To prevent yourself from going astray as a victorious rebel, stay focused on the ways in which power compromises self-awareness.
Remind yourself frequently of your own established values. Setting aside your need to consolidate power, are your present actions truly consistent with your desired legacy? How would you like future generations to remember your accomplishments after gaining power? Are there ways to exercise power that are more humane, rational, and reasonable? Are you abiding by the golden rule of doing unto others as you would like done unto you? Are you going further, as the playwright George Bernard Shaw advised, and taking into account other people’s unique needs and perspectives in determining your treatment of them? To help yourself remain compassionate, commit to two key principles of leadership: (1) block measures or rules that degrade or unfairly treat the minority; and (2) block measures that offer the majority extra privileges. You fought hard to level the playing field for your in-group. Now do your utmost to keep it leveled for the next generation of conformists and non-conformists alike.
THE QUESTIONS WE MUST ASK
I’ve referenced historical examples in this chapter, but the question of how victorious rebels come to treat minorities is an urgent contemporary issue. As I write this in 2021, historically oppressed minorities in the United States are on the verge of claiming unprecedented powers and perhaps even joining the establishment. American society is supporting gay rights as never before. Women and people of color are gaining unprecedented (albeit still imperfect) access to the levers of power in academia, business, and government. For the first time in American history, racial minorities are poised to become the numerical majority.
Although this shift in power remains incomplete, now is the time to raise difficult questions about the exercise of power and the responsibilities that it entails. Are the ascendant members of the new establishment poised to “win responsibly”? What can they do to ensure that they don’t exercise the same repression imposed on them as disempowered minorities? Few people dare to pose such questions, fearing that others will accuse them of trivializing historical oppression. I do not downplay the need for justice and a shifting of power toward underrepresented minorities. But having immersed myself in the psychological research presented in this chapter, I wonder: What is the endgame of the fight against oppression? What, ultimately, do we hope to accomplish, and what kinds of actions and policies will get us there? Unless proponents of historically oppressed groups clarify their goals, their attitudes will likely shift upon gaining power, reinforcing the fortunes of their own tribes and diminishing the ideals of equality and justice for which they have long fought. Our country might be better off now, but worse off than it could be.
As traditionally underprivileged minorities gain power, they must take care to exercise restraint. Rather than simply hire, respect, or listen to people who look and think as they do, they should retain a healthy respect for difference and welcome in everyone, including those who might not pass the usual ideological tests that progressives cherish. Influence should stem from our intellect and wisdom, not our skin color, gender, socioeconomic background, sexuality, or any other perceived difference. Let’s allow for a thriving discourse in which everyone’s ideas are subject to critique on their merits, and in which skepticism and insubordination of all kinds are encouraged.
All of us, whether Rebels Who Won or the Newly Powerless, should carefully consider how we voice our skepticism. Across social media, righteous disagreement easily morphs into unbridled wrath, and our expressions of legitimate concerns can destroy a person’s well-earned reputation, career, and livelihood within a single twenty-four-hour news cycle. Champions of historically oppressed minorities have been as guilty of such discursive recklessness as their opponents. In 2020, several students at Skidmore College circulated a petition with fifteen demands to increase racial justice, with number three being the immediate firing of Professor David Peterson, who had been teaching jewelry and metal classes at the college for thirty-one years. His classes were boycotted. He was harassed online with e-mails and social media postings claiming he was racist, sexist, and transphobic. On the door of his classroom, somebody posted a sign with the following statement:
STOP: By entering this class you are crossing a campus-wide picket line and breaking the boycott against Professor David Peterson. David Peterson is notorious for the blatant sexism he treats his female students with, his outwardly transphobic treatment of trans students, and his general disregard for all students who are not white cis men . . . This is not a safe environment for marginalized students. By continuing to take this course you are enabling bigotted [sic] behavior on this campus
What did Professor Peterson do? He did not engage in racial discrimination, he did not use derogatory language, he did not hold offensive signs, he did not even express a point of view. What he did was quietly attend a rally with his wife, listening to speakers support local police officers. The president of the university contemplated terminating Professor Peterson and began a two-month investigation into student accusations. Professor Peterson was found innocent of all charges. Still, thousands of outraged students and members of the local community jumped to their own quick conclusion and crushed this sixty-one-year-old man’s reputation. Nobody was held accountable for the public denouncements that he was racist, sexist, and transphobic, including an article (littered with factual errors) published in the college’s Skidmore News. In the absence of evidence to suggest he did anything wrong, students were able to tarnish a reputation built over thirty-one years of loyal employment. Isn’t one purpose of college to acquire information and perspectives beyond what you previously possessed? Wouldn’t it be valuable to inquire about someone’s side of the story before demanding their termination? Instead of affirming norms of fairness and treating everyone with a sense of dignity, students in this case (and others) perpetrated a climate of fear that coarsened public discourse. We must be vigilant about becoming what we previously despised.
