Fixing Civil Discourse Starts With an Ethics Requirement

Harvard is infamous for its inability to foster civil discourse among students.

Last month, Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 identified a key factor chilling speech on campus: faculty activism. As classroom conversation chills and political contentions rise, veritas — a symbol of Harvard’s commitment to intellectual truth-seeking and integrity — is at stake.

If Harvard is serious about its commitment to a neverending pursuit of truth, a meaningful ethics requirement is the first place to start.

The University has placed among the bottom of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s college free speech rankings for the past three years, penalized for its “abysmal” campus speech climate, high rates of student self-censorship, and a “yellow” light for restrictive speech policies. A report from Harvard’s Classroom Social Compact Committee even found that only 35 percent of the Class of 2024 answered “agree” or “strongly agree” when asked if they were comfortable expressing opposing views on controversial topics in their courses.

Surprisingly, Harvard’s response was more of a jumble of administrative buzzwords than substantive pedagogical reform. Harvard convened an Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue Working Group and established a Classroom Social Compact Committee. These administrative abstrusities have only seemed to float above the classroom spaces, with the noble aim of reshaping norms and dialogue, yet lacking the concrete strategy to achieve it.

While this top-down approach might be an effective way to signal University values to administrators, donors, and the public, these initiatives are completely divorced from the realities of the classroom.

Free speech has no silver-bullet solution, yet the introduction of a College-wide ethics requirement will move Harvard in the right direction. Ethics offers a practical skill set that encourages students of all concentrations to engage in good-faith disagreement. It poses questions with no single objective truth, nor a faculty-endorsed one. Moreover, an ethics course engages both faculty and students — neither opinion holds power in the conversation.

Establishing an ethics requirement at Harvard serves a two-fold goal: curbing the effects of faculty activism and alleviating concerns that students participate in implicit censorship. If Harvard wants civil discourse to exist beyond the bounds of abstract mission statements and committees, a true ethics requirement is the answer.

Moreover, an ethics requirement demands more than a mere General Education class. Current Ethics and Civics offerings — GENED 1192: “Philanthropy, Nonprofits, and the Social Good” and GENED 1189: “U.S. K-12 Schools: Assumptions, Binaries, and Controversies,” to name a few, silo ethics into narrowly-focused, discipline-specific courses, but a true ethics requirement explores moral disagreement broadly, tackling the most contentious questions facing our nation. To avoid overwhelming students with a new requirement, centering the Gen Ed requirement on ethics offers a workable solution.

Ethics taught in this vein is available for all students, and can be applied in flexibility across fields — from the regulation of artificial intelligence, to reproductive rights, to climate policy.

Take GOV 1090: “Biotech Ethics.” The course progresses deliberately from ethical theory, to case studies, to building real policy frameworks — each segment feeding the next. Assessments aren’t so much about memorization or cramming, but rather involve live debate simulations in which students argue a moral position and absorb the counterattacks in real time. With 45 percent of the grade tied to section participation — not just talking, but rather active listening, engagement, and the will to change one’s mind — the classroom culture itself becomes part of the curriculum.

In discussing abortion, for example, I was surprised to see students share opposing views so openly. Discussing when life begins, how far bodily autonomy extends, and whether fetal viability changes the moral calculus, filled our first section discussion. Rather than fighting one another with amorphous politics, we were forced to engage in the normative questions underneath. I found myself interrogating my own beliefs more closely, for example, on whether conception alone is sufficient to constitute personhood.

I’ve seen firsthand that students have the capacity to talk about contentious issues — if given the right environment. We can blame faculty for injecting their personal politics too heavily, or the perceived restraint of students, but without a platform to dilute these effects, Harvard’s complaints are fruitless.

Some might contend that an ethics requirement risks becoming just another meaningless box to check. But, if Harvard is serious about amending our culture of civil discourse, we ought not leave this vision with abstract committees and disconnected administrators. We must embed it in our curriculum for both faculty and students to learn, practice, and carry beyond campus.

College is a uniquely formative experience — a time for finding ourselves and refining our moral standpoints. Harvard should help students rise to that occasion and allow us each to pursue our own, unique version of veritas.

Ava M. Ribaudo ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Government concentrator in Leverett House.