Last week, Stute News Editor Ben Knobloch reported on Stevens’ “average” free speech ranking, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The methodology docks universities with high controversy, leading to an abysmal rating for Harvard University. A friend of mine, a Harvard sophomore, denied that Harvard has a free speech problem, and then told me to look up “Harvard doxxing truck.”
Last weekend at Harvard, the Palestine Solidarity Committee issued a statement saying they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” cosigned by 34 student organizations. This was met with near-immediate rebuke from Harvard professors, national politicians, the Harvard Jewish community, student organizations, and co-signers started to rescind their signatures. Within days, a billboard truck drove around Harvard campus displaying the names and faces of student cosigners with the heading “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites,” and websites appeared with full lists of the cosigners’ personal information, including social media profiles, hometown, and past employers.
Something like this could never happen at Stevens. I don’t think we have some kind of moral high ground above Harvard; I think Stevens students simply don’t care enough about current events to mobilize like that. Free speech culture at Harvard is certainly not innocuous, though it’s hard to say that it’s unequivocally better here. Is it better to have a culture where the conversations are avoided altogether, or where speaking out on issues you are passionate about leads to retaliation? A good free speech culture seems to me to be where a student openly shares their beliefs and the opposition can respond, both without fear of retaliation. Few Stevens students talk openly about their political beliefs, and after four years, I still don’t know the political beliefs of many of my classmates because they never come up.
In the classroom at Stevens, students are rarely, if ever, asked about their opinion on the world around them. Even though most students are here for a technical education, development and exposure to alternate worldviews are integral to a college education. Too often, when I bring up any politician’s name, national or international news headline, someone will respond “I don’t really keep up with politics.” Stevens’ students have such an aversion to the humanities that articulating their opinion can be a difficult conversation. You don’t have to study political science, yet some people overuse “I’m not into politics” to dismiss talking about current events and humanitarian issues. The indictment of a former president is not just politics — it’s pivotal American history. Issues like war in Ukraine and Israel are nuanced and deserve our attention, even if we aren’t studying international affairs. Thinking critically about the information we consume and staying informed on world issues is a basic requirement of being a well-rounded, educated adult, and it’s lacking in American culture.
Americans are more polarized than ever, and part of it has to do with our news consumption. In 2022, Pew Research Center reported that “half of U.S. adults get news at least sometimes from social media.” 33% of TikTok users, 37% of Reddit users, 44% of Facebook users, and 53% of Twitter users said they regularly get news from their respective sites. It’s very difficult to consume unbiased news in this way, because social media algorithms are not designed to show you a balanced perspective. Your feed is designed to encourage engagement, either by showing you what you like and already agree with or something so stupid you have to leave a comment saying how wrong it is.
Even if you never plan to leave New Jersey, you have a humanistic duty to be informed about world events. We get too caught up in our bubble and forget there are other important, life-or-death problems out there. To me, the purpose of engineering is problem-solving for the betterment of humanity. You will be a better engineer, and a better person, if you know about the issues that other cultures face and why people feel strongly about them. How can you consider yourself a highly educated individual if you’re ignorant of the world around you?