THE BIG IDEA
In addition to showing restraint and mustering empathy and charity for the Newly Powerless (even if they didn’t show such generosity of spirit themselves), the Rebels Who Won should welcome good faith skepticism from all quarters, recognizing skepticism’s power to reshape and refine orthodoxy to everyone’s benefit. Relatedly, they should welcome humor.
Poking fun is a long-standing strategy for dealing with power shifts, so long as it comes from a place of understanding, good faith, and an honest desire to provoke thought. Elites and oppressed groups alike are quick to decry humor pointed at them, but a good deal of humor embodies exactly what principled insubordinates advocate: mild transgressions of social norms. At their best, comedians are truth-tellers, saying what the rest of us notice but are afraid to touch. Humor allows us to pose questions about people or practices that that baffle and intrigue us. As I’ve suggested in relation to the false accusation against Professor Peterson, an attitude of “I can say whatever I want to whomever I want in any way that I want” is highly problematic, no matter who is saying it. But political correctness is equally problematic because it stifles debate. Society benefits when well-intentioned humorists notice something dysfunctional and nonsensical in any corner and poke fun.
When President George W. Bush vowed to avenge the September 11, 2001, attacks, we plunged headlong into an ill-fought war in Afghanistan that continued for another twenty years. Stephen Colbert skewered the president, the war on terror, all of it, in what is considered the most controversial comedy routine ever given at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (where journalists are supposed to roast the U.S. President in good fun). Colbert mocked Bush for his premature decision to start a war with Iraq and declare the Iraq War over:
I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.
Brilliantly succinct. And then Colbert dug in:
I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message: that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound—with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.
But when Colbert first told these jokes, conservatives were outraged, and sent voluminous amounts of hate mail (“Mr. Colbert’s employer, Comedy Central, said it had received nearly 2,000 e-mail messages” within forty-eight hours). As a member of an oppressed group gaining power today, you must hold the same standards of truth-telling—whether it goes for or against your tribe. If you lean liberal and enjoyed that ribbing of President Bush, you must show the same willingness to hear the truth about the foibles of your own tribe members.
It has become harder to joke about anyone without causing offense. Perhaps we should allow jokes about minorities for the sake of a thriving marketplace of ideas, so that society can continue to reap the benefits of insubordination. In their Time magazine essay titled “Make Fun of Everything,” mixed-race comedians Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele bemoan the assumption that being other than White, male, heterosexual, and able-bodied implies fragility. What’s worse, they ask, “making fun of people or assuming that they’re too weak to take it?” There is value in equality, and the true measure of progress might come when we can jest about societal overcorrections and hyperbolic statements and not cause offense. As comedian Bill Burr attempted to do in skewering disingenuous gestures:
Gotta @#$ing apologize to everybody. This is how screwed up my country is right now. You know Bryan Cranston, right? That dude did a movie. He played a quadriplegic and people gave him sh!t. . . . “Why is there an able-bodied person playing a quadriplegic?” It’s like, “It’s because it’s called acting. . . .” See, if he was a quadriplegic playing a quadriplegic, that’s not acting. That’s just @#$ing laying there, saying sh!t that someone else wrote.
