The Certainty Trap and “Taking Sides” in Librarianship

Calls for libraries to adopt positions on controversial matters of public policy are not only presumptuous, but a violation of public trust.

[Image: college.library (University of Wisconsin-Madison) “Opposing Viewpoints Display” [flickr.com]. Reproduced under a Creative Commons License].

The first post on this Substack was an open letter entitled “Against Radical Empathy” (signed by myself and other colleagues) in which we argued – based on findings from the social psychology literature – that the American Library Association officially adopting “radical empathy” as a professional principle in librarianship in lieu of neutrality was misguided at best and would actually be harmful to library workers and users alike.

It was encouraging to see the debate that this article generated both in the comments section and on social media, for it brought out a diverse range of opinions, some positive but others sharply critical. One Twitter poster in particular took exception to the question posed in the text: “If empathy is intended to foster ‘solidarity’ with one stakeholder group in the community, does this not imply that this will be in opposition to another?” The poster answered to the effect that, “if it means taking the side of the marginalized against bigots, then, yes.” This response revealed not only a distinctly Manichean view of the world but one in which the motivations of great numbers of people are assumed as originating only in “bigotry” rather than any legitimate, good-faith argument, thereby justifying “siding” against them.

A similar worldview was on display in a library services panel webinar I attended the week following publication of the open letter, in which the presenters stated (apparently to the approval of many of the participants) that:

• We need to align ourselves with our communities;

• We have to pick a side, we need to act now, we don’t have time for liberal democracy to deliberate;

• Because our public funding models [i.e., municipal or other public funding] limit what we can do, we need to break those relationships and rebuild them so that we can take sides;

• If we did this, the vast swath of the public would support us.

I was struck by the extent to which these librarians endorsed “taking sides” in favor of certain members of the public and against others, even if it means totally disrupting the nature and functioning of their publicly-funded institutions. What also astonished me was the confidence the participants displayed, not only in the moral rectitude of their convictions but in the idea that the public would support any and all actions based on those convictions.

I believe that many librarians have – for all their good intentions – fallen into what University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign sociologist Ilana Redstone (writing at Tablet) calls the Certainty Trap, or the “resolute unwillingness to recognize the possibility that we may not be right in our beliefs and claims” and that “there’s more than one way to see a given issue.” As a result, those under its sway are invariably led to believe that if people disagree with them, it can only be because of “ignorance or hateful motives.” And yet, she writes, “outside of [the] walls [of the Certainty Trap] lies a third possibility…that can shape how we engage: One might have principled reasons for the position they hold. And when we refuse to hear or recognize those reasons, we can’t communicate.”

The Certainty Trap, she argues, is fuelled by three fallacies: the Settled Question Fallacy, the Fallacy of Known Intent and the Fallacy of Equal Knowledge. The first simply asserts that the matter in question is closed to any further debate, when many reasonable people can argue that it isn’t; the second assigns malign motivations to people rather than acknowledging they may have good faith arguments; and the third arrogantly assumes that, if only one’s opponents knew what you did, then they would agree with you.

I would suggest that many of our colleagues appear to have fallen into the Certainty Trap and as a result are willing to condemn entire sectors of the public upon whose taxes their libraries depend.

To demonstrate, let’s imagine what “taking sides” and “aligning with” specific communities on a number of key highly contentious issues – and, by definition, against others members of the community – would actually mean in practice. Imagine, for example, if your library adopted a public position on:

• Defunding the police: A public library declaring that their local police should be defunded or abolished would need to explain its reasoning to the 81% of Black Americans who, according to a 2020 Gallup poll (conducted a month following the murder of George Floyd) want the police presence in their neighborhoods to remain at the same levels or be increased.

• Critical Race Theory: A public endorsement of CRT on the part of a publicly-funded library would likely result in heated public meetings with Black and biracial parents like this mother, or this dad,  or this dad, or this father and daughter arguing that the framework is divisive, essentialist and racist. Were the ALA to adopt such a statement at the national level it would have to further publicly align its membership against BIPOC writers concerned with anti-racist policies such as John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Coleman Hughes, Chloé Valdary, Adolph Reed, Cedric Johnson and Irshad Manji.

• Abortion: A public affirmation of reproductive rights on the part of a library would mean alienating a majority of regular church-going Catholics and other faith groups in the community (like Hindus and Sikhs) as well as secular opponents with good faith ethical – and even feminist – concerns regarding the procedure that have nothing to do with “bigotry.”  

• Gender-inclusive intimate public spaces: A declaration by a library that all local intimate public spaces (e.g., changing rooms and showers) should be gender-neutral would likely face objections from many Muslims and Orthodox Jews, for whom segregating such spaces by sex plays a significant role in their respective faith traditions.

