On Nov. 9, 2021, Hamilton College President David Wippman and Cornell University Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies Glenn C. Altschuler published an opinion piece on the website
InsideHigherEd
titled “How Colleges Can Counter Cancel Culture.” They argued that “constraints on discussions of important social issues, however sensitive, subvert the goals of a liberal arts education…Academic freedom means faculty members and students must be able to teach, learn about and advocate for unpopular positions and contrarian ideas, even if doing so makes some classmates and colleagues uncomfortable.”
In a
New York Times
Letter to the Editor published on Nov. 25, 2021, President Wippman offered his solution to “cancel culture,” stating “American colleges and universities remain committed to free speech and academic freedom, and many are working to address issues of political conformism through programs like Hamilton’s Common Ground, which seek to model respectful discourse across political boundaries.”
Several students and faculty voiced critiques of Common Ground in interviews with
The Spectator
, contesting some of the core principles undergirding the program’s mission and expressing concern about the choice of speakers. Despite President Wippman’s lauding of Common Ground, these interviews revealed a discrepancy between the program’s intended effect and its outcomes in practice.
The Hamilton College website states that the mission of the Common Ground program is “for the speakers to model the kind of respectful dialogue across political boundaries that should occur not just on college campuses, but in the broader society as well.” The Hamilton College website states that “Common Ground is supported by the Pohl family in honor of Hamilton graduates Arthur, Class of 1914, Harold, Class of 1915, Leland, Class of 1917, Harold ’50, George ’51, and David ’54.”
When asked about the funding of Common Ground, President Wippman responded that “we got a gift to fund the series. It’s not endowed, but we do have some additional funds. I’m hoping to get an endowment to support it. I’d like to make sure it continues on an ongoing basis.”
Common Ground’s first event was on Oct. 18, 2017. It featured a debate between President Trump’s former Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and President Obama’s Chief Campaign strategist David Axelrod on topics ranging from the role of media to populism.
Common Ground has since hosted five debates and a panel, with the most recent being a debate between Harvard Economics Professor N. Greg Mankiw and University of California, Berkeley Economics Professor Christina Romer about the consequences of income inequality. This event, which took place on Nov. 15, 2021, was delayed from its previous date of March 12, 2020 due to the complications surrounding hosting a debate during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In terms of campus responses to the first Common Ground event, President Wippman found that “the reactions I got were generally very positive. There are some people on campus who don’t like the idea of the program. I’m not really sure what the logic behind that is.”
Assistant Professor of Anthropology Mariam Durrani opposes the program because “Hamilton students, faculty and staff who actually offer different perspectives from the status quo are targeted by white supremacists….So the question is common ground for whom? Who participates in common ground? Who is made to feel unwelcome by its very design? Who thinks it is respectful? Who doesn’t?”
Initial Reactions
Although the first Common Ground debate occurred less than a year after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, President Wippman claimed that no specific event led to the creation of the program. Instead, he explained that it started as a response to national polarization. “Nationally, there has been increasing political polarization, it’s probably true at Hamilton as it is elsewhere. Common Ground was in part a response in an effort to encourage respectful dialogue across political boundary lines.”
When asked whether he believes this polarization has fostered a cancel culture at Hamilton, President Wippman said “I do think, and I have heard, [that] many conservative students on campus…don’t feel comfortable expressing their viewpoints openly for fear that they will be criticized for those viewpoints.”
Melanie (Mel) Geller ’22 shared her view regarding the issue of cancel culture. “I think cancel culture is bad because it’s antithetical to restorative justice and incompatible with forgiveness, and I think as a community, we should prioritize those values over our instinct to condemn and ostracize,” said Geller.
William (Will) Ling ’22 finds it difficult to offer opposing viewpoints at Hamilton. “I think, for the most part, people here hold a more liberal view. I would say the people who broadcast dissenting views kind of loudly and have more controversial views definitely have caught flack, whether it’s right or not.”
After the April 11, 2019 Common Ground event featuring President Trump’s former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former President Obama’s Chief of Staff for Operations Jim Messina, Ling wrote an opinion piece for
The Spectator
titled “Protesting certain political speakers undermines the notion of ‘common ground.’” Ling encouraged students to empathize with the positions of their peers and saw protests against Common Ground speakers as detrimental to the program’s goals.
