Civil discourse that exceeds 150 characters

Social media exerts a powerful influence on college campuses. Has the technology helped broker new connections across ideological difference? Or has it simply siphoned students into conversations with those who share their views?

This was the topic of last Thursday’s inaugural Ethics IRL (or, in real life,) a new series organized by the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics. Its format, inspired by the 1980s PBS show “Ethics in America,” uses the Socratic method to engage Harvard community members on pressing issues.

Things got underway with moderator Nien-hê Hsieh, the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, posing a hypothetical: Assigned reading for a general-education course covers immigration, with students required to post their responses to a class discussion board.

One student writes: “I don’t understand why people who want to defend their country are being called racist, are being called xenophobic nationalists. Since when did it become a crime to defend the borders of your country?”

“I don’t see how you can live in a country where federal agents are ripping children from the arms of their parents and families,” responds another. “This is basically state-sanctioned trauma.”

On the panel were a dean, an activist, a journalist, an influencer, and a current undergraduate who largely avoids the technology. Hsieh instructed the group to put themselves in the place of students.

“I think this prompt is missing a very important piece of context, and that is whether or not the responses posted are anonymous.”

Soleil Golden ’24

“Would you give your honest opinion no matter what people might say in response to those posts? Would you carefully craft a neutral position and try not to attract your classmates’ attention?” he asked.

“I think this prompt is missing a very important piece of context, and that is whether or not the responses posted are anonymous,” answered Soleil Golden ’24, a premedical neuroscience student at Boston Children’s Hospital with more than 70,000 Instagram followers, who described using social media to hone her rhetorical skills. “If it’s anonymous, I think people would feel a lot freer in voicing their opinions.”

And what if the instructor pulled those comments into the lecture, pressing both students to elaborate on their positions?

“I think I’d be more inclined to speak out,” answered Brody Douglass ’27, an economics concentrator and Navy ROTC midshipman who said he limits social media in favor of in-person socializing. “I believe that, in general, better dialogue happens when it’s actually dialogue rather than just a series of discussion posts where words can be taken more easily out of context.”

Panelists offered a mix of deeply personal and evidence-based insights on the state of modern discourse. The series was introduced with support from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Civil Discourse initiative.

“Can we imagine how this would have played out on social media?” Hsieh wondered.

“Perhaps there would have been some grains of interesting conversation,” replied researcher and activist Yaёl Eisenstat, a policy director at the Cybersecurity for Democracy project at New York University, who noted the platforms’ influence on the very formulation of the assignment. “But chances are, in the way social media is constructed today, it would have been drowned out by the more emotional.”

And what if both students were doxed? What if the resulting fear drove one to withdraw from the university entirely?

“I think would be extremely sad if the first student left,” said Sewell Chan ’98, executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. Speaking directly to the charge that universities have become inhospitable to conservatives, he continued: “We live in a world in which 40 percent or more of the country not only agrees with student number one but would say things much harsher. If we’re acting like we’re so offended or bothered by student number one that we can’t handle what they said, that should say something about us.”

As the conversation progressed, panelists kept returning to the tension between the goals of higher education and the algorithmically driven platforms.

“Universities have a particular mission,” explained Rakesh Khurana, Danoff Dean of Harvard College. “Their mission is to search for Veritas, as close as they can get. They do that by bringing diverse perspectives and points of view to an environment. They create certain conditions that are different than free speech conditions, which is that you can say what you want to say but you have to defend it with reason and evidence.

“I can stand outside and say, ‘The Earth is flat;’ it’s perfectly within my free speech rights,” he continued. “I can say it in the classroom, but don’t expect it to get marked correct in my Earth and Planetary Sciences class.”

But Eisenstat said that social media algorithms actively undermine the pursuit Khurana described.

“The world that social media has helped create affects how students interact with each other on campus,” she argued. “What the world of social media has done is made it easier and easier to both choose your silos but also be pushed into silos that you’re not aware you’re being pushed into. … It’s the personalization. It’s the using all your human behavioral data to then turn around and target you with the information that is going to most appeal to your lizard brain.”

The event ended with panelists sharing suggestions for community members who want to help foster a climate more conducive to open exchange.

“Push yourself to engage with people who are not like-minded,” Eisenstat said. “But do not therefore think it is too hard to create the social media environment we want and to push for the legislation that would help.”

“I’ve spent hours talking to people online,” Golden said. “While those conversations can be frustrating and you can feel like you’re losing the argument, I have not engaged in any social interaction online where I haven’t walked away with a new piece of knowledge.”

“I now try to discipline myself,” Khurana said. “When I find myself disagreeing with somebody, I assume we’re plugged into different algorithms.”