their faces that they had no interest in discussing the ideas or attitudes of black conservatives. In most cases, I would have pushed back or argued more forcefully in favor of thinking about race in a more nuanced way, but I’d been on campus for only a few months and I’d largely anticipated their reactions. I knew that challenging them would have led to a series of unpleasant remarks and possibly a falling-out, so I changed the subject to Williams professors they recommend I take courses with, since they were sophomores and juniors.
I’d been in many situations like this where the people I was talking to, whether students or professors, wanted to talk only about people, ideas, and initiatives that they agreed with. More often than not, I’d quibble, if not argue. Sometimes, I’d argue aggressively, even taking stances I completely disagreed with. But I always judged the situation first. Could an intellectual argument with this person damage our relationship? Hurt their feelings? Did they seem equipped or eager to debate, or more interested in agreeable conversation?
Plus, I didn’t feel the urge to argue all the time; no one does. But there were times when I was frustrated by the refusal of many liberal students and professors to engage with conservative ideas. I was also frustrated by those, usually on the right, who actively resisted talking about issues such as racism and sexism. So the frustration went both ways, though it was often easier to get my conservative peers to reflect on more liberal ideas than the other way around. This didn’t surprise me, though, mainly because most of the far-left students unwilling to engage with conservative ideas were minorities who often took controversial issues personally, owing to difficult, sometimes traumatic, life experiences. Still, I picked my battles carefully through most of my freshman year because I wanted to establish myself first and forge relationships with people before going against the grain in a more concentrated way.
CHAPTER 10
Shoulder to the Wheel
The summer after freshman year, I attended the Summer Writing Institute at Yale University. On balance, my time at Yale paled in comparison to my time at Stanford. That was because the monthlong writing conference at Yale was mostly for middle-aged authors looking to advance their careers. Yet Yale was still an awesome experience. And, sure enough, I was determined to make the most of my time there. I reached out via e-mail to some thirty professors whose work I had read and met with as many of them as I could. Due to their limited availability and conflicting schedules, I was only able to meet with about a dozen scholars in the law school, humanities, and social science departments. But each of the conversations I had helped me gain a deeper understanding of what it meant to be an academic and a scholar.
Whereas in the past I would have asked the professors questions mainly about their ideas, my goal in each of these meetings was to learn more about their methods, approaches, and styles of reasoning. I wanted to grasp the methodological differences between various disciplines and how scholars with an expertise in one field engaged with other areas that shed light on the issues that interested them.
When I wasn’t in a writing workshop or meeting with a professor, I was enjoying New Haven and hanging out with a girl I’d met at the bookstore named Allegra. Within a few days of our meeting, Allegra and I were doing everything together: eating meals, going to the gym, exploring the city, watching Netflix, and going out to watch the NBA Finals at the bars nearby. Sometimes we even did our writing assignments together in my room, since I had a single and she had a roommate.
Allegra was gorgeous, fun, and easy to talk to, but I tried to spend time with her without building expectations for anything serious. I have fond memories of the time we shared, even though she was a bit more forward and free-spirited than I was. We still talk from time to time, but regular conversations petered out shortly after we left. I met another girl later that summer, and we saw each other casually for a while, but I was still disappointed by the fact that I hadn’t yet found the right girl to pursue a serious relationship with.
When the Yale program ended, I spent some time at home in DC before heading back to Williams. At home, I considered everything I had accomplished during freshman year: establishing myself on campus as someone committed to engaging with serious issues, broadening my intellectual horizons, developing friendships, and earning the respect of my classmates. Then I thought about what I wanted to accomplish in the coming year: to challenge people and their understanding—and therefore my own—of complex issues by pushing the boundaries of
what it meant to play devil’s advocate.
At Stanford, I had enjoyed and learned quite a bit from invigorating, often intense debate. There were still many complicated issues that I wanted to consider from different viewpoints, but at Williams, most of the people I interacted with were more interested in finding common ground and treading lightly than in going head-to-head. This attitude made the campus feel like a welcoming community and helped me make friends and feel grounded there, but now it was time to put my shoulder to the wheel and begin the work that would define my time at Williams.
Over the next two weeks, I wrote two articles, “Everything That Offends Black People Is Not Racist” and “Blaming White Racism for Violence,” which were published in The Undergraduate Times and The Washington Times, respectively. In these articles, I stated some demonstrable facts, but I also argued against many of my own beliefs, taking on a conservative “All Lives Matter” approach to racism and police brutality.
I wasn’t hoping to offend people, but I was looking to provoke them. I knew that if I told people ahead of time that I was writing from an alternate perspective as an intellectual exercise, they wouldn’t bother to argue with me. It was only by committing to these arguments that I could hopefully inspire people to speak out, therefore giving me a chance to debate.
Of course, I was well aware of the risks involved in doing this. Namely, that if I had one ounce of political success in the future, people would come back to those articles and use them against me. But I was undeterred. I weighed those risks with the potential rewards. To me, those gains would be an opportunity to engage in illuminating debate and to find out what would happen if I went against the grain and people thought I believed what I wrote instead of the same notions as most of my peers on campus.
When the articles came out, shortly before the beginning of my sophomore year, many people, especially my friends in the black community at Williams, were confused, angry, and hurt. I received comments and messages ranging from “What happened to you? Did you get abducted?” to simply “Zach, no!” When people commented, I almost always responded by giving them my phone number and saying, “Give me a call; I’d love to talk about it more,” but they rarely did. My close friends—my boys like Eric, Walford, and Cole—had my back. They knew who I really was and felt no need to argue with me. But others simply shut me out.
