Education and the Identities of Liberalism

In “Political and Metaphysical: Reflections on Identity, Education, and Justice,” Lauren Bialystok makes a nuanced and timely case for a reassessment of the moral and political significance of identity within liberal societies in general, and for education in particular. She offers an impressive philosophical reconstruction of a form of political polarization driven, in part, by the attempt to adjudicate claims of justice and fairness on identity grounds. This attempt appears to put at odds two important intuitions: that we ought to treat citizens as free and equal in an ideal sense, and that we ought to recognize citizens in their particularity in the non-ideal circumstances against which some may struggle. While Bialystok acknowledges that this conflict is a longstanding one for liberal political theory, her argument advances three important claims that show why we have reason to take this tension seriously in the educational domain. First, political liberalism does a poor job of recognizing problems of justice and fairness logically connected to identity. Second, the leading successor to a liberal political approach, which is to ground claims of justice on identity, falters because the criterion that one must necessarily appeal to in making good on identity claims, ‘authenticity’, is unstable and results in justice claims that exacerbate, or incentivize, in-group/out-group distinctions and undermine democratic and deliberative politics. Third, we need both a principled conception of justice (such as political liberalism) and a politics more attuned to actual injustices (such as identity-based politics) in the public conversation about justice and fairness. Key to this enterprise is an education that engages students on both the importance and salience of identity in a deliberative politics, as well as the limits of appeals to authenticity as a basis for such deliberations. Bialystok’s argument represents a novel and significant contribution to the growing debate over social justice and education. I think it adds much needed intellectual, in fact dialectical, nuance to a discussion that has been increasingly monopolized by so-called “culture wars” and social media. Her educational project points a constructive way forward. Therefore, my response will focus less on the conclusion of her argument and more on her claim that these problems can be attributed to political liberalism. If she is correct, we have real reason to entertain a serious revision or perhaps even rejection of the liberal philosophical project. But as we will see, it is not so obvious that philosophical conceptions of liberalism are the problem. As Bialystok rightly points out, demands for justice have become more insistently tied to particular group identities. Yet, the principles that a liberal politics has at its disposal in order to adjudicate such claims ostensibly requires a diminution of those particular identities. “You claim you and your brethren have been being treated unjustly,” says the political liberal. “But can you tell me how this treatment departs from what any citizens is owed? Don’t formulate your demands in terms of what you are owed. Make your case in terms of what everyone and anyone is owed.” As Bialystok puts it, citizens are therefore unfairly compelled to “bracket” their identities in order to make good on their claims. It would seem that a turn to identity as a basis for (some) justice claims is warranted. We can craft social policies aimed at broadly defined groups, for example. The redistribution (of resources or valuable opportunities) can be an effective way of righting persistent inequalities between groups when those inequalities are due to historical wrongs. However, the problem arises when claims to justice are (i) logically connected to one’s specific identity and where (ii) failure to accurately …