If you want the truth about LSU, ask a student
My "Last Lecture" upon retiring from LSU's faculty
When I gave my “Last Lecture” to a group of current and former students, faculty members, family, and friends at the Journalism Building at LSU on Wednesday night, it was a bittersweet experience.
I’m retiring from the Manship School’s faculty at the end of the semester, so the school kindly gave me the opportunity to say some final words to my students and others.
I used my time to pay tribute to my students and to reflect on what I learned from them over the past 18 years.
If you’d like to watch it, you can find the video at this link (you’ll need to fast-forward to the 25-minute mark). But, if you’d rather read it, here’s the text of my remarks:
When people ask me what I do, I always tell them, “I teach at LSU.” And that is what I do. But today, I’d like to talk about another aspect of this amazing job that I’ve been lucky enough to hold for the last 18 years.
And that is the privilege to learn from my students.
I am a teacher, but I’ve also been a student of the young people at this school, particularly those in my classroom.
Those of us who teach have the amazing honor to learn from the young people with whom we spend most of our days.
I’d like to start with a story:
It was my first semester teaching here, in the fall of 2006. I was full of enthusiasm, and eager to impart all my knowledge and wisdom to the graduating seniors in my political communication capstone course. I thought I was doing a fantastic job until the day when one of the students — his name was Kyle — dropped by my office.
After some small talk, he asked, “Can I be honest with you?” I told him to speak freely. Then, he said, “You’re losing this class.”
And I remember saying something like, “OK, tell me how that is.” And, oh boy, did he tell me.
He listed all the ways he thought I was teaching the class wrong, and it didn’t take me long to realize that he was right. So, I swallowed my pride and made most of the changes he suggested. And the course went pretty well from then on — at least, I think it did.
But what I learned in that first semester guided me for the next eighteen years. And they were simple insights:
Encourage and empower your students to speak out – in class and beyond, and create an environment that nurtures and encourages it.
Welcome criticism, and never take it personally.
And always remember that if we pay attention, the young people around this place have as much to teach us as we have to teach them.
After that first semester here, I wanted every student to feel they could talk with me as freely as Kyle did that day. I know most didn’t. But some did.
In return, I always tried to be their fierce defender in every way possible. In fact, nothing makes me angrier than hearing about a faculty member, administrator, or LSU president who has disrespected or insulted a student.
And that’s why I tell them all the time that they’re the reason we’re here. They’re why I have this job.
I tell them they have the right to speak out and be heard, to demand our best efforts on their behalf, and to criticize and challenge us if we don’t fulfill our obligations to them.
The way I see it, if I don’t encourage them to question me, how can I expect them to go and question others around this campus?
That’s how I’ve taught for many years. And that’s why teaching our capstone in political communication hasn’t only been great fun but also has allowed me to watch and learn from my students, who often take my admonition to heart and go about starting some “good trouble.”
What I’ve learned, sadly, is that this place — this institution of LSU — has failed them in many ways. Yet, they care about it, remain loyal to it, and have dedicated much of their time and effort to trying to make it a better place.
They do that out of love, not disdain. They do that because they feel connected to this institution and this state in a way that some administrators, who are just passing through, do not.
I always tell them they own this place — and they should act like it.
College faculty members sometimes get criticized for treating students like customers. I don’t think most of us do that, but that’s the perception.
I certainly never saw my students as customers. I thought they were much more important than that. I thought we owed them far more than good customer service.
But they own this place. I work for them, not the other way around. Or maybe it’s that I work with them. Whatever the case, I decided long ago that I wanted them to see themselves not as my customers, but as my collaborators.
In this course, I taught them about advocacy, activism, and starting “good trouble.” But mostly, I was teaching them to distrust those in authority because I happen to think that’s a good practice.
I never once told my students what they should make trouble about. That was always their decision. It had to be.
But I always tried to support them and help them achieve their goals, even if I didn’t agree with what they wanted.
At the beginning of each semester in the last few years, I’ve given them a reading assignment, something I wrote and published online a few years ago. I’d like to quote from it here. I wrote:
“Point #1: Let’s dispense with the notion that you must always behave civilly. In politics, civility is a tactic, not a virtue. If behaving civilly helps you reach your political goals, then do that. If, however, staging a rowdy protest, a sit-in, a walk-out, or delivering an angry speech works better, do that.
