“Adversarial” is a loaded term that bears frequently negative connotations of combative and even hateful contact. However, adversaries can also be simply any individuals, groups, or ideas that meet in active conflict with each other—and conflict can be productive. Thinking of the adversarial in terms of conflict and specifically addressing that conflict in the classroom, there could be pros or cons to the deployment of or engagement in adversarial relationship between students and teachers:

Cons – the possibilities and products of unhealthy conflict:

• Disrespect between adversaries
• Extreme polarization of adversarial positions can lead both parties to extreme camps of ideas and willful ignorance
• Pre-existing power gradients between adversaries can lead to abuses of power
• An unwillingness or inability to engage confidently and respectfully in conflict can lead one or both parties to disconnect from the environment altogether
• In productive environments (like the classroom), can disrupt the unity or community of the institution

Pros – the possibilities and products of healthy conflict:

• Engaging with opposing viewpoints can lead to more thoroughly vetted conclusions
• Conflict engaged in respectfully can create mutual respect between opposing individuals or groups
• Allowing space for conflict to be explored allows both sides the opportunity for voice and to build confidence in their viewpoint through both articulating it and being heard
• The competition that can be inherent in conflict between adversaries can develop and inspire greater personal interest by each party
• Conflict can teach both parties not only better ways of continuing to engage in conflict, but can also teach new and nuanced views

In 501 this week, we’re also talking about the rise and role of the English Department. We read some of Martha Nussbaum’s Cultivating Humanity. She has a lot to say about the value of acknowledging differences and conflicts that may exist within a classroom, claiming that “We all learn most from a curriculum that contains dissent and difference, an interaction of opposing views.” More specifically, she says:

A central role of art is to challenge conventional wisdom and values. One way works engage in this Socratic enterprise [Nussbaum’s footnote: that is, the search for truth by engaging in debate with and questioning those with whom one disagrees] is by asking us to confront—and for a time to be—those whom we do not usually like to meet. Offensiveness is not at all by itself a sign of literary merit; but the offensiveness of a work may be part of its civic value. (Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2^nd ed., pg 2317)

The tricky thing, I think, about navigating the role of the adversarial in the classroom is remaining conscientious as the instructor—and, in some ways, as the symbol of the authority of the academic institution—that I occupy a role of authority and power in the classroom. Differences and conflicts between students and teachers can be productive as long as teachers do not exploit their power over students they are in conflict with, and as long as both parties can remain respectful even in the midst of conflict.