龚鹏程x汤普森·福特｜学术自由受到不同敌人的威胁

龚鹏程对话海外学者第七十一期：在后现代情境中，被技术统治的人类社会，只有强化交谈、重建沟通伦理，才能获得文化新生的力量。这不是谁的理论，而是每个人都应实践的活动。龚鹏程先生遊走世界，并曾主持过“世界汉学研究中心”。我们会陆续推出“龚鹏程对话海外学者”系列文章，请他对话一些学界有意义的灵魂。范围不局限于汉学，会涉及多种学科。以期深山长谷之水，四面而出。

理查德·汤普森·福特教授（Professor Richard Thompson Ford）

美国斯坦福大学法学教授

龚鹏程教授：您好。人们普遍认为，扩大公民权利并更加坚定地执行这些权利可以让社会不公正现象消失。 然而，在您的《权利的错：法律如何破坏争取平等的斗争》（Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality）一书中，您认为尽管有时权利运作得很好，但有时它们可能适得其反，使社会问题变得更加困难。 您能为此做一些阐释吗？

理查德·汤普森·福特教授：龚教授，您好。基于权利的社会正义的途径，具有将控制权置集中在个人手中的优点。如果您觉得自己受到了虐待，法律赋予您寻求纠正的权利。至少在理论上，这些权利将得到执行，不去考虑成本和收益或对他人的影响。因此，以该权利过于昂贵或会造成超过其对个人的利益的社会危害为反对合法权利的有效论据是无效的。

但是这种方法有几个明显的缺点。它不能保证社会正义，因为它的目的不是解决系统性问题——而是孤立地解决问题。

例如，美国法律禁止就业中的种族歧视，这有助于当一个符合要求的个人仅仅因为种族而被拒绝工作时。但是，对于缺乏社会经验或缺乏获得好工作所必需的“软技能”的贫穷和孤立的非洲裔美国人来说，这几乎没有什么作用。机会不平等的问题比面临非理性偏见的个人更大。

此外，个体化执法无法解决广泛的系统不公正问题，因为何时起诉是由个人决定的。因此，法律倾向于那些拥有知识、时间和资源来驾驭法律体系的人——那些已经相对富裕的人。

更糟糕的是，由于法律不考虑社会背景，而只考虑个别情况，因此滥用行为可能已经成熟，有时实际上会使更广泛的社会问题变得更糟。

例如，禁止性别歧视的法律——明确旨在促进女性平等——被男性用来攻击酒吧的“女士之夜”促销活动，甚至是母亲节的赠品。而且，更严重的是，通过对种族意识的肯定来纠正几代种族歧视的影响的努力，已被攻击为对白人的“反向歧视”。

A rights-based approach to social justice has the virtue of placing control in the hands of individuals. If you feel you have been mistreated, the law gives you an entitlement to seek redress. And these entitlements, at least in theory, will be enforced regardless of the costs and benefits or the effects on others. So, it is not a valid argument against a legal right that the right is too expensive or will cause social harm that outweighs its benefit to the individual. But this approach has several severe downsides. It cannot guarantee social justice because it is not designed to address systemic problems—instead it addresses problems in isolation. For example, American law prohibits race discrimination in employment, which helps when a clearly qualified individual is denied a job solely because of race. But it does little to open job opportunities to poor and isolated African-Americans who lack the social connections or “soft skills” necessary to get good jobs. The problem of unequal opportunities is larger than an individual facing irrational prejudice. Also, individualized enforcement can’t address broad system injustices because the decision of when to sue is made by individuals. So enforcement is skewed toward the claims people who have the knowledge, time and resources to navigate the legal system—those who are already relatively well off. Worse yet, because the law does not look at social context, but only at individual cases, it can be ripe of abuses and sometimes actually make the broader social problems worse. For example, laws prohibiting sex discrimination—clearly designed to advance women’s equality—are used by men to attack “Ladies Night” promotions at bars and even Mother’s Day giveaways. And, more seriously, efforts to redress the effects of generations of race discrimination through race conscious affirmative have been successfully attacked as “reverse discrimination” against whites.

龚鹏程教授：在您最新的著作《着装规范：时尚法则如何创造历史》（Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History）中，您概述了时尚法则和服装习俗的历史。 作为一名民权学者，您认为时尚法的哪些方面很有趣，时尚与歧视等民权问题又有怎样的关联？

理查德·汤普森·福特教授：着装规范与服装本身一样古老。几个世纪以来，服装一直是可穿戴身份的象征。时尚，争取社会变革的武器；和着装规范，一种维持政治控制的方式。在由社会等级结构和景观定义的中世纪社会中，穿着像王子和屠夫的妻子一样戴着宝石镶嵌的王冠的商人是公敌。

在都铎王朝的英格兰，丝绸、天鹅绒和皮草被保留给贵族，而被称为“行李箱软管”（trunk hose）的膨胀裤（ballooning pants）可能被认为是对良好秩序的威胁。

