CATO: The Perils of “Safe Art” - A Tribute to Nat Hentoff

Nat Hentoff was concerned with three things: the Constitution, being an atheist pro-life advocate, and jazz music, with the latter being his primary passion. Terry Teachout put it well when he said, “no writer did more for jazz.” Others agreed. In 2004, he was the first non- musician to be named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.

He was a man of balance - between reality and curiosity, between law and language, between atheism and accessing the beyond through music and storytelling and art. Though he didn’t believe in an afterlife, he died listening to records of Billie Holiday.

So, if Hentoff could see the illiberal state of higher education in the arts, he’d roll over in his grave. He’d also say, “I told you so.”

“A precedent has been set at, of all places, colleges and universities,” he warned in his 1991 article for Dissent, entitled Speech Codes on the Campus and Problems of Free Speech, “that the principle of free speech is merely situational...more and more expression will be included in what is forbidden.” The shrinking of permissible speech has come to pass in the least likely discipline, upheld by well-meaning artists in the name of tolerance.

Truthfully, as a college student, I might not have cared. I was a musical theatre major at the University of Michigan, and the only conservative in my 80 person program. I “cared” about free-speech, insofar as it didn’t put my career in jeopardy. In other words, I hardly spoke about it at all.

Then came 2016. The year of designated safe spaces and a new campus-wide strategic plan for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The year of then-president Mark Schlissel’s speech at a post- election vigil where he stated that, “ninety percent of you rejected the kind of hate and fractiousness...that was expressed during the campaign.” The year that Ben Shapiro came to campus.

Word of his show, entitled Truth is a Microagression, struck a cord within my program. There were sit-ins in the drama school lobby, where my fellow classmates decried the ‘racist’ YAF president for hosting the orthodox jew and making our campus ‘unsafe.’ I listened, my cheeks burning, a ticket to the show sitting in my inbox like a time bomb.

As I approached Hill Auditorium for the event later that week, I pulled up my hood and summoned the courage to walk past the musical theatre students who passed me on the sidewalk. It was then that the implications of shrinking speech came to bear on my life. I said nothing to my classmates the next day. I had everything to lose.

This safetyism, or the equating emotional discomfort with physical danger, has only permeated deeper into higher education in the arts since my graduation, as illustrated by recent events at my alma mater’s School of Music, Theatre and Dance. Though the examples are too numerous to list, the most egregious is the firing prominent composer and faculty member Bright Sheng for sharing Laurence Olivier’s Othello with his students. The skin-darkening makeup used in the 1965 film to depict the Moorish general was deemed ‘racist’ and ‘unsafe,’ words so familiar that they’ve lost their sting.

“But wait!” some tenderhearted liberals might protest, “there are no real, explicit speech codes in the arts! Show me where they’re written!”

Speech codes may not be explicit, but they are inherent, and have real-life impact on the free exchange of ideas. Under the threat of being fired or of knee-capping your career before it begins, free speech is simply impossible. Hentoff’s prediction has come to pass. Artists have become the censors, and only “safe art” is permitted on campus.

There’s only one problem: safe art sucks. Art is inherently risky. Historically, it has been used to safeguard against tyranny, make political commentary and stand against government overreach. It was a way to examine the uncomfortable and unpack the complicated. It was for everyone.

Now, it is for only those in religious lock-step with this new orthodoxy. Safe art, which panders to tribalism and institutionalized ideas, is not creative, or thought-provoking, or lovely. It undermines its own justification for existence.

As artists, what can we do? We can be braver than I was. We can speak freely, and allow our peers to do the same. We can, as Hentoff describes, “trust each other” other with risky art.

Bydalek is a writer, performer and administrator living in New York City. She is a proud graduate of the University of Michigan.