Rooted in brutal albeit playful honesty, comedians offer society a gift. Regardless of which area of the political spectrum is being satirized, comedians provide warnings when society is adrift and slipping into nonsensical territory.
The desire to protect the Rebels Who Won from even the most modest of attacks is understandable given America’s history of oppression. But members of these groups must ask themselves what the endgame is. Equality under the law and in the workplace is one thing. But as long as we view the disabled, particular races, sexes, and sexual orientation as too weak to be spoofed, we’re putting them beneath members of the historical majority. In his most famous speech, President Teddy Roosevelt urged his audience to be the one who actually enters the arena, “whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds . . . and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” Allowing others to make fun of you and jesting in good faith—in short, breaking with a pernicious form of political correctness—is one portal that grants entry into the arena.
As the research in this chapter also suggests, protecting members of formerly underprivileged groups from attack can have serious and unintended consequences. Unless they’re careful, members of these groups and their supporters risk fomenting new injustices upon taking power. The last thing our broken world needs is more trauma, aggression, and tit-for-tat competition, but that seems inevitable unless today’s Rebels Who Won take it upon themselves to do better than previous generations of rebels have done and show compassion for those they’ve supplanted. Let’s break from the zero-sum thinking that holds that we’re right and our opponents are wrong. Let’s break from the drive to consolidate power over the Newly Powerless at all costs. Let’s protect not merely members of our own tribe, but the respect for insubordination that has always undergirded efforts at social change.
Rebels shoulder a great deal of responsibility once they’ve taken power. But the burden doesn’t rest on them alone. The Newly Powerless must psychologically train themselves to remain open-minded in the face of unfamiliar or unwanted ideas. If you’re in the majority, what’s the healthiest way to react when someone identifies flaws in your existing assumptions? As we’ll see in the next chapter, non-dissenters can help improve society by truly listening to others whose ideas differ from their own—with expressions of curiosity and intellectual humility. Only by exploring the messiness and discomfort of principled insubordination as it is, not as we hope or want it to be, can we access the best available ideas. Science has uncovered some principles and guidelines that just might help.
RECIPE STEPS
1. Engage with the Newly Powerless. Pushing against your tribal impulses, reach out to your former adversaries and shore up a shared identity to the extent you can. Provide assurances to everyone involved in the war of ideas—friends, foes, and neutral observers—that their opinions still count.
2. Stay focused on the ways in which power compromises self-awareness. Remind yourself frequently of your own established values. Setting aside your need to consolidate power, are your present actions truly consistent with your desired legacy? Do your utmost to keep the playing field leveled for the next generation of conformists and non-conformists alike.
3. Nurture critical thinking. Rebels Who Won should welcome good faith skepticism from all quarters, recognizing skepticism’s power to reshape and refine orthodoxy to everyone’s benefit.
PART IIIHARNESSING DISOBEDIENCE
CHAPTER 8
Engage the Outrageous
How to overcome barriers that prevent us from heeding unconventional ideas
We’ve encountered many heroes thus far, intrepid non-conformists who took great risks for a greater good. I’m proud to say I’ve personally had a brush with one of them: a grant administrator at the University at Buffalo’s Department of Biomedical Informatics. In 2007, Cheryl Kennedy, then a thirty-year-old graduate student and project coordinator at the university’s Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions, became a whistleblower. She expressed grave concerns about her boss, Dr. William Fals-Stewart, our joint mentor and a prominent addictions researcher. For years, Fals-Stewart published numerous papers and secured tons of research grant money. Behind the scenes, some students (myself included) sensed something wasn’t quite right. We wondered, for instance, where he recruited 120 couples for a study on the effectiveness of a substance abuse treatment program. He handled the consent forms. He handled the payments. Nobody other than Fals-Stewart ever met a research participant.