“If creative non-violence was good enough for Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., it’s good enough for us.
“To most leaders, a mindless insistence on civility is a way to control or limit speech or stifle behavior. Don’t let anyone set unreasonable limits for how you communicate with them in a political context.
“When someone says you should be civil, they are trying to ‘civilize’ you. Don’t let them.
“Point # 2: You are the equal of everyone who runs this place.
“I hope you stop treating the people who run LSU with so much respect and deference. Look around you. This campus is falling apart. We pay the football coach $10 million a year, while some custodial workers subsist on food stamps. We’re embroiled in countless scandals involving officials who covered up rape and sexual misconduct. We’re a piteous 172nd in U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of U.S. universities.
“So, let’s dispense with the notion that anyone around here knows what they’re doing just because they wear a suit to work or have an office with some wood paneling and nice leather furniture.
“Make everyone — from President Tate on down — earn your respect and deference. Don’t give it to them for free.
“Point #3: Please don’t approach administrators and other authority figures with the attitude of a supplicant. You are taxpaying, voting citizens of this state. If it weren’t for you, none of us on the faculty and staff would be here.
“Carry yourselves like the full-grown citizens you are. Demand that administrators here listen to you. And when they don’t, don’t be afraid to respond as forcefully as necessary to get their attention (within the bounds of the law, of course).
“If staging a sit-in in their outer office is what it takes to get a meeting with that administrator who’s been ignoring you for two weeks, then do that. And if anyone says you’re being uncivil, tell them, ‘Exactly! Thanks for noticing!’
“And consider not reflexively saying, ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, ma’am,’ to people around here. Most of you are polite young Southern men and women who’ve been taught from infancy that you MUST respect your elders. And that you MUST treat them with maximum deference. That’s fine for Thanksgiving dinner and church, but in the political realm, that’s nonsense. Gray hair doesn’t signify wisdom or moral standing.
“Treat the important people around here with deference if they’ve earned it. Or treat them with deference if you think their weak egos require stroking to get what you need from them. But, in the political realm, do it with a clear purpose in mind.
“Again, look around you. How many of the people running this place deserve the respect and deference that society expects from you? Not as many as they want you to believe.
“The bottom line is don’t let the ‘important people’ people set boundaries for how you think and act. Own your opinions and own your actions. Don’t let anyone — including me — tell you what to think about any political issue. You have agency. Exercise it.”
And, boy, did they exercise it.
I’ve seen my students fight for disabled students because they were touched by the struggles of people they see every day who this university is failing. They are filled with righteous indignation by an institution that seems better at erecting barriers to blind students than pulling them down.
I’ve seen them fight for these students, and I’ve been inspired.
I’ve been inspired to watch my students fight for better mental health services from the student health center – a center that is funded by the fees they pay each semester. I’ve watched them work passionately for classmates and boyfriends and girlfriends who were suffering from severe emotional distress and trauma and couldn’t get the help they needed.
I’ve celebrated students who took on the cause of removing the Confederate names on buildings around campus or the lack of diversity of the names on those buildings. And I was overjoyed a few years ago when their activism resulted in LSU removing the name of a Confederate admiral from one of the more prominent streets on campus.
I’ve admired my students who helped organize the Black football players to march on the president’s office a few years ago and demand better from their university.
Even though she wasn’t my student, I cheered on then-Reveille editor Andrea Gallo in 2013 when she sued the LSU Board of Supervisors to get information about the illegal and secretive search for a new LSU president.
I was in awe of a group in 2019 that doggedly investigated and uncovered evidence of LSU’s cavalier attitude toward sexual abuse and rape on this campus, months before the national and local media published some of the same findings.
Other teams in my class have assisted non-profit organizations, like STAR Advocates, as they fight to end LSU’s rape culture.
Over the years, students in this course have fought for the rights of pregnant students, deaf and blind students. They’ve advocated for better services for those with addiction. They’ve worked with the Parole Project to help prison inmates as they reenter society.
Just this semester, my students are advocating for an expansion of the American Sign Language curriculum at LSU and for better financial literacy training for all students. They’ve helped create a free clothes closet for students who need professional attire for a job or internship, or a job interview.
