Campus insanity versus freedom of speech
The aim of education is to make people think, not spare them from discomfort.– Robert Zimmer
Campus craziness
In case you haven’t been following this issue, there have been some disturbing events and trends in the ivory tower. For an overview, see:
- In College and hiding from scary ideas
- Campuses are breaking apart into safe spaces
- Safe spaces on college campuses are creating intolerant students
- Campus free speech crisis deepens
- Campus chaos: Daily shout-downs for a week
Two particular articles motivated this post:
Class struggle: how identity politics divided a campus. At Reed College, a freshman named Hunter Dillman who had been branded a racist after asking the organiser of a Latina student group an innocent question. He was ultimately hounded off campus.
Take Back the Ivory Tower. Alice Dreger, author of Galileo’s Middle Finger, describes her travails as a researcher and public speaker with a non-‘politically correct’ perspective on intersex and transgendered persons. She resigned her faculty position at Northwestern University over censorship issues. Unfortunately the article is behind paywall, you can read the intro here.
My concern is that without viewpoint diversity where everyone is heard, research and scholarship suffers. Further, students cocooning in safe spaces will be ill-prepared for dealing with the moral and political controversies and ambiguities that they will face throughout their lives.
Views from University administrators
A summary is provided by an Inside Higher Ed article: Presidents and Provosts Gather to Consider Free Speech Issues. Some perspectives on these issues from individual University administrators:
Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro stresses the importance of safe spaces [link], which he defined as places on campus where students can find friends and build the confidence to have difficult conversations.
10 miles across town at the University of Chicago, President Robert Zimmer stated [link] “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.” “Concerns about civility and mutual respect,” the committee wrote, “can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.”
If you can’t speak freely, you’ll quickly lose the ability to think clearly. Your ideas will be built on a pile of assumptions you’ve never examined for yourself and may thus be unable to defend from radical challenges. You will be unable to test an original thought for fear that it might be labeled an offensive one. You will succumb to a form of Orwellian double-think without even having the excuse of living in physical terror of doing otherwise.
That is the real crux of Zimmer’s case for free speech: Not that it’s necessary for democracy (strictly speaking, it isn’t), but because it’s our salvation from intellectual mediocrity and social ossification. In a speech in July, he addressed the notion that unfettered free speech could set back the cause of “inclusion” because it risked upsetting members of a community.
“Inclusion into what?” Zimmer wondered. “An inferior and less challenging education? One that fails to prepare students for the challenge of different ideas and the evaluation of their own assumptions? A world in which their feelings take precedence over other matters that need to be confronted?”
Princeton University‘s President on pluralism and the art of disagreement:
This University, like any great university, encourages, and indeed demands, independence of mind. We expect you to develop the ability to articulate your views clearly and cogently, to contend with and learn from competing viewpoints, and to modify your opinions in light of new knowledge and understanding.
This emphasis on independent thinking is at the heart of liberal arts education. It is a profoundly valuable form of education, and it can be exhilarating. It can also at times be uncomfortable or upsetting because it requires careful and respectful engagement with views very different from your own. I have already emphasized that we value pluralism at Princeton; we value it partly because of the vigorous disagreements that it generates. You will meet people here who think differently than you do about politics, history, justice, race, religion, and a host of other sensitive topics. To take full advantage of a Princeton education, you must learn and benefit from these disagreements, and to do that you must cultivate and practice the art of constructive disagreement.
Speaking up is not always easy. As a student on this campus and, indeed, throughout your life—at work, in social settings, and in civic organizations—you will encounter moments when saying what you believe requires you to say something uncomfortable or unpopular. Learning the art of disagreement can help you to choose the moments when it makes sense to speak, and to do so in ways that are effective, constructive, and respectful of the other voices around you. But no matter how good you become at the art of disagreement, you will also need the personal courage to say what you believe—even if it is unpopular.
The UK is tackling this issue also [link].
It will not surprise you to hear that I am staunchly in Robert Zimmer’s corner on this.
Identity politics and the culture of victimhood
At the heart of this debate is identity politics and the culture of victimhood. From an article in Spiked: Fear, Loathing and Victimhood. Excerpts:
Some not limited by circumstance sometimes choose victimhood, adopting fashionable assumptions about their fragility and subordinate status.
There are, after all, substantial advantages to declaring yourself disadvantaged. Victims never have to say they’re sorry. Apologies – and accountability – are for victimisers. Victims are creditors, owed not just compassion but practical relief, like the power to censor whatever they consider offensive speech. The expression of unwelcome images or ideas in the presence of self-identified victims is labelled another form of victimisation, as student demands for trigger warnings and ‘safe spaces’ suggest.
Read more at judithcurry.com
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