文艺复兴时期的佛罗伦萨族长科西莫·德·美第奇 (Cosimo de Medici) 抓住了时尚和着装规范的力量，他说：“一个人可以用两码红布制成绅士（One can make a gentleman from two yards of red cloth.）。”

着装规范随着当时的社会和政治理想而演变，但它们始终反映了权力和地位的斗争。在 1700 年代，南卡罗来纳州的“黑人法案”（Negro Ac）规定黑人穿着“高于他们的条件”（above their condition）是非法的。在 1920 年代，美国各地的工作场所都禁止自由奔放的女工穿着短发和合身的连衣裙，而在 1940 年代，黑人和拉丁裔男性喜欢的宽松的 Zoot 西装（zoot suits）在东海岸到西海岸的城市引发了骚乱。

即使在当今更加非正式的世界中，着装规范仍然决定着我们穿什么、什么时候穿——以及服装对于我们来数意味着什么。人们会因为编辫子、长指甲、大耳环、胡须和纹身或拒绝穿西装、打领带、化妆和高跟鞋而失去工作。在一些城市，穿下垂的裤子是一种犯罪行为。

即使没有书面规则，隐含的着装规范仍然会影响机会和社会流动性。硅谷的 CEO 们穿着 T 恤和人字拖，为整个行业定下了基调：穿着时尚连衣裙或高跟鞋的女性，在科技界面临嘲笑，一些风险投资家拒绝投资任何穿着西装的人经营的公司。

我的书，着装规范，介绍了从中世纪到现在的时尚规律历史，走在历史的红地毯上，揭开和审视服装的经典、习俗和习俗——那些我们经常认为理所当然的规则。阅读了着装规范后，您将永远不会再认为时尚是肤浅的——穿衣也将不再一样。

Dress codes are as old as clothing itself. For centuries, clothing has been a wearable status symbol; fashion, a weapon in struggles for social change; and dress codes, a way to maintain political control. Merchants who dressed like princes and butchers’ wives wearing gem-encrusted crowns were public enemies in medieval societies structured by social hierarchy and defined by spectacle. In Tudor England, silk, velvet and fur were reserved for the nobility and ballooning pants called “trunk hose” could be considered a menace to good order. The Renaissance era Florentine patriarch Cosimo de Medici captured the power of fashion and dress codes when he remarked, “One can make a gentleman from two yards of red cloth.” Dress codes evolved along with the social and political ideals of the day, but they always reflected struggles for power and status. In the 1700s, South Carolina’s “Negro Act” made it illegal for Black people to dress “above their condition.” In the 1920s, the bobbed hair and form-fitting dresses worn by free-spirited flappers were banned in workplaces throughout the United States and in the 1940s the baggy zoot suits favored by Black and Latino men caused riots in cities from coast to coast.

Even in today’s more informal world, dress codes still determine what we wear, when we wear it—and what our clothing means. People lose their jobs for wearing braided hair, long fingernails, large earrings, beards and tattoos or refusing to wear a suit and tie or make-up and high heels. In some cities, wearing sagging pants is a crime. And even when there are no written rules, implicit dress codes still influence opportunities and social mobility. Silicon Valley CEOs wear t-shirts and flip flops, setting the tone for an entire industry: women wearing fashionable dresses or high heels face ridicule in the tech world and some venture capitalists refuse to invest in any company run by someone wearing a suit.

My book,Dress Codes presents a history of the laws of fashion from the middle ages to the present day, a walk down history’s red carpet to uncover and examine the canons, mores and customs of clothing—rules that we often take for granted. After reading Dress Codes, you’ll never think of fashion as superficial again—and getting dressed will never be the same.

龚鹏程教授：您是学术自由联盟（academic freedom alliance）的成员，这是一个坚持学术自由原则的非营利组织，成立于 2021 年。您能否简要介绍一下该组织的起源和宗旨？ 您认为在美国大学里言论自由吗，您认为“取消文化”的恐惧被夸大了？

理查德·汤普森·福特教授：AFA 是由具有不同意识形态信念的人组织起来的，他们的共同信念是学术自由受到许多不同敌人的威胁。有一种“取消文化”（cancel culture）的想法已经成为右翼的稻草人。但是，虽然这个词被过度使用，但存在一种由恶意骚扰和排斥所强化的意识形态正统观念的真正问题。

有些职位被简单地视为具有放射性，结果是人们不再愿意讨论某些事情，因为他们会害怕变成骚扰的对象标。

从左到右，我们看到了针对使用“错误”过时术语或在涉及种族、性别、性别和性别认同的问题上采取有争议但站得住脚的立场的人的攻击。

反对英国作家 J.K.罗琳（J.K. Rowling）就是一个很好的例子：她对跨性别问题的看法是有争议的，在我看来，这应该受到挑战；但它们并不是仇恨或卑鄙的，她提出的问题值得大众讨论。但是有一种反应，经常被那些不知道她的表述的人所接受，将她称为一个恐跨症的偏执狂。