However, attempting to seek commonality between some political positions is exactly the issue Associate Professor of Africana Studies Nigel Westmaas has with Common Ground. In a Sept. 10, 2017
Spectator
Letter to the Editor, Professor Westmass claimed “the principle and intent behind the planned series of talks might be well-intentioned. Dispassionate academic discourse has its place. In times like these, however, what we really need is passionate, consistent and spirited attack on racism and other forms and acts of intolerance and bigotry emanating from the White House. Too much is at stake for an elusive search for a fanciful, polite, common ground.”
Professor Westmaas explained to
The Spectator
via email how Common Ground could be potentially harmful. He said that “there is the potential issue of ‘false equivalence’ that creeps into the common ground topics and/or conversations. So for example, in order to find a ‘parallel’ point or ‘common ground’ that suits ‘both sides’ we might equate ‘both sides’ with the level of ‘complicity’ on an issue far removed from the facts on the ground.”
Thomas (Tommy) Keith ’22 added to Professor Westmaas’s perspective about the potential harm of Common Ground. “I was part of the College Democrats at the time, and a lot of the leadership [was] not super happy about [Common Ground] and [was] kind of boycotting it,” said Keith.
He personally opposed the Common Ground program because “[the panelists are] participating in the system with so much dirty money, they have so much corrupt politics behind them. They have heinous policy positions on certain things. It is good to hear from a diverse array of perspectives, but when those perspectives are kind of disingenuous or kind of corrupted, that’s when I have an issue.”
To Keith and Westmaas, Common Ground did not mend polarization. Rather, it revealed substantial issues with trying to create common ground when the moral standing of the speakers and views could be called into question.
Dean of Faculty Suzanne Keen acknowledged the need to counter hateful rhetoric and views Common Ground as a means to achieve this goal. Dean Keen said that “if somebody comes to campus who says something that offends you, strikes at the heart of everything that you hold dear and criticizes you in a completely unfair way because of some aspect of your identity, something like that would be offensive to anybody. In my opinion, the appropriate response to that is to stand up to that person or gather others around you and to assemble and say what you believe, as an alternative to what the idea is that they’re offering.”
President Wippman feels more so that general responses to the program have been overwhelmingly positive, noting that “people voted with their feet. We had large numbers of people attend pretty much all the Common Ground programs…we filled the [Margaret Bundy Scott] Field House for the program with Condoleezza Rice and Susan Rice.”
Does Common Ground generate discussion on campus?
When
The Spectator
asked President Wippman whether the Common Ground program fosters discussion on campus, he responded “I think so, and that’s certainly the goal of the program. The most recent program was about the causes, consequences and policy choices related to income inequality, and I know there was discussion about that across campus. My hope is that it will stimulate discussion of these issues.”
When
The Spectator
asked Dean Keen the same question, her response contrasted President Wippman’s. “I don’t think that it really has had that impact. I think it tends to be a discrete event. I haven’t noticed there being continued discussion, for example, about income inequality after the event. It seems like it’s more like that’s the event, and you go and it’s interesting and enjoyable. Maybe the student paper runs an account of it? Maybe you see a few things on Facebook about it? But I haven’t noticed that.”
When
The Spectator
asked students this question, they tended to agree more with Dean Keen’s perspective regarding Common Ground than President Wippman’s opinion.
Edward (Eddie) Gamble ’25 found that conversations on Common Ground were more reactionary than sustained. Ling shared this perspective. “I wasn’t necessarily like talking to my friends about the issues that were brought up. Again, campus does stray pretty far to the left, so I don’t think that there’s much discourse afterward between opposing viewpoints. I think, for the most part, people already have a more set view,” said Ling.
While Keith agreed that Common Ground did not facilitate debate around the issues presented after the event, he offered a different perspective regarding how students view the event and its consequences. He stated “I think it’s done a good job facilitating debate around how broken our economic system is and how the school is trying to force-feed an ideology that we can all get along in politics. [How] can we all respect each other’s viewpoints when their perspectives might be actively harming certain people? I think students through [Common Ground] have been exposed to more bullshit and been able to counteract it rather than actually gaining fruitful perspectives from other people.”
