It is the basic requirement of a journalist to be trustworthy. Yet at the same time as they receive readers’ trust, the journalist must also give trust back. They must trust that readers will treat reporting in good faith, that they will revisit their opinions if the information contradicts their current beliefs, and that they will channel those new beliefs into actions.
Democracy is also an exercise in trust. Each citizen must trust every other citizen to wield their political power well and trust their chosen institutions to channel that power to realize the societal good. Being a citizen requires confronting disagreements with persuasion and debate, not force. It also requires being open to being persuaded.
I come from Hong Kong, a place where I was told I couldn’t publish a piece I wrote for my high school paper because it was too politically sensitive. I came to the United States of America searching for a way to grow into my inherited citizenship. While doing so, I have grown into a journalist.
According to the intellectual historian Helena Rosenblatt, “the purpose of the liberal arts education is really to form freedom-loving and moral leaders.… [I]t’s supposed to train citizens.” So it was fitting that before transferring to UChicago, I started undergrad at a small liberal arts institution in Vermont—Middlebury College.
Middlebury is known for being a “little Ivy” due to its rigorous academics, excellent facilities, and the opportunities it affords its graduates. It is also known for a student protest over intellectual racism that put a professor in a neck brace.
In 2017, a student club at Middlebury invited conservative political scientist Charles Murray to speak about his 1994 book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. In it, Murray and his coauthor had argued that racial differences in IQ arose from both genetic and environmental factors.
Hundreds of students protested at Murray’s event at Middlebury. They turned their backs to Murray and called him a white nationalist. By shouting over him, they prevented Murray from sharing academically unsound and widely disproved opinions. They also prevented Allison Stanger, the professor interviewing him, from challenging those opinions.
Murray and Stanger were escorted to a different location to continue live streaming the event. After the interview concluded, they exited from the back of the building.
Protesters met them there, pushing and shoving them. They grabbed Stanger’s hair and twisted her neck. She sustained a concussion and neck injury.
In 2022, when I was a first-year at Middlebury, it was a bit of a rite of passage to uncover the Murray incident. In full honesty, I already intended to transfer to UChicago before I found out about Murray, in no small part because of UChicago’s professed belief in free inquiry and discourse. What happened to Stanger solidified to me the importance of colliding peacefully with potentially discomforting ideas and trusting in others and oneself to recognize their merit—or lack thereof.
Indeed, Laurie Patton, who was president of Middlebury College when Murray came to speak, chose to reference UChicago professor Geoffrey Stone in her response to the incident. Stone chaired the committee that wrote what is now known as the Chicago Principles in 2014.
“The neutral principle of no suppression of ideas protects us all. This is especially important in the current situation, for in the long run it is likely to be minorities, whether religious minorities, racial minorities, or political minorities, who are most likely to be silenced once censorship is deemed acceptable,” Patton quoted from Stone. “Censorship is never a one-way street, and this is a door we do not want to open, perhaps especially in the era of Trump.”
At UChicago, I covered protests and vigils for the Maroon. During my summer internships, I covered the Democratic National Convention, Wisconsin state politics, and then national politics. Each time I filed an article, I tried to be worthy of trust, and I tried to extend my own trust to my audience.
Of course, UChicago has also seen students attempt to silence controversial speakers. It has had to navigate the pitfalls of drawing lines between free speech and harassment, such as when a student brought viral attention to the Rebecca Journey’s The Problem of Whiteness course, causing an internet audience to send Journey death threats.
Perhaps to avoid repeating these instances of audiences shutting down or harassing speakers and attendees, the Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression holds many of its events off the record, with no recording permitted, “to ensure students can ask their questions freely and openly.”
It is difficult to find a national space for gathering to talk instead of to react. The news comes out, and there is no time to process it. Because of this, as a journalist, it is sometimes difficult for me to trust in myself and in my readers. I have felt before, publishing some article about national politics, that I am merely offering another magnifying glass to spark the inferno of polarization. My article would not spur any private conversation nor reflection, I remember thinking, but would create many X threads with angry comment sections. There would be no opinion-revisiting, no action-changing.
I have felt more hopeful about my work at the Maroon, in a community small enough for public information to inspire private discussions. I am grateful that, over my three years here, I’ve had the opportunity to share some of that information.
Perhaps the most optimistic I have felt about journalism has been when a trio of reporters from the Baltimore Banner came to speak with the Maroon, fresh off of winning a Pulitzer Prize.
Alissa Zhu, Jessica Gallagher, and Nick Thieme’s reporting on the fentanyl crisis in Baltimore was public. But it was built from hundreds of private conversations and gatherings they had with members of their community in Baltimore. It led to legislative action, nonprofit funding, and a new Restitution Advisory Board.
I am still figuring out how to be a better journalist and a better citizen. How can I become better at changing my mind when necessary? How can I trust others to do so? I do not pretend to know.
But I will continue reporting after I graduate. I am still hoping to help shape a democratic system—and an information-sharing system—worth believing in. I am holding out hope for a citizenry that can be more trustworthy and can better exercise trust in each other.
Tiffany Li is a fourth-year in the College and former editor-in-chief of the Maroon.
