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The University of Utah's College of Humanities Presents Humanities Radio Season 5

Jana Cunningham | Director of Marketing & Communications,
Host of Humanities Radio

Welcome to Humanities Radio

Humanities Radio is the University of Utah College of Humanities' Podcast. Our goal is to lead conversations about the humanities in the 21st century.

We will talk with faculty, students and alumni to share information and ideas about the importance of the humanities in today's world. Listen to our latest and past episodes below!

Latest Episode

Season 5, Episode 8 - Kendall Gerdes: Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies

Episode 8:  Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Campus Activism

Kendall Gerdes, assistant professor of writing and rhetoric studies, discusses her book, “Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Campus Activism” explores sensitivity as a term of art in rhetoric.

Kendall Gerdes: 

Often students who are advocating for some kind of transformation are accused of being too sensitive as a way of deflecting their demands, and that shuts down the conversation. 

Jana Cunningham: 

Hello. Thank you for joining me on Humanities Radio. I'm Jana Cunningham with the University of Utah College of Humanities, and this season I'll be in discussion with professors from across our college about their latest book publications. I'm with Kendall Gerdes, assistant professor of writing and rhetoric studies to discuss her book, Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Campus Activism. 

Thank you Professor Gerdes for joining me today. I really appreciate it. 

Kendall Gerdes: 

Sure. 

Jana Cunningham: 

So just as our first bigger overall question, can you provide an overview of this book and explain what motivated you to explore this topic? 

Kendall Gerdes: 

Yeah, I like to say that the book explores sensitivity as a term of art in rhetoric. People often think of rhetoric as oratory, or an art of writing and speaking to other people. And I like to think of rhetoric as a structure of address where you might be writing or speaking to another person, or communicating in another way. But to receive an address, to be spoken, to read somebody else's writing, we have to be open to that address. We have to be able to receive it. And to me, that's what being sensitive is. 

So what does that have to do with campus activism? Well, all the claims in the recent years about students being too sensitive, pricked my ears as a rhetorician. What was the work that sensitivity was doing in those public debates? And again and again on student activist issues, claims that students were too sensitive occurred with claims about academic freedom. And that students were infringing on academic freedom or it was going to be the end of academic freedom. I started to see a rhetorical alliance between issues about sensitivity and issues with academic freedom. So I wanted to explore what that relationship was and how we could understand it better with rhetorical theory. 

Jana Cunningham: 

And so through this book, you go through very specific types of debates. Talk about which debates you examined and why you chose those ones in particular. 

Kendall Gerdes: 

So each chapter of the book focuses on a different contemporary student activist issue or campus issue, and they all look at a slightly different arrangement of the arguments. So the first chapter is about trigger warnings, and that has to do with students who have suffered some trauma and maybe have a disability as a result of it. And were 10 years ago or so, asking their professors to consider using trigger warnings to help them prepare for difficult discussions. So really my analysis of trigger warnings looks at the accessibility issues, so trauma and accessibility, those are the trigger warnings issues. 

The next chapter focuses on Title IX, and that has to do with sex inequality in education. It also has to do with trauma because it's looking at sexual harassment primarily, as well as sexual assault and the procedures for processing those claims at a university. 

The third chapter is about safe spaces, which works through a specific example of the student occupation of the University of Missouri in 2015. So it specifically looks at Black student activism as an example of a response to racial trauma on campus and the claims about safe spaces as deflecting those activist requests. 

The final chapter is a little bit different because it looks at campus carry debates, specifically the debate in 2016 in Texas when the law was first being changed to allow campus carry. And the consolation of issues is different because faculty are the ones there that were said to be too sensitive, not wanting to allow guns in their classrooms. That's one where you can see how there can be daylight between who cares about academic freedom and who's too sensitive when the issue is different. So each issue emphasizes a slightly different student population and different aspects of public arguments about sensitivity. 

Jana Cunningham: 

And that's why you chose these ones in specific to go over the realm of the sensitivity. 

Kendall Gerdes: 

So each chapter looks at something that's a little bit different, but together makes an argument that's really about how sensitivity works as a rhetorical concept. 

Jana Cunningham: 

Right. The central question you pose in the book is how rhetorical theory of sensitivity can equip scholars and teachers to meet student activism with more ethical response and scholarship and pedagogy. How is that? 

Kendall Gerdes: 

Yes. So it's a big complicated claim. 

Jana Cunningham: 

Yes. Yes. 

Kendall Gerdes: 

And in fact, listening to it, you might want to replay that last 15 seconds and hear it again. So my central argument in the book is that everyone is sensitive. Because we have to be in order to be affected by each other in language. So students are sensitive, but institutions are sensitive too, maybe in different ways or to different things, donors or financial incentives rather than classroom issues. But all of those are types of sensitivity. 

Student activism most often presents the campus community with a demand for change. Not always. Sometimes it's conservative and doesn't want change. But often students who are advocating for some kind of transformation are accused of being too sensitive as a way of deflecting their demands. 

Jana Cunningham: 

I see. 

Kendall Gerdes: 

And that shuts down the conversation. So embracing a rhetorical theory of sensitivity would let us hear those demands differently and understand them as about justice and ethics at our institutions. 

Jana Cunningham: 

So it definitely changes the whole way the conversation is viewed and the way the conversation is had. 