Professor Durrani shares Keith’s view that Common Ground events showcase the error in trying to generate commonality around certain issues. She argued that “[Common Ground] type events show how the ignorances held by so many about the legacies of settler colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade and US imperialism around the world continue to shape Hamilton College cultures and discourses to this very day, and importantly exact a cost from those of us stubborn enough to commit to anti-racism in scholarship AND in our everyday practice (this latter part is not common at all).”
When asked how he would respond to someone who claimed the Common Ground program was bringing views that are harmful to campus, President Wippman said “I’d want to have a conversation with them and try to understand which specific views were articulated that they found harmful and whether there’s a basis for that. I’d like to understand what they mean by harmful. We have to be careful about the language of harm, so if a student said that, I’d want to understand what is it about the views that you found harmful and how can we deal with that.”
The Common Ground program has mostly featured former White House officials whose work concentrates on politics, international affairs or economics. President Wippman explained the selection process, saying “sometimes we work with the speakers’ bureau, sometimes we work with faculty, as we did with the recent program on income inequality. I certainly welcome student input. At one point, we circulated an announcement saying if people wanted to organize programs, we would provide funding for them. We only got one proposal, which I think came from the Levitt Center.”
Student interviewees said they desired a larger role in Common Ground, and that they felt the program was at its best when the speakers talked about issues directly related to student interests.
Gamble wrote an opinion piece for
The Spectator
where he outlined the debate between Romer and Mankiw and gave his thoughts on both of their economic solutions to inequality. When
The Spectator
asked him whether he thought the debate between Romer and Mankiw gave enough opportunities for student input, Gamble responded “I guess so, I think maybe just a bit more [would be better].” He found that it was the student questions that sparked discussion on more pertinent topics.
“I got the feeling that in the first Common Ground events [I went to], there wasn’t a lot of time for student input and that a lot of the questioning was, you know, fairly obvious critiques of the right-wing people on the stage. [Critiquing these figures] is important because I think those people should be challenged. I think all viewpoints should be challenged. But I don’t know if I learned much more from that,” said Keith.
Ling recognized difficulties with having debates that involved too much student input. However, he explained that this problem can be mitigated by having Common Ground events that feature panels rather than two prominent speakers. He stated “during the affirmative action [panel] anyone who wanted to ask a question could ask [a] question. So it was a lot more intimate. So I think sometimes it’s good to have the bigger name speakers, but it can in some sense be a detriment to just how much input students [have] and how many questions students can [ask].”
When Ling spoke on the affirmative action panel, he was referring to the Jan. 29, 2020 Common Ground event on the pros and cons of affirmative action. It featured Stanford Law School Professor Rick Banks, Associate Professor of Education at the University of Maryland Julie Park, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute Jason Riley and Counsel for the Educational Opportunities Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Genevieve Bonadies Torres.
An article titled “Common Ground panelists discuss the pros and cons of affirmative action” written by Amanda Kim ’21 in
The Spectator
explains the degree of audience involvement in the discussion. She stated, “[Moderator and Associate Dean for Strategic Academic Initiatives at Harvard University Julie] Vultaggio then began the program by asking for audience input, encouraging attendees — as well as those watching the live stream — to anonymously submit the words that they associated with the concept of affirmative action. Using the service Poll Everywhere, Vultaggio then displayed a word cloud comprised of the submitted terms.”
“I think that knowing who would be coming and kind of having student input is good in all cases because students are interested in [and] might want certain people here. I think the College could do a better job,” said Ling.
Geller offered her own solution for increasing student input in the decision-making process. “I like that the events incorporate some student questions, but I think students should have greater input in the event topic and selection of speakers. I think one solution could be if the faculty or administration listed a couple of different topics and allowed students to rank the topics in their order of preference,” said Geller.
“If you want to do something for Common Ground, I think that it’s pretty important that it should be what the students want,” said Gamble.
