by Patrick Randall | A new social-justice initiative sinks into irrelevance.
In light of the campus controversies of the past year, two Tufts students have decided to create what they call the “Social Justice Arts Initiative.” In an email sent to members of the Music, Drama & Dance, Art & Art History, Media Studies, and Ex-College Departments, co-coordinator Alexi Paraschos claims that the purpose of this initiative is “to create dialogue pertaining to issues of social justice through the lens of the visual and performing arts,” and especially “to address inequalities that result from institutional discrimination.” The planned culmination of the effort will be an event in the spring of 2009, presumably to showcase the artistic activism fomented by the initiative.
The underlying problem with the Social Justice Arts Initiative is a problem with the term “social justice” itself. It is predicated on the false assumption that living in society creates moral obligations beyond those that already apply to the individual; specifically, it holds that every individual has a moral obligation to reduce inequalities of every kind. It also asserts that these extra obligations can be transferred to organizations of individuals, which is the source of related terms like “corporate responsibility.” Philosophically, then, the very concept of social justice is anti-individualist, anti-capitalist, and anti-American. Justice cannot be compartmentalized into “social justice” or any other kind of justice.
There are several reasons that the Social Justice Arts Initiative will be a colossal waste of time, energy, and money. First, the artists and ensembles likely to participate have little visibility on campus. The same handful of students and faculty forms the sparse audience at concerts of groups like the New Music Ensemble (NME), which has lent its voice to the failed walkout on the war and other fringe activities on campus.
Second, it has always been the myopic arrogance of many artists to presume that their work can effect social change. This comes from a belief that art plays the role of instigator in society and that it causes the events which, in reality, it can only reflect. There are notable exceptions to this, of course, such as the 1830s Belgian Revolution, which was incited by a performance of the nationalistic opera La Muette de Portici. But as inaccessible as opera is to the modern audience of common Americans, the music of groups like the NME is completely meaningless to even the majority of cultured students at Tufts. Moreover, many artists fail to understand that art can never be as meaningful as the reality it depicts. When artists play chicken with powerful aspects of the human condition like prostitution, war, and racism, without an understanding that a gap will and must remain between the art and the reality, they only cheapen their art forms. The pen is rarely mightier than the sword.
Many activist artists, realizing that their work has no revolutionary potential, have adopted the rhetoric of “awareness” instead. According to these people, their work heightens awareness of the injustices they fight. This will probably be the approach taken by the Social Justice Arts Initiative, which, ideally, would illuminate issues pertinent to the average Tufts student in an innovative way and convince him, in the words of Gandhi, “to be the change [he] wishes to see in the world.” This is the favored tactic inside liberal academia, where music and drama majors actually can influence the policy responsible for “institutional discrimination.” After all, administrators do not have artists in mind when they flatter the student body with phrases like “future leaders of America.” So artists can either embed themselves in insulated, friendly environments where they have power (like universities) or convince the rest of us to create change in the wider world. The goal of the Initiative encompasses both of these approaches in an attempt to reform Tufts.
Here, then, is the third reason the Initiative will fail: It will only be preaching to the choir. No one will uphold social justice who does not already believe in it, and new converts are unlikely to be made by contemporary art, which is mostly useful for testing the outer boundaries of what art is. If the Initiative wishes to be culturally relevant, perhaps it could speak to rapper T.I. and ask him to promote social justice at Spring Fling instead of using the word “nigger.”
The exact nature of the injustices that the Initiative hopes to combat is unclear. Parsachos made specific reference to the PRIMARY SOURCE carol and the Diva Lounge incident, but beyond that only defined “social justice issues” as “social inequalities related to issues such as race, gender, sexual orientation, national/ethnic origin, religion, and socioeconomic class.” Even more unclear is how Tufts as an institution has promoted these inequalities, as Parsachos implies, since he is obviously not referring to the university’s unfair admissions practices. But since the Initiative will ultimately fail to silence those it is aimed at discrediting, these questions are irrelevant. It will only be a useful lesson in the ineffectiveness of any effort under the banner of “social justice,” a term that can be replaced by “leftist, politically correct agenda.” Until its proponents recognize that their peculiar brand of justice is scoffed at by those who are the targets of real injustice, they will always be preaching to the choir.
Mr. Randall is a junior and co-President of the Tufts Symphony Orchestra.
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