Kendall Gerdes: 

That's the hope. 

Jana Cunningham: 

So you discuss in the book, sensitive rhetoric can conflict with freedom of speech. Let's talk about this a little bit more and why that is, and how if the two can become aligned. 

Kendall Gerdes: 

Yes. So freedom of speech is often thought of as the umbrella right under which academic freedom resides. Actually, academic freedom has a pretty thin basis in case law in the United States. I like to call it partly folk doctrine because there's so much of our beliefs about academic freedom inflect the way that we talk and argue about it, but not actually the way that it's legally implemented. So freedom of speech and academic freedom aren't the same, but they are related concepts. And student activism is often criticized, though it is occasionally defended with appeals to either academic freedom or free speech. 

As we're recording this in mid-November 2023, the University of Utah is really trying to thread this very needle with allowing reactionary student groups to post transphobic flyers on campus, while on the other hand procedurally punishing those who are protesting against gender policing and state violence. We're watching this unfold right now on our own campus. 

The rhetorical question is, how does the argument work? How does the argument about free speech or academic freedom work? What work does it do? So for whom is free speech a shield and against whom is it used as a club, or a way of enforcing an interest? So every community regulates speech, every university, every organization, your local book club, sometimes with law and policy, sometimes with student code of conduct, sometimes with just norms and taboos. But none of those ways of regulating speech are ever value neutral. They all have values that motivate how they're written as well as how they are enforced. So rhetoric is a way of helping us pay attention to the underlying values and see what interests and motivations they're connected to. 

Jana Cunningham: 

Right. Interesting. And so when you are exploring these different debates in each of these chapters, do you go into this as well in each of these chapters? 

Kendall Gerdes: 

Yeah. So each chapter looks at what's at stake in the claims about sensitivity. What does that claim that students are too sensitive seem to be protecting in the case of trigger warnings, or in the case of Title IX? Because those issues do shift a little bit. Although there is a major recurring theme across the chapters that has to do with trigger warnings, which was chronologically like the first of the student activist issues. We're talking 2013, 2014 where claims about student sensitivity really caught traction. 

So looking at the way arguments about trigger warnings and sensitivity migrated into other student activist issues is also part of the work the book does. Because safe spaces were argued to be the live action trigger warning. Or students who are advocating for better Title IX procedures are viewed as being triggered. And obviously there's kind of low hanging fruit in the campus carry debate about triggering as a gun term as well. 

So each chapter does trace some of the ways that arguments that developed around trigger warnings about a decade ago migrated to other issues. And you could go further outside of higher education to look at the way that arguments about sensitivity have circulated outside of higher ed. But in the last 10 years, they really began on student issues. 

Jana Cunningham: 

So a main argument in your book is, excuse me. Critics of sensitive students are missing the way that sensitivity is a condition of possibility for the work of teaching and learning that's central to the purpose of higher education. Can we explore that and what do you mean by that and why is that? 

Kendall Gerdes: 

Yeah. So I begin from and defend this premise that we have to be sensitive. It's a condition of possibility, meaning without it, none of the other structures of teaching and learning can exist. So without it we couldn't be affected by each other in language. That is to say teaching and learning depend on affection in language, our ability to move each other, challenge each other, and also wound and hurt each other. And that can happen just with words or representation. 

So genuine learning especially in the humanities is not just adding to what you already know, elaborating on the things that you came in believing or understanding. But genuine learning often challenges your structures of understanding and pushes you to transform the way you think about something. So higher education should not just be about the transmission of specialized knowledge from one set of experts to students, that kind of banking model of education. 

But really education I think is a common good, and equipping students to be good citizens and good neighbors is part of the work that the humanities has to do in higher ed. That means teaching students to negotiate across their differences and to deal with people that won't share their perspectives. That means that we have to do that work for ourselves too. 

Jana Cunningham: 

Right, right. Absolutely. 

Kendall Gerdes: 

I think that higher education is being targeted in culture wars and student activists targeted with claims of being too sensitive, in no small part because of the role of higher ed in shaping a healthy democracy. 

Jana Cunningham: 

So my last question which takes a turn a little bit, is a question I ask every single one of my faculty at the end of our podcast. What does this world know now because of your research that they didn't know before? 

Kendall Gerdes: 

This is a great question. It really challenges faculty to get to the point. 

Jana Cunningham: 

It definitely does. 

Kendall Gerdes: 

So I hope that readers of my book who are interested in higher education, who are interested in claims about academic freedom, will also get interested in rhetorical theory and will see how it can help us address ordinary everyday problems. 

I also hope that my book will help readers to see the pattern of arguments that invoke academic freedom against students, and to see how those arguments about sensitivity in the wider culture were first developed and test-driven in the microcosm of higher education. And I think we don't have to concede that criticism. So I hope that being sensitive can mean being open to being addressed, to learning, and ultimately to transformation. 

Jana Cunningham: 

Thank you, Professor Gerdes. I really enjoyed learning more about this book and about your research. 

Kendall Gerdes: 

No, thank you. 

Jana Cunningham: 

That was Kendall Gerdes, assistant professor of writing and rhetoric studies. For more information about the University of Utah College of Humanities, please visit humanities.utah.edu. And don't forget to subscribe to Humanities Radio. 

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Last Updated: 3/18/24