Open Inquiry was founded to create a forum for students of all backgrounds and identities to discuss their views on topics without speech restrictions. The Record invited a selection of current and former members of the group to share the reasons it was established.
Open Inquiry started with a loose network of students sharing their dissatisfaction with the tenor of discussions in the classroom and hallways of HLS. These types of sentiments occurred across the political spectrum and among people with very different personalities, interests, life experiences and identities. There were phone calls, lunch meetings and hushed remarks after class expressing much of the same attitude: that intellectual exploration at Harvard was too often stilted and conducted within the ever-narrowing confines of what was socially acceptable.
Many of us were drawn to Harvard because of its intellectual reputation, so we expected a level of intellectual integrity and frankness that we then felt was noticeably absent from classroom discussion. That lack of candor resulted in many ideas held by individual students left unarticulated and unheard. Again and again, students felt confined both as speakers and as listeners.
No recollection about the founding of Open Inquiry can ignore a complaint shared many times: that the culture at Harvard — and academia more generally — results in so many stances evaluated not on the viewpoint itself but rather on the individual expressing them instead. The questions are always: ‘Can this person, given his background and experiences, make this claim? Can or should an uncomfortable idea be discussed by anyone?’ Of course, not only does this analysis extinguish so many interesting exchanges from the get-go, it also doesn’t put to rest those verboten ideas because it leaves their merits untouched. And so, to borrow from Karl Popper, views in class can’t even be wrong because they could never be proved otherwise.
Thus, a year and a half ago, “Open Inquiry” was formalized. Preliminary meetings coalesced, and a constitution and framework were developed and approved. A group of friends — including a member of FedSoc, a leader in the movement for Black lives, an advocate of veganism, a handful of technocrats, a Latter-day Saint, a #MeToo demonstrator, moderate Democrats and assorted others — got together at John Harvard’s and started pitching topics that few were willing to broach in the classroom. People engaged each other in discussion and debate, exploring important and controversial issues in groups, both large and small, and even in more intimate one-on-one discussions.
Although Open Inquiry as an organization is viewpoint and content-neutral, we have learned that the proposition of an open inquiry is not an entirely valueless one. To capture and express our group’s goals, we created our founding principles to help foster the environment we aim to create and which are stated at every meeting. Our mission, plainly stated, is “to promote open inquiry through open inquiry.” To achieve this, we encourage three actions: first, state your views candidly, even if they are controversial; second, try to understand one another in good faith; and third, publicly defend a culture of open inquiry both at Open Inquiry and in the HLS culture at large.
We are excited to see the rising classes continue this tradition, even as our own Fall semester proceeds virtually. We know our frustrations about inquiring at HLS aren’t limited to our class year or our eclectic mix of ideologies and political opinions, so we believe its continuity is paramount to all future students. We are confident the intellectual culture at HLS can match its reputation, and we remain steadfast in believing that it can be done by changing how we choose to conduct ourselves as students.
To join the Open Inquiry mailing list to be involved in upcoming (online) events, please email inquiry@groups.io.