Ignore or Respond: When A Crank Appears at Academic Event

Today, I was at an event at Carleton that I did not organize.  I was on a panel on European security issues, with my role being the Canadian defence guy, more or less.  We had a member of the audience criticize us for being critical of Trump and then he went into the threat Muslims pose to Europe and North America.  The idea is that they will be a majority, yada, yada.

As he rambled, I had a very loud conversation in my ahead between two teams: TeamMarginalize and TeamEngage.  The former argued that we should just tune this guy out--we are not going to convince him of anything and we don't want to give him and his comments attention and time.  The latter argued that if we don't respond, it will appear that we condone his abhorrent views. 

Knowing me, you could guess that I would side with TeamEngage.  Well, it was not just me.  Each of the panelists took issue with various elements of this guy's rants.  One panelist made it quite clear our job as academics is to be critical, and that Trump has done things that are quite worthy of criticism.  Another responded that the problem is authoritarian rule, not religion. 

My basic take: all fundamentalisms suck, that Christian theocracy is just as problematic as Islamic theocracy, and Islam is not a threat to North America--white supremacy is.  I didn't go into the why's of that, although I would have argued that Islam and democracy are compatible, that there are plenty of Muslims in North America that support the values of the US and Canada, that more folks are being killed by white supremacists than Muslims, and on and on.

I would rather this guy never get the mic, but there is no way to make that happen.  So, instead, when he says something objectionable, I object.  I don't mind folks disagreeing with me from the left or the right--it happens all the time.  But I will push back against hate, and I was proud to see my co-panelists do so as well. 

Of course, we will never convince this guy of anything--as one Congressperson put it, it is like talking to a dining room table--but we need to stand up and say that these utterances are wrong.  Silence, in my mind, is complicity. 

Of course, I could just be rationalizing my
own tendency to spew...