When I visited last Monday’s ethnic studies roundtable, I was surprised to find all of the opinions aired were in favor of the university’s ethnic studies requirement. The only complaints were regarding implementation issues. Supposedly, the purpose of the requirement is to promote cultural understanding. In this light, the requirement sounds like a social good both on the surface and in substance.

However, the good and the necessary are not always the same. The simple fact something benefits people is not enough reason to force it on people. Almost all things in the sphere of human life that are adopted, repeated and preserved are a result of a matrix of disparate choices and preferences. Requiring University of Wisconsin students to take an ethnic studies course subverts this process. As a result, taking one of these classes doesn’t need to be intrinsically attractive enough to overcome its costs for those who otherwise would not take one voluntarily.

To claim it is acceptable to require every student to take an ethnic studies course rather than letting these courses be subjected to individual preferences because they have some benefit is tantamount to assuming an institution knows what is better for individual students in some aspects than the individual students themselves do.

Even the requirement’s purported aim of developing a spirit of openness is not a completely harmless one. The culture of open-mindedness itself is an opinion – just one of many ways of viewing the world. A culture of open-mindedness is in opposition to other kinds of worldviews, such as ones that value traditionalism or ethnocentrism. Thus to make it mandatory for students to take courses oriented towards the culture of open-mindedness offends people with different worldviews. To think people who value traditionalism or ethnocentrism are “wrong” and it is in society’s best interest to “correct” them reveals a belief that people who value these things cannot possibly care about them as much as other people value causes like environmental justice.

UW’s ethnic studies requirement was proposed several decades ago, after a period rife with racially insensitive incidents in the campus community. I am all for preventing and punishing acts that result in harm or waste, like lynching and denial of employment based on non-competence-related inherent attributes. 

But the coercive power of society and the state should end at and be restricted to manifested actions. A worldview about society is beyond this realm where intervention is not as intrusive. 

Students should be left alone to ponder, develop, harbor and cherish their own social thoughts including bigotry, prejudice and misconception. Although these kinds of thoughts may be disturbing to many people, they do not limit anyone’s freedom or harm anyone. An intervention at this level is too much of a bother for an unapparent benefit.

It’s become easy to argue that requiring students to take an ethnic studies course is not an imposition of thought because students are still free to choose what to take away from the course, or students are still free to choose to skip classes, ignore assignments and boycott exams in the hope future employers would be enlightened enough to ignore an anomalous failed grade. 

But it’s also true that even in imposed behavior, there is still a refuge for potentially costly autonomy. The requirement is still tantamount to forcing students to be subjected to input some of them may not want to hear. If I walk alongside you holding a newspaper to your face that is hostile to your philosophies in such a way that you can still see where you are walking but you can also see the newspaper, you would still say it is wrong for me to do so.

Impositions on behavior, like rules against plagiarism, are crucial because plagiarism has a labor market implication of obfuscating the distinction between genuinely smart students and crafty ones. An imposition on behavior such as the ethnic studies requirement is not rooted in preventing harm and waste, but in an ideal. The ideal is stated clearly enough, but the universality of this ideal is questionable. It will remain questionable as long as non-cultural studies majors are not left to decide to take ethnic studies courses voluntarily. 

Heikal Badrulhisham ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in economics.