Imagine for a moment it is late Halloween night. As one child sleeps and the other is readying for bed, more than a dozen animal rights activists, disguised in ski masks, with a few goblins sprinkled among them, plant themselves at your front door.
"We know where you live," their blunt-voiced leader warns darkly. "Murder .Ê.Ê. slavery .Ê.Ê. greed .Ê.Ê. " hiss others. One woman, short, dark, with the hint of New York in her voice, alternately pelts you with outrage and weeps. A slim, blondish women beside her intones over and over that this butchery has to stop.
How do you respond to this spooky scene?
When animal rights activists showed up to protest my husband's research on learning in rats, we had to make an instant calculation, and we reacted, instinctively, as teachers. We did not order them off our property or slam the door in their faces. We did not raise our voices. Instead, guessing that most if not all the protesters were students, and struggling within ourselves for patience, we listened.
In the days since, friends and acquaintances have expressed their outrage at these protesters' tactics, and their incredulity that we would treat them with any patience at all. We have been lectured by friends and students alike: What these youthful protesters did was deceptive, invasive and cowardly, a tactic of bigoted hate groups and thugs; if these protesters had been interested in anything other than intimidation they would have removed their masks and come in when we invited them, or talked with my husband at his office.
Most of the well-meaning people to whom we have told this tale are certain they personally would have slammed the door in the protesters' faces!
So why didn't we? It is a question we have thought about more than once since this happened. Were we naive? Were we wimps? Or was something else going on?
Pondering these questions, and thinking about the people who stood before us, we can never be certain. But we do believe we assessed the situation accurately: Despite the angry eyes and slogans, we were not in immediate danger, and in these circumstances at least, listening and talking, and struggling to see the protesters as human beings under their masks, seemed preferable to invective.
More importantly, both my husband and I remember our own protests during another era, and aspire to be the kind of teachers we would have wanted as we were working to find and express our values. Both of us believe that universities are, or ought to be, places where people can engage in robust discussion and debate. We believe we have a responsibility to listen to what others have to say, and try to understand it. And we each believe that as university teachers, we have a responsibility to stand up calmly and openly for what we believe to be the truth, even if occasionally those we find ourselves teaching can't or won't.
Clearly, it is not our responsibility to offer ourselves to be bullied, particularly at home, where we feel most vulnerable. But as one friend who sympathizes with our actions pointed out to me, this encounter outside our house Ñ though unpleasant and ethically dubious Ñ appeared to be what some of us in the teaching profession like to call a "teaching moment," one of those uncommon moments, often outside the classroom, in life, when the potential for real learning suddenly presents itself. And in an instant's calculation, that is what we decided it was.
Hearing out the protesters during the hour or so that they stood before us in the chilly night air, we were astonished by the extent of the need for learning. None of the protesters knew what my husband does in his research; they knew he had brought research dollars into the university, but they had never read a paper describing his work; they assumed, wrongly, that the rats he uses in his research are in pain; they believed, wrongly again, that his work has no useful implications, or if it does that it would be possible to substitute computer models for the rats' behavior; they seemed to believe, too, that animals never make good models for people. And so both of us, teachers who have trained ourselves to listen to peoples' arguments and opinions, worked gingerly but diligently to counter the errors, the partial knowledge, and ignorance built into so many of the questions and accusations.
Did the protesters actually learn some things from us in this "teaching moment"? Probably not. But who can say? And what would they have learned if we had not engaged our teaching selves, if we had called them names, and slammed the doors on them instead?
As for ourselves, teachers are not the only ones who teach during such moments. Those we try to teach always are our teachers too. And in this case the individuals who showed up on our doorstep taught us several things:
I would like to apologize for my own actions in the intrusive visit to your home. I like to think of myself as a Buddhist and I strive for compassion towards all living things. I was embarassed and humbled by the way you and your husband courageously confronted a group of angry young masked activists and turned the confrontation into an open civil debate.
I have expressed my feelings about this to the other activists and we are all committed to non-violence; unfortunately some of us do not consider intimidation to be a form of violence. The students in our group have a great love for animals and they tend to distrust those in authority, so at times they are misguided, but they mean well. They are just frustrated at a system that seems oblivious to change. They are impatient and impetuous but they live by their ideals; they just have problems accepting the fact that others can't see what they see. They think that things will change overnight and that all creatures will be free of man's inhumanity to man and our fellow inhabitants of earth. I thank you for being patient with us.
I was also interested in organizing an open (maskless) forum about animals in research. Hopefully members of the research community and animal rights activists, along with whoever is interested, could express their views in a civil debate. It would help people on both sides and those in the middle to understand each other. If your husband would be interested in helping to sponsor such an event or if he knows of others in the research community who would be interested, please let me know.
I thank you again for your patience. I learned a valuble lesson that somehow in my exuberance to save and respect animals I had forgotten my core belief to treat all living things with compassion and respect. My humblest apologies.
Last updated: 31 December 1996
URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~poynter/tre3-5.html
Comments: pimple@indiana.edu
Copyright 1996, The Trustees of Indiana University