What's in a name?

guest column on March 5

The most telling part of her analysis, however, occurred in a comment in which she ventured the following observation: “The statements I read on Princeton FML and The Daily Princetonian are the sorts of things I have never heard uttered in person. I can only conclude, then, that some members of our community behave respectfully toward others not out of a genuine concern for people’s feelings, but rather because they do not want to be seen behaving badly.” If this insight is a precise perspective into the problem underlying the devastating commentary we have witnessed, it is also, I think, an equally acute means of approaching a solution. Why not do away with the anonymity of online comments and require contributors to post their name and affiliation? No, this does not cleanse our campus of the malicious posters, but it stripes them of their most lethal weapon and reliable defense — their anonymity. The Daily Princetonian already makes registration possible for all — not just student — users. And if we’re concerned not just with eliminating pernicious posting but even with elevating campus dialogue to a useful, intelligent and humane discourse and with cultivating the concept that there should be no place on this campus where members of our community may avoid responsibility for their words and actions, then I would argue that Princeton as a whole would highly benefit from an emboldened reclaiming of online identity.

Objection: What about freedom of speech?

An important point, indeed, for it is this freedom that, more than any point, argues for the elimination of anonymity in our campus discourse.

This University was first inhabited by the same generation that signed the Declaration of Independence and ratified the Constitution. The signers considered the freedom of speech so fundamental to the new republic that they wrote it first on the list of amendments to the Constitution that were aimed to safeguard essential liberties. To these men, the freedom of speech meant the freedom to speak out against tyranny and orthodoxy — and they risked their lives for doing so. There was real responsibility — and real consequence — to their speech. After signing the Declaration, Benjamin Franklin is alleged to have remarked, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” We all learned that John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress, signed his name the largest so the King would require “no spectacles to read it.”

It is true, of course, that many of these same men published significant works anonymously and that anonymity holds a privileged place in the history of the circulation of ideas. For example, Franklin contributed to his brother’s newspaper under the pseudonym of Silence Dogood, while James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay all shared the pen name Publius to draft the “Federalist Papers.” Even today the pseudonyms of famous authors — Mark Twain, George Eliot and Lewis Carroll — are more familiar to us than their actual names — Samuel Clemens, Mary Ann Evans and Charles Dodgson. But it is important to examine why they published anonymously. Surely they did not seek to evade responsibility for what they wrote. Franklin penned moral adages for as wide an audience as possible; he did not want his singular identity to detract from the impact of his ideas. It was already common knowledge that Madison, Hamilton and Jay were prominent and outspoken federalists. In the fragile political climate of the 1780s that threatened to be torn asunder over the very question of the supremacy of the new constitution, no doubt these men veiled their identities to draw attention away from their own persons and the polarizing factions that revolved around them. Evans wrote in an age when literature was dominated by male authors. It is not so much that she wrote anonymously as androgynously: She wanted her contributions to be taken seriously rather than cursorily dismissed because of her sex.

Anonymity has won itself a place in intellectual history when it comes to redirecting a discussion away from ad hominem and back to the idea. Yet in our generation we have witnessed online the exact opposite along with its devastating — and sometimes deadly — consequences.

The Internet has given rise to a fantasy world in which it is possible to say virtually anything without consequences. This is possible practically nowhere else and surely productive nowhere. To contribute in class, we must open our mouths in the presence of our peers: Our idea is inseparable from our person, and our awareness of others watching and — hopefully — listening to us directs the discourse in a productive manner. If the purpose of ‘Prince’ columns, editorials and commentary is to simulate real-life, face-to-face conversations in which we, as members of the same community, sit around the same table and discuss how this campus can be improved, then why shouldn’t all of us — not just columnists — join in under our own names? If, on the other hand, the purpose is not productive, responsible conversation, then we would do better simply to sign off.