And they’re trying to expand access to Narcan to save lives from drug overdoses while some LSU officials try to suppress and denigrate their research to reporters and others.
Another group is working with Aly Neel and LSU’s Feminists in Action to distribute hundreds of free emergency contraceptive kits to students, no questions asked. By the way, they will be in Free Speech Alley tomorrow from noon to one handing out kits.
From one end of this campus to another, they’ve demanded that the people who run LSU do better. Often, they’ve been ignored. Over the years, they’ve been insulted and lied to by people in the System Office and beyond. But just as often, faculty, administrators, and staff members have worked with them, helped them, and become their champions.
Whenever these students ran into one of those brick walls, I resisted the urge to solve the problem for them. Instead, I’ve usually said some version of, “So what are you going to do about it?” And, usually, they found a way.
When they didn’t find a way, they learned valuable lessons, including the reality that the status quo at LSU isn’t just an ethos; it’s a zip code.
In both scenarios — being stonewalled or being welcomed — they learned valuable lessons. Usually, by the end of the semester, the ones who had the hardest time — those who got insulted or rejected or ignored — will tell me how much they learned from the experience. They’ll say their struggles and their failures taught them more than their successes.
They learned that they had to be collaborative, crafty, and conscientious. And many graduates have told me the lessons and skills they learned at the Manship School served them well in the real world.
Through it all, they inspired me and made me want to be a better person and a better teacher. And they also made me realize that if I was going to encourage them to raise some hell to make this place a better school, then I ought to be willing to do the same.
How could I encourage them to engage in dissent if I was unwilling to do it, too?
They taught me that I don’t know all the answers.
They taught me that, many times, the wisdom is already in the room and that my job is not to reveal it but to let it emerge.
They taught me that, despite what some people may think, this generation is not overly pampered or privileged. Of course, I’ve known students who’ve had every advantage and wasted it. But I’ve also known so many more students who worked two and three jobs to put themselves through school and never complained.
I’ve known students who struggled with mental illness, who battled cancer, who lost their homes, who lost a parent, or whose parents lost their jobs. And I will forever stand in awe of their courage and fortitude in the face of these extraordinary challenges.
But here are the most important lessons I learned from my students in this course and beyond:
They’re far more courageous and concerned with the truth than many of their elders.
They taught me the value of fidelity to the truth. They taught me the power of fearless truth-telling. They taught me the power of dissent.
And, watching them, I realize that we’re often so scared of dissent because we’re afraid of facing the truth.
We know from experience that, like most big institutions, LSU does always not value the truth, so we need students to tell us the truth. We know the people who run this institution are often motivated more by power, status, and money than by the truth.
This is why we need our students to show us the way. That’s why we need the students to reveal to us what this institution really is. And that is why the faculty must empower and encourage our students to do the work that many of the people who run this place are afraid to do.
Our students understand that many of the so-called grown-ups around here do not have the courage or fortitude to tell the truth. Too many have rolled over or remained silent in the face of the attacks on this university over the past 20 years.
If you’re looking for courage in this place — if you’re looking for someone willing to tell the hard, honest truth about LSU — look to a student.
I like to quote the British diplomatic historian A.J.P. Taylor from his book about wartime dissent, The Troublemakers. In it, he wrote:
Conformity may give you a quiet life; it may even bring you to a university chair. But all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no troublemakers, no dissenters, we should still be living in caves.
Of course, the spirit of this course has always been the spirit of the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, who famously said, “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
I never officially called the course “Good Trouble,” but I often told my students that’s what we should call it.
And I never did quote Walt Whitman in his preface to the Leaves of Grass to them, but I wish I had.
So, I’ll leave you all with Whitman’s words and hope that someday whoever teaches this course might share it them – the future troublemakers at the Manship School – because these words capture the spirit of the students I’ve been privileged to know and to learn from:
Whitman wrote:
This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
It's been the greatest privilege of my life to work in this place among some of smartest, most courageous, and caring young people anywhere.
After I retire, there will be lots about this place I will not miss. But I promise you that I will very much miss working with and among these amazing young people who taught me so very much.
A fitting and wonderfully crafted farewell , friend!
What a gift you have been to so many students. Beautiful last lecture.