Is asking someone to consider the broader impact of supporting a policy out of place? Disrespectful? Is it hostile? Is it inconsiderate?

The Governor of Louisiana thinks so. An LSU Law professor asked students that if they felt comfortable voting for Donald Trump because of his policy agenda, they should consider how that makes people of different identities feel.

This is a great argument, one that is great because of the element of surprise. Most people who are voting purely on policy issues – something like the southern border for example – wouldn’t be connected to the rights of the groups that Trump and a lot of his supporters don’t appear to have respect for or care about.

This probably won’t go anywhere as in a classroom teaching a class a professor has a lot of protection. They have academic freedom and first amendment freedom. Professors often rely on saying controversial or surprising things to stimulate class discussion and thought. Where else in the world would highly-educated people be permitted to stimulate thought at this level without university protections?

It’s a great thing to think about for a lawyer: How would supporting the letter of the law, or a policy, have adverse communication effects that could be interpreted as a policy choice, or worse, a principled stand? Sometimes in choosing what we think is the best policy we are happy to let the lives and bodies of others serve as the lubricant to let the gears of our lives operate unimpeded. Occasionally this is done willingly, more often this is done out of a cursory awareness but an unwillingness or perception that there can be no other way. What this professor is suggesting is that perhaps the decision of how to vote or support policy should be done via a different kind of rubric, one that doesn’t force a choice.

The university today is often thought of as a job-training site. Students are there to learn how to do a job, and that’s it – it should be apolitical. This model strips the university of a number of its more important and vital functions which can be thought of through different narratives and discourses. The job training model is the least relevant namely because it would be so much cheaper to enter the job after high school and be taught by your employers. This wouldn’t take public money, it would be corporations footing the bill, and they would get employees who did things exactly the way they wanted. But most corporations would be against this; they want the university system. But why? Someone with a degree commands more salary and also probably has the tools to push back on poor decisions made by bosses, asking annoying questions and wanting reasons why the policies are the way they are.

Let’s think of the university as a seed bank, as the place that ideas we have rejected are allowed to live in a terrarium of sorts, where we can repopulate the world with the extinct ideas if we ever needed to. This is why universities teach things that are “useless” to many people outside the university. Teaching these things allow people to understand that these perspectives are around and available, and can be used if needed to address something, solve an issue, or provide some new light to old perceptions. The seed vault keeps ideas and methods alive and available in case society realizes that their quest for progress and innovation didn’t check the blind spot. This is insurance at the minimum.

But also the seed vault model encourages different ways of thinking by exposing students to types of thinking and approaches that seem incorrect and out of place. Academic freedom is essential to allow professors to introduce ways and approaches to thought that aren’t popular or automatic. We are the products of many things when it comes to our thought: The media, our relatives and friends, what we choose to read, watch, and listen to in our spare time. We need direct intervention in this, and that intervention is unlikely to come on the path of least resistance. That is, it has to come from an agitator who is protected and encouraged to agitate – a teacher.

A teacher cannot just say whatever they want. Academic freedom is the responsibility to be free to interrogate and speak however they wish about anything that will encourage or spark different ways of thinking. In this case, this incident is justified. The professor is not dismissing the people who voted for Donald Trump, he is pushing on the question of whether or not it is ethical to vote for someone purely on policy. What a question! Isn’t that what we are supposed to do, make logical decisions about what’s best for the country? This professor pushes back – best for whose country?

Unfortunately our elected officials are starting to think of dissent – even the intellectual exercise of dissent – is a threat to the country. Which is one of the biggest threats to the country that we could possibly face. If we are no longer permitted to question authority and criticize how we make decisions, what sort of democracy do we have at that point? Who is really free to express ideas? What kind of culture will that attitude produce?