Taylor N. Carlson and Jaime E. Settle. What Goes Without Saying: Navigating Political Discussion in America

Abstract

In her New York Times essay on self-censorship in the college classroom, Camp (2022), a University of Virginia senior at the time of writing, expresses frustration at a campus environment that seems to encourage students to withhold or conform their views under fear of social pressure. As part of a conversation about deliberation, I shared her essay with my political psychology class, who understood her frustration but also recognized the ways in which college campuses—and our small, liberal arts environment in particular—create more tightly networked groups of individuals than we experience almost anywhere else in our adult lives. In college, the people in your class are also the people you eat lunch with, go to parties with, and pursue romantic relationships with. The political discussion you have in class, while purely academic in theory, has the potential to affect your social life in ways that would lead most reasonable persons to pause before sharing a controversial take on current events.