Cheryl decided to take action. She knew that accusing Fals-Stewart of academic fraud carried major career risks. Fals-Stewart paid her salary, and as a graduate student, she had little power. But Cheryl was convinced Fals-Stewart had committed academic fraud. “I’m a very strong person,” she told me. “I’m not intimidated by people. I don’t care what your job title is.”
I wish I could say Cheryl emerged victorious and unscathed after her act of principled insubordination, but that’s not what happened. The institute followed up on her information, summoning Fals-Stewart to appear before an ethics panel. They asked him for addresses of the therapy clinics where he collected data, and he provided them. Visiting the clinics, panel members found no evidence that he had ever performed research. Concerned, they asked Fals-Stewart for signed consent forms from study participants. Before he could produce them, a warehouse that apparently contained the sole copies of the research documents burned to the ground in a suspicious fire.
A formal misconduct inquiry launched by the university mandated a hearing for investigators to obtain testimony from Fals-Stewart’s witnesses. Coincidentally, Fals-Stewart said each of these witnesses happened to be out of town. They could only testify by phone. If you can believe it, the inquiry panel accepted his story instead of delaying the investigation. Each witness testified that Fals-Stewart’s research was legitimate. In a made-for-movie plot twist, the witnesses were actually paid actors who had no idea they were participating in a formal proceeding (I swear I’m not making this shit up). The script they read required them to impersonate Fals-Stewart’s actual staff members and deliver false testimony in a real hearing. Each actor read a script that included the name of the person responsible for burning down the warehouse, destroying documents, and fabricating the data. That name was Cheryl Kennedy, the whistleblower. Somebody had leaked her identity to Fals-Stewart, and this was his revenge plan.
Based on “witness” testimony, the ethics panel acquitted Fals-Stewart and, incredibly, fired Cheryl. But that wasn’t enough for Fals-Stewart. Cheryl had engaged in fraud, Fals-Stewart insisted. He intended to sue the University at Buffalo for defamation of character. Here he overstepped—big-time. His lawsuit caught the attention of the New York State’s attorney general. After looking into the case, the State of New York charged Fals-Stewart with fourteen felonies for defrauding the government by accepting grant dollars with fake data. A few weeks later, Fals-Stewart killed himself.
Although Cheryl ultimately succeeded in bringing Fals-Stewart to justice, the process devastated her. The institute’s leadership accepted his accusations and fired her without due process. After the attorney general exonerated her, she received zero compensation in damages. Not a single person uttered, “I’m sorry.” Nobody backed her up or offered protection, and as she relayed in our conversation, “it fucked with my life.” To this day, she remains ostracized by fellow academics.
Listening to Cheryl tell her story, I felt both moved by her heroism and outraged by the shitty treatment she received. It was important, I thought, to prevent the next Cheryl from being disrespected and unfairly punished so that the rest of us could benefit from the important truths whistleblowers and other non-conformists tell. What might have helped members of the ethics panel and other institute leaders listen more carefully to Cheryl and take her more seriously? How might any of us better champion people living on the margins who, lacking the “right” credentials, nevertheless possess the best ideas and solutions?
Sifting through psychological research, I uncovered three powerful mental barriers that close our minds to alternative notions we encounter. Although listening to unfamiliar, provocative, or creative ideas is never easy, understanding and overcoming these barriers can help. Our psychology makes us vulnerable to the arguments and assumptions of authorities and the incurious among us who unthinkingly support the status quo and render certain beliefs and speakers off-limits. Fortunately, we can train ourselves to listen to non-conformists in a more even-handed manner, focusing less on the messenger and more on the value of the information itself. When we hear ideas that really do have merit, we can build on them, increasing the extent to which non-conformists persuade the majority.
THE BIG IDEA