I could go on. And note that I am not advancing or endorsing any of these counterarguments myself, only pointing out that they exist, that they have nothing to do with “bigotry” and that they are sincerely held by multiple constituencies in every community – groups that no library can afford to alienate or antagonize. While there are of course actual bigots and racists in every community, the point is that the matters listed above and many others besides are all issues on which reasonable people should be free to disagree on the basis of principle, and about which we should be able to engage in good-faith discussion. Yet, as we have seen, a partisan public declaration on the part of a publicly-funded library on any of them inevitably means standing in opposition to some – or indeed, many – members of the public representing entire cultural or faith-based groups. Put plainly, “taking sides” is incompatible with the value of multiculturalism.

Further practical (to say nothing of ethical) problems arise when one gives the proposition the slightest scrutiny. Would “taking sides” mean going beyond a symbolic public policy declaration on the library's website to, for example, altering the collections policy so that no book from the contrary view is ever purchased again? Would all existing books in the collection representing that perspective be discarded? Would all public speakers representing that point of view now be forbidden? Would patrons be informed that staff will no longer be assisting with research inquiries into that point of view? The implications would be absurd if they weren’t so chilling.

But this ethos also assumes an ideological uniformity on the part of library staff: that they would all speak with one voice on these issues, which would surely not be the case, leading to internal resentments and antagonisms, or at the very least staff not daring to express themselves openly.

More problematic still, this ethos essentializes the specific stakeholder groups themselves. It assumes, for example, that all Black people think and speak with one voice, without acknowledging the diversity of opinions among this stakeholder group and every other community with whom a given library would presume to “align.”

In short, any attempt on the part of publicly-funded libraries to adopt and declare stances on these and other controversial matters of public policy – to take a side – is completely inappropriate and would constitute a violation of the trust placed in these institutions — and one which could come at great cost.

This is why library neutrality matters: just as the separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of religion by guaranteeing freedom  from religion, so too does neutrality guarantee freedom of thought by guaranteeing freedom from one particular way of thinking.

Contrary to the stated opinion in the webinar I attended that a majority of the public would support the breaking  apart of public funding arrangements and adoption of partisan positions on complex and controversial issues, I believe the vast majority of the library-going public would actually be  deeply upset to find their taxes being spent on disruption to the basic, commonly-envisioned purpose of a public library.

As a society we do need to be better-equipped to grapple with the inequalities facing many marginalized populations in our communities as a result of a host of complex (or “wicked”) socio-economic and political problems. But identifying and legislating policy interventions is the domain of community organizations, policy analysts, politicians and planners – operating through relevant government departments and agencies and with public input  – who have been educated and trained in this function and have the political capacity and funding at their disposal to implement their initiatives. Such tasks are far outside the realm of librarians’ expertise. As such, libraries "taking sides" on public policy issues would not only fail to result in changes to actual material conditions in the community, but would derail the unique, meaningful contribution they can make to the public policy function, which is enabling informed debate.

As for the imperative to pick a side – abandoning our historic mission to remain above the fray of partisan politics to do so  – because there is “no time for public deliberation,” we must be cognizant of the threat such a view poses to democracy. As urban planning scholars Thomas Harper and Stanley Stein note,

A practical crisis (such as an environmental crisis or the disintegration of urban society) may suggest the need for radical political change, but it does not necessarily imply the need for a radical methodological and philosophical break with tradition. If radical approaches…require a rejection of our fundamental moral notions and much of our underlying liberal democratic consensus, they will not be able to engage in a dialogue with other views that still accept the basic liberal democratic consensus. This leads in the direction of coercive intervention (182).

Accordingly, any library taking a side must by definition impose that side and try to coerce the public into adopting  it – a startling and profound subversion of the missions of the public and academic library! However, I suspect that many activist librarians would be perfectly sanguine about this prospect if it meant “standing against bigotry.”

But here’s the thing. The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of bigotry is the “obstinate or intolerant devotion to one’s own opinions and prejudices” – in other words, the very Certainty Trap into which many librarians appear to have succumbed.

I worry about this rhetoric because I believe it represents an existential threat to our profession’s ability to contribute to an informed, functioning democracy. In its place, I hope we can instead engage in a renewed conversation about public service based in intellectual humility, fallibilism and a respect for the ethical and values diversity in our communities, so that the myriad pressing issues facing our society may be openly and fruitfully debated. 

References

Harper. T. & Stein, S. (2006). Dialogical planning in a fragmented society: Critically liberal, pragmatic, incremental. CUPR/Transaction.

Redstone, Ilana. “The Certainty Trap.” Tablet May 9th, 2022. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-certainty-trap

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