Issues with Speakers’ Backgrounds
The level of student input is not the only concern that interviewees had regarding Common Ground speakers. Professor Durrani felt that the debate about income inequality did not give sufficient credence to minority voices. Professor Durrani asked in an email “Why did we have three white ‘boomers’ discussing income inequality and not any Black or Indigenous scholars or activists? I found it terribly revealing that the first major [Common Ground] event after 2020 — when George Floyd’s state execution at the hands of a police officer set off the largest social movement in US history and a summer of Black Lives Matter protests around the world — had not one Black person on stage to actually talk about how income inequality is linked to systemic racism in housing, healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc.”
Keith also had issues with the background of the speakers, stating “[Romer and Mankiw] were both fundamentally capitalists and have benefited from the neoliberal system and neoliberal academia. They definitely disagree on the margins of how to solve inequality, but I think a lot of their logic was framed around incentives and framed around monetary rewards for people rather than a moral imperative that inequality is not okay. I think it would be a lot cooler if they got a more diverse array of perspectives than just two establishment perspectives that are both out of touch with what people want. Like bringing on a leftist and anarchists and a hardcore libertarian.”
Henry Platt Bristol Professor of Economics Ann Owen noted “[Common Ground] brought in two prominent scholars in economics who also had valuable experience as policymakers. I think that the students benefited from hearing their perspectives on policy aimed at reducing inequality.”
Common Ground on the Ground
In Sept. 2019, President Wippman announced that the Common Ground program was expanding and had gained supplemental funding for a new program called “Common Ground on the Ground.”
According to President Wippman, the purpose of Common Ground on the Ground was to “stimulate discussion of pressing social issues across a wide range of subject areas, including economics, history, literature, the arts, philosophy, law, and politics.” He also gave examples of programs that could receive funding as part of the program, such as “creating new student-led publications, podcasts, online broadcasts, or video content that present varying perspectives” and “creating new or redesigned courses and seminars that encourage open dialogue about polarizing issues, with guest speakers, simulations, and paired readings.”
When asked which programs have received funding through Common Ground on the Ground, President Wippman stated “the Levitt Center created a program to train students to facilitate difficult conversations, and we supported that, but I think it got interrupted by the pandemic. There was an effort to expand out beyond the Common Ground program as it has operated so far. We wanted to get it into the broader community at Hamilton. For example, we worked with NPR’s One Small Step program. They came to campus, paired students with members of the community and had conversations about how their political views formed.” According to NPR, the One Small Step Program “explores the idea that intentional conversations between partisans could be a catalyst for national healing.”
Speakers’ Perspectives
When asked about speakers’ feedback on Common Ground, President Wippman responded that “the speakers generally have been very positive about their experience. They found Hamilton audiences engaging [and] the questions to be good ones. I think they’ve enjoyed the classroom visits a lot, the one I remember most vividly was Susan Rice and Condoleezza Rice.”
The Spectator
reached out to former Common Ground speakers for comment but received no response.
What is next for Common Ground?
The Spectator
asked students whether or not they believed the Common Ground program should continue. “Maybe a wider range of people could be helpful” said Ling.
Gamble agreed: “yeah, I think that the program should definitely continue. I think foreign policy or something focusing on a specific issue. Not all viewpoints can really be represented by just two people, so if you can get a more comprehensive view of the situation, it’s a bit more interesting.”
Keith had a different view. “I don’t think the program should continue under its current guise of common grounds. As we’ve seen, it’s not really possible in today’s politics. Sure, they’re trying to cultivate [common ground], but you have a party that’s very obstructionist and actively harming our democracy in a lot of ways.”
Professor Westmaas explained why finding common ground is difficult for some people on campus, despite the intentions of the program. He stated, “I invoked the example of Martin Luther King’s radical philosophy and practice that was definitely not America’s conception of “common ground” in 1968. It took about two decades for the halo to appear above his head. Now there are attempts to co-opt and normalize King who, just before his assassination, had a disapproval rating of 75% among Americans.”
Regarding future programs, President Wippman commented “We’re still talking about that. It’s tricky to do large-scale programs during the pandemic… We don’t have any specific speakers lined up at the moment, but we hope to resume those programs in the future.”