I DON'T expect all of you to like all my columns. What makes me mad is when people criticize me without bothering to understand my arguments.
Being a columnist has taught me to actually read or listen to people's arguments before criticizing, even if I know we have different perspectives. But criticism of a professor's new book shows some people need to learn that lesson. Before the book even has been published, it has encountered a firestorm of criticism. Journalists and politicians only should criticize books they've read.
Judith Levine's new book, "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex," criticizes how we think about minors and sex. According to a CNN article about the book, Levine "argues that young Americans, though bombarded with sexual images from the mass media, are often deprived of realistic advice about sex." I don't find this argument very controversial. I might disagree with the way she proves it, but I won't know fully unless I read it after it comes out.
The book won't be published until May. A few excerpts are up online, but very few people - mostly reviewers - actually have read the book. Yet it has inspired a firestorm, even within our own newspaper.
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Predictably, any book that suggests we not let our children grow up in the dark about sex is going to be hit by a firing squad from some who think that means promoting teen sex. But the uproar over this particular book is premature. Minnesota State Representative Tim Pawlenty argues the book should not be released because it "advocates child abuse" ("University of Minnesota Plans to Review Press Procedures," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 8). Yet he never quotes any of the book. Since the book hasn't been published and he isn't a reviewer, it's doubtful that he's read it.
If you read an excerpt from the book published on the University of Minnesota Web site entitled "Pedophilia," you would not find the advocacy of "state-sanctioned child abuse" that Pawlenty claims.
It is true that sex has consequences, but this book does not deny that, as one Cavalier Daily columnist alleges. Rather, in a Q&A session posted online by the University of Minnesota Press, Levine argues that our attempts to protect children from knowledge of sex fail and ultimately put them at risk.
The uproar over this book shows a disturbing problem in academia and politics: Too frequently, interest groups on both sides of the spectrum attack things a person has published without even bothering to read them, simply because they tend to disagree with the author. This criticism expresses a person's own point of view or agenda instead of really examining what the author has to say.
This needs to stop. True free exchange doesn't work if we assume a person is arguing in bad faith or taking a morally repugnant point of view just because that person's view is usually ideologically opposed to our own. This is intellectually lazy because instead of really confronting the argument, we assume the person doesn't have anything enlightening to say.
One example that comes to mind is a controversial book about race, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's "The Bell Curve." After the book was published in 1994, it received an avalanche of criticism for a discussion of a possible relationship between race and IQ statistics that was considered racist. Now, this may very well be true, but I haven't read it.
Certain academics read it and reviewed it in peer publications, some favorably and some not. But many members of liberal advocacy groups simply assumed it must be racist, partly because it discussed race and IQ in the same book, and partly because Murray has an extremely conservative reputation.
Looking over reviews of the book, the vast majority of the most vehement critics could not cite anything in it, leading me to believe they haven't read it. These critics were not debating the authors' arguments, but rather used the book as a platform for their agenda to stamp out racist utterances.
Similarly, the publication of Levine's book has been used by those who are against sex education in schools to denounce someone whom they see as too liberal. Because Levine appears from her biography to be liberal, many people never will pay attention to her argument - they've already judged it.
True intellectual discussion requires becoming familiar with an argument before criticizing it, which includes reading books before condemning them. If we're not going to do people the courtesy of understanding their argument, there's no point in making it in the first place.
(Elizabeth Managan's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at emanagan@cavalierdaily.com.)
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