I was back on campus just a few days later. Few people actually brought up the articles, but there was a slight tension in the air that permeated many of my interactions. When I saw my friends from the basketball and football teams, they treated me no differently, and many even expressed their support because they knew me well enough to know what I was all about. Members of the BSU and other student activists, on the other hand, felt betrayed. Some still dapped me up or said hi, but with many, there was an elephant in the room, a slight hesitance behind their eyes as they spoke to me. When people brought up the articles directly, I asked what they thought of them. Some said it was brave, while others resented what I’d written. No matter how they responded, I always made an effort to engage respectfully without demeaning myself by sustaining a conversation with people who sought only to insult me.
Within weeks of school starting, the Williams Alternative republished my article from The Undergraduate Times. This time, it really struck a nerve, because these controversial views were being introduced in a place that many of my classmates thought of as their home. I knew they would be upset, and I was ready for it. I felt confident enough in my opinions that I could hold my own and talk about them respectfully, even with people who vehemently disagreed with me. When I walked into the cafeteria the day it was published, almost every head turned in my direction. People were paying attention, and I felt determined to do something useful with that.
Eric and I had decided to be roommates that year. We were a good match; Eric was the only person I knew who worked as hard as me. When we were in our room together, we were either working or having intense conversations about politics, literature, academics, or life experiences. Most nights, we’d stay up late working and then go to the snack bar together after midnight.
Early in the year, I met with Chris and Jake, the two remaining presidents of Uncomfortable Learning. Keith had graduated the previous spring, though he remained a great friend and loyal adviser. Chris and Jake confirmed what Keith had told me the year before—they wanted me to gradually accept more responsibilities throughout the year and ultimately take over the group when they graduated. We also discussed the speakers list for the coming year. The first speaker who was scheduled to come was John Christy, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who has dismissed the scientific consensus on climate change and was considered a climate change denier. It was a successful event, and several students engaged productively with Christy, pushing back against his arguments that the changes in the earth’s climate weren’t caused by humans or reason for alarm.
I was encouraged to see this level of engagement and eager to start publicizing the next speaker we had scheduled, Suzanne Venker, an author and self-described anti-feminist. We knew going in that Venker would be different from Christy or any of the speakers who had come to campus the previous year. Venker’s views that feminism was a war against men, that marriages are healthier when women work less and stay at home more, and that wives should be subordinate to their husbands were so counter to the women’s equality and empowerment that many of the women and men on campus believed in and were fighting so hard to achieve.
Knowing this, Chris and Jake were concerned about being associated with the event. They were both junior advisers and didn’t want to risk jeopardizing their relationships with the freshmen they advised, so I volunteered to put up posters and set up an invitation on Facebook for the event.
Within minutes of my posting the event, my phone lit up with texts, comments, and other messages. One after another, comments appeared on the event’s page. There were dozens—eventually hundreds—but none of them was positive. “It’s nice to know that Zach Wood, a former leader of the BSU, is actually a men’s activist,” one read. Another said, “Zach Wood, you’re a filthy dirty misogynist.” I was called a sellout and a traitor and told that I needed Jesus. But there was one lengthy comment posted by a well-known campus activist that I thought captured the sentiments of the most radical factions on campus, who most strongly opposed Venker’s visit.
It read:
When you bring a misogynistic, white supremacist men’s rights activist to campus in the name of “dialogue” and “the other side,” you are not only causing actual mental, social, psychological, and physical harm to students, but you are also—paying—for the continued dispersal of violent ideologies that kill our black and brown (trans) femme sisters. You are giving those who spout violence the money that so desperately needs to be funneled to black and brown (trans) femme communities, to people who are leading the revolution, who are surviving in the streets, who are dying in the streets. Know, you are dipping your hands in their blood, Zach Wood.
Protests were quickly planned, as well as a feminist counter-event. I was excited to see all this activity and hoped it would result in productive conversations, but Chris and Jake were alarmed by the backlash and decided to cancel the event. It was majority rule, so I had no choice but to stand by their decision. But as soon as the decision to cancel the invitation was made, I didn’t waste any time. By the end of that night, I had written a response, which I published in the Williams Alternative.
In my piece, I said that at Williams, learning should begin with confronting challenging ideas, and I explained that while tens of millions of Americans espoused Venker’s views, I was not one of them. I believed that her arguments deserved trenchant criticism but that to challenge her intellectually and critique her arguments, we had to first understand them. Engaging with Venker’s ideas was not an ideological endorsement. Whether we agreed with her or not, we all could learn some
thing from Venker’s work.
I wrote that those who protested viewed this event through a lens of motivated ignorance and suggested that students make an effort, individually, to understand the very best counterarguments on the issues that they cared about most. Intellectual integrity, I argued, does not necessarily entail changing one’s mind. Rather, intellectual integrity consists of the willingness to be self-critical and think as hard as one can about counterarguments out of the understanding that each of us can and should try to learn from those with whom we vociferously disagree.
Over the next few days, everyone on campus was talking about that article. Fifty students announced they were getting together to write a response, which I eagerly awaited. I had approached that piece, like everything else, with intention. Yes, I was aggravated by the character attacks, but I didn’t waste time disputing them; rather, I resolved to prove that although her speech was canceled, I was not afraid of Venker’s views, nor did I agree with them. In fact, I was more than willing to take them on.
It was frustrating to me that by effectively shutting down her speech, campus activists had provided fodder for the conservatives who mockingly call progressives liberal snowflakes. In my life, I had felt fear, and I refused to feel that way again. There were no words, beliefs, or philosophies that I would allow to frighten or intimidate me. I wanted to confront and disprove the depiction of liberals and progressives as timid or weak or, worse, unable to defend their own positions, and it rankled me that by canceling the event, we had ended up playing right into their hands.
Uncensored Page 19