The majority of academics were distraught that Donald J. Trump won the presidential election, and Charles C. Camosy, an associate professor of theology at Fordham University, was among them. But his explanation of Mr. Trump’s victory diverged from those of many of his colleagues: He believes that academe’s insular culture is, in part, to blame.
The day after the election, the professor published a column in The Washington Post: “Trump Won Because College-Educated Americans Are Out of Touch.” Challenging the narrative that race was the most influential factor in the election, Mr. Camosy, an expert in Christian ethics, argued that divisions based on education level were just as pivotal.
People who studied within the isolated, liberal-leaning confines of most colleges, he wrote, couldn’t understand how anyone would possibly vote for Mr. Trump. That points to a gap in understanding, he said, in which the college-educated and the working class hold far different “first principles,” or assumptions about basic issues like religion and gun rights. Disagreeing with the former group, he added, often means being labeled ignorant or bigoted.
If academe doesn’t do anything about that, he said, the divisions will only become more entrenched. But what exactly are academics’ responsibilities to understand the rest of the population, and how can they fulfill them?
Mr. Camosy spoke with The Chronicle about why it’s important to bring to campuses perspectives that, as he has written, “more accurately reflect the wide range of norms and values present in the American people.”
You talk about higher education, academe, and the college-educated as the problem. Those terms can mean different things. Who exactly are you blaming for being out of touch?
I want to make a distinction between commuters who show up at community college to take nursing classes at night, for instance, and students at residential liberal-arts campuses, who are affected in a much more profound way by academic culture. The political culture and the media culture are primarily the product of the latter kind of college student.
Beyond the presidential election, how else are the divisions between college-educated elites and the working class playing out?
We’re having interesting debates about free college. For those who don’t go to college and actually think of it as this foreign place that looks down on them, are they going to be happy to pay higher taxes to fund free college? Probably not.
Also, a lot of the innovation and research and development that are automating jobs out of existence take place at colleges and universities. Robotics makes things more efficient, and in the long run maybe cheaper, but it really has hurt the working classes, perhaps even more than trade deals have. Is it always a benefit to make things more efficient? The voices of the working classes haven’t really been heard in those debates.
We’re not paid to listen. We’re paid to give our views and to teach others about our views. And that’s not very good for a dialogue.
Finally, you can look at first principles that are different with regard to life, or religious liberty, or the right to hold firearms. In my circles in the academy, these are often thought of as questions that have already been decided. Of course you’re pro-choice, of course you’re for LGBT rights over religious liberty, of course you’re for gun control. And people who take different positions are rarely heard.
In the column, you write: “In my experience, many professors and college students don’t even realize that their views on political issues rely on a particular philosophical or theological stance.” What about your experience has led you to feel that way?
As a theologian who studies bioethics and ethical issues more generally, I often get a dismissive kind of hand-waving response: You believe that because you’re religious. That kind of dismissal really doesn’t account for how ethics works. Ethics is not a group of people over here that’s reasonable and rational and another group over there that’s religious.
Part of what I try to do in my work is make sure everybody understands that there is no “view from nowhere.” There’s no viewpoint on any issue that doesn’t rely on some sort of first principle that one holds simply on the basis of authority or faith or intuition. A lot of the working classes have their views for explicitly religious reasons. And a lot of people in the academy look down on them as not really being serious, not being rational.
If I’m right, and others who have my view are right, then it puts us all on much fairer and more equal footing, such that real conversations, instead of that hand-waving dismissal, can take place.
Are the divides a question of degrees or a question of values?
Some of the disagreements surface because there are people who just don’t have certain facts about climate change, or about when life begins. Those could be mitigated by people going to college. That’s very important.
But even more important are those foundational disagreements, which are philosophical and theological in nature. No matter what facts are talked about, Catholics and Buddhists aren’t going to agree on the foundation of what a human person is.
Let’s increase educational attainment, so that the disagreements that are based on not knowing things are mitigated somewhat. But also, let’s have a lot of diversity in terms of those first principles, so that we can engage in a more authentic discussion that reflects the broad views of lots of different kinds of people.
One of your central points is that academe should help promote better social understanding. Are colleges and those who work within them obligated to understand the entire population?
No, I don’t think the whole population, but certainly huge movements like this. If the best we can do is simply label them bigots and homophobes and sexists, then clearly we need to do better.
How might that work?
We just don’t do listening very well. We’re not paid to listen. We’re paid to give our views and to teach others about our views. And that’s not very good for dialogue. So we need to get better at intellectual humility. We also need to avoid identity politics — simply reducing people to their gender, to their age, to their ethnicity, to their sexual orientation, to their religion — and engage in the complexity of real people.
Why do you propose hiring quotas as one solution?
I don’t mean a quota coming down from the administration or anything like that. But for instance, in my own department, we looked around and didn’t see a lot of people of color. So we said, We ought to make an effort in hiring to have more diversity. That’s the kind of thing I have in mind — for departments to look around and say, Well, how much intellectual diversity do we have? Do we have even one conservative?
I don’t even like the liberal-conservative binary. I just want a person who really doesn’t have the views of the rest of us, who challenges us, who forces us to take a moment to listen to someone who’s different, who forces our students to take a moment to listen to someone who’s different.
Do you know conservative scholars who feel they’re not getting hired or promoted because of their views?
Yes. I happen to be at a Jesuit Catholic university, so for me to hold pro-life views on abortion is, though not comfortable in an academic setting, at least more acceptable than at a secular place, where someone with my views likely wouldn’t even be hired. Or if they were hired, and they openly offered their views, they would be subject to severe discrimination. Friends of mine, colleagues of mine have experienced this at more-secular places.
Can you imagine somebody today who believes in what used to be called “traditional marriage” making that argument in such hugely — and in my view, rightly — LGBT-friendly places? Frankly, I don’t know anyone, because either they’re not around, or they’re too scared to offer their views.
If the 2016 election results represent a failure of colleges because they’re out of touch, what would success look like?
Recent conversations about higher education
I do think that if we didn’t have this huge divide, Trump would not have won. Even though the election was the impetus for my piece, I think the issues are much broader than that.
We just have a fundamental divide in this country between working-class folks and people who are educated in our elite institutions. And that permeates everything. It permeates how news organizations cover stories. It permeates how people think about fundamental questions, like how health care should be delivered.
Because we’re doing such a good job at reaching more and more people through academic institutions, I think we have a deep responsibility — not just based on how a presidential election turns out, but for the good of our country — to do a better job of reflecting more diversity of first principles in our academic communities.
What would show that colleges are doing a better job?
We would see more diversity in departments. You wouldn’t see complete agreement on hot-button issues. We’d see it in the administration. We’d see it in the programming for students — in who’s invited to give talks, what kinds of ideas are promoted. And we’d also see it, I think, in our culture more broadly.
One reason why racial justice was such an important issue in this election was because colleges and universities started that conversation, and it filtered down to the rest of the culture. That was a very good thing. So if we also make a commitment to other kinds of diversity, that will also filter down to the rest of the culture. We won’t see such enclaves of people over here — millions and millions of people — thinking something so diametrically opposed to people over there.
That’s a big part of my work as an academic ethicist: to show that these kinds of us-versus-them, right-versus-left, life-versus-choice binaries are too simplistic. People are much more complicated and interesting than identity politics allows us to imagine.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.