这种耻辱一直伴随着她，尽管她做得很好，但其他分享她的观点但不同意她的地位和财富的人，无疑会因为她是榜样而不去发表看法。

还有一个更大的右翼人士的审查问题：例如，我的大学斯坦福大学的一名刚毕业的学生因其对巴以冲突的评论，而成为组织良好且极具误导性的媒体宣传活动的目标，并且一位美国参议员加入了反对她的十字军东征。她丢掉了作为记者的工作，因为她作为一名大学生担任了有争议的职位。

具有讽刺意味的是，虽然她被攻击为敌视以色列国，但她是犹太人并且在以色列生活过。

或者考虑一下由福克斯新闻等媒体和机会主义政客积极推动的对“关键种族理论”（ “Critical Race Theory.”）的恐慌。从字面上看，没有一个攻击批判种族理论的人为他们的主张引用实际证据，许多人甚至承认他们不知道批判种族理论是什么。然而，这场骚扰运动导致了禁止教授“批判种族理论”的行政命令和立法。

同样，美国各州现在禁止教授性取向（所谓的“不要说同性恋”法）（Don’t Say Gay”laws）。这是反对高等教育或探索威胁自己地位和特权的思想的人们对知识自由的直接攻击。

所以，我认为这里有一个真正的问题，随着意识形态两极分化的加剧，这个问题变得明显。

在大学校园里，管理人员经常采取更容易的方式，屈服于纪律或谴责发表有争议言论的教师的要求。无论要求审查的人是学生还是校友，他们都是在错误地加强对宽容的看法，还是保守的校友、捐助者和越来越多的反对，不利于他们自己议程的想法的政客，都会发生这种情况。

这违反了学术自由的理想，并且有可能将校园变成只公开表达保守和没有挑战性的想法的地方。AFA反对这种狭隘的思想和极权主义的思想，无论它出现在哪里，也究竟是谁在背后支持。

The AFA was organized by people of very different ideological convictions who were joined by a shared belief that academic freedom was under threat from many different enemies. There is the idea of “cancel culture” which has become a sort of scarecrow for the right. But while the term is overused, there is a real issue with a sort of ideological orthodoxy that is enforced by vicious harassment and ostracism. Some positions are simply considered radioactive and the result is that people are no longer willing to discuss some things for fear of being targeted with a harassment campaign. From the left, we’ve seen attacks directed at people who use “wrong” outdated terminology or take controversial but defensible positions on questions dealing with race, sex, gender and gender identity. The campaign against the British author J.K. Rowling is a good example: her views on trans gender issues are controversial and, in my view, deserve to be challenged, but they are not hateful or mean spirited and she raises questions that merit civil discussion. But there’s been a reaction, often taken up by people who are ignorant of her actual statements, to tar her as a transphobic bigot. This stigma follows her to this day and although she is, of course, doing just fine, other people who may share her views but not her status and wealth, are undoubtedly deterred from speaking by her example.

There is an even larger issue of censorship by very powerful people on the right: for example, a recent graduate from my university, Stanford, was targeted for her comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by a very well organized and quite misleading media campaign and the crusade against her was joined by a U.S. Senator. She lost her job as a reporter over defensible if controversial position she took as a college student. An irony there was that while she was attacked as hostile to the state of Israel, she is Jewish and had lived in Israel. Or consider the panic, actively promoted by media outlets such as Fox News and by opportunistic politicians, over “Critical Race Theory.” Literally not one of the people attacking Critical Race Theory has cited any actual evidence for their claims and many have even admitted that they don’t know what Critical Race Theory is. Yet this harassment campaign has resulted in executive orders and legislation prohibiting the teaching of “Critical Race Theory”. Likewise, American states now prohibit teaching about sexual orientation (the so called “Don’t Say Gay” laws). This is a direct attack on intellectual liberty by people who oppose higher education or the exploration of ideas that threaten their own status and privilege. So, I believe that there is a real problem here, which is becoming more pronounced as ideological polarization increases. On college campuses, administrators often take the easier path and succumb to demands to discipline or censure faculty who make controversial statements. This happens whether the people demanding censorship are progressive students and alumni in a misguided effort to enforce their view of tolerance or conservative alumni, donors and increasingly, politicians who oppose ideas that are inconvenient for their own agendas. This is a violation of the ideal of academic freedom and it risks turning campuses into places where only anodyne and unchallenging ideas are openly expressed. The AFA opposes this kind of narrow mindedness and totalitarian policing of thought wherever it appears and whoever is behind it.

龚鹏程，1956年生于台北，台湾师范大学博士，当代著名学者和思想家。著作已出版一百五十多本。

办有大学、出版社、杂志社、书院等，并规划城市建设、主题园区等多处。讲学于世界各地。并在北京、上海、杭州、台北、巴黎、日本、澳门等地举办过书法展。现为中国孔子博物馆名誉馆长、美国龚鹏程基金会主席。