NEW YORK, NY Aug. 29 (DPI) – A dean at The University of Chicago last week informed incoming freshman that the school doesn’t condone “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings,” which naturally set off another culture-war dust-up on the internet. The letter was a rare pre-emptive action on the delicate business of keeping a diverse student body happy while teaching them at the same time.
Even more remarkable than the letter itself was The New York Times’s handing of the story. The NYT’s report, which came two days after the letter appeared, attempts to discredit the letter and its contents. The article, by-lined by three reporters, quoted an academic as saying the letter was a “publicity stunt” that was “a way of ‘not coddling students, but coddling donors.’”
That of course set off a maelstrom on the comment boards, with most comments supporting free speech on campus.
The “Safe Space” controversy is one of modern academe’s most baffling developments: Over the last two decades America’s institutions of higher learning have become more diverse than ever – many more courses of study, many more different types of people, more sexual choices, even more options at the salad bars.
Yet elite colleges from Yale to Princeton to Amherst have shown a shocking respect for their students’ intellectual intolerance – that is, students are demanding that their teachers silence ideas they deem hurtful or unpleasant.
The Times article described the “Safe Space” controversy – and the University of Chicago letter – as merely an attack on “Political Correctness,” but most readers understood that the issue was far more significant.
The most popular comments universally supported the protection of free speech on campus, and readers recognized that the “Safe Space” controversy went far beyond “political correctness.” The most popular comments on NYTimes.com:
I never thought I’d see the day when the most determined enemies of free speech and lively debate would be this country’s universities and colleges, and the students attending those institutions would demand “protection” from ideas that might be uncomfortable to them -– that is, would want to be treated as children and not adults.
In doing the right thing, Chicago has struck a blow for intellectual rigor and an open and free society. Such rigor requires that all points of view (even those odious) be given an opportunity to be expressed (and if necessary defeated via reason and good sense), and it’s refreshing to see an institution make clear and plain to incoming students that this idea –- once considered central to a liberal education — is still valued.As a left liberal faculty member I cheer Chicago for making this clear. Trigger warnings are part of a general administrative push to scapegoat faculty and get students on their side as they attempt to consolidate power. Faculty are less and less free to teach what we think we should be teaching, and more and more at the mercy of administrative coopting of the self-righteousness of naive student activists.
Anybody who thinks this letter is a publicity stunt or a fund-raising gambit doesn’t know UC very well. I doubt the University even knows how to stage a publicity stunt. As my own alma mater, Brown University, appears to be drowning in a sea of trigger warnings, safe places and more sensitivities than can be stanched by a quadrangle full of Kleenex boxes, all I want to do is cheer UC. At least one U.S. university still defends free thought, free speech and evidence-based truth.
The world does not come with trigger warnings.
Thank you, University of Chicago. It’s about time.
College is about developing critical thinking skills, not playing safe. The world is not safe and an education should help prepare students, not just shelter them.