Just read this thread and imagine being a college administrator. All the U of C did was tell students that the school will not accede to childish demands from some students and faculty for the university to put its collective hands over their ears so they won’t be offended by disagreeable speech. And look at the whining that ensues. Suddenly the administrators are Nazi supporters etc.
Safe spaces are ridiculous - in addition to being antithetical to academic freedom. I read of a school that provided a “safe space” for students during a sponsored talk on sexual assault that they worried might be “traumatizing” to some students (who were free to abstain). The safe space consisted of a room with milk and cookies, coloring books, video of frolicking puppies, etc. More than a safe space, it was a regressive, infantilizing space for people too fragile to attend college in the first place. The article did not mention if anyone used the safe space.
For those that worry that somehow neonazis will take over academia without safe spaces - do you lose as much sleep worrying what would happen if academia were overtaken by marxist agitators? Oops, that already happened.
“If faculty doesn’t think that it may get some perks (promotion, tenure, etc.) - they do not bother to organizer students to make protests.”
" I believe that admins and faculty encouraged protests and used students as a proxy in they quest for promotions / tenure / money / power / etc. "
Oh brother…
You seriously do not know how the advancement or the tenure process works at universities. At all. Where on earth do you dream up these wild ideas? the tabloids?
"lots of “student’ protests are sponsored by internal power struggles of faculty at the universities.”
wow, just wow.
As far as I know (I apologize if I am wrong), her mother is white, rich, and politically-connected PR professional. Still, I feel sorry for her. I would not wish my daughter such publicity.
Yes, I blame Yale for this story (Peter Salovey and Christakises are Yale employees). They agitated students and supported their “protest”. Greg Lukianoff is also an agitator, same as the others, just on the other side. Adults, playing their games. I find them all morally despicable.
“For those that worry that somehow neonazis will take over academia without safe spaces …” I guess I worry more about them taking over our country. But then I live in a safe space. It is called California.
“Kids become campus agitators when they realize they can’t compete” I always thought it was the other way around. I guess I am friends with too many obnoxious attorneys
I assume that the whole “trigger warning” business tends to be concentrated in the liberal arts faculty/students not because MD or engineering students are necessarily any more immune to that or too busy to engage in it. It’s more because of the nature of the material being taught. Liberal arts is heavily literature-centric. You spend a lot of time reading, discussing, and writing about literature and the ideas it presents. There’s a lot of heavy stuff in there that deals in challenging ways with the human experience.
STEM students may well be traumatized by discussions of carbonium ions in organic chem class or by differential equations in math class, but it’s probably a qualitatively different form of trauma from what we are talking about over in the liberal arts.
My personal opinion is that any student who needs trigger warnings prior to discussions of challenging ideas probably isn’t cut out to be a liberal arts major.
< Don’t forget Dartmouth gave all protesters excused absences and extensions on all work that semester(s). >
Exactly, my point. Inge-Lise Ameer was hired as Dartmouth Vice-Provost for Student Affairs just before the controversy. She was hired to “lead the new cohort of house professors, and will convene “serious working groups” on diversity and inclusion within the academic experience”. Of course, she jumped on the opportunity to use BLM for her agenda.
Do you talk about engineering schools or humanities? Because tenures are not exactly the same. Yes,faculty can be intimidated into giving tenure to a colleague . Remember, when one Prof. at Dartmouth was denied tenure in English (she barely published), and organized undergrads to support her “to increase diversity of the English department”? (Disclaimer: still, she was denied tenure. But she tried to play the race card).
@hebegebe FIRE has a conservative bias. It works against sexual assault reform. It supported John McAdams who made threatening and harassing comments as a professor.
Judge the young woman on her demeanor during the exchange w the master in the courtyard. That’s her actual behavior, and fair game, and observable since it was taped.
Her race, her money, her parents’ professions have nothing to do with anything. Can’t we stop pre-judging people based on those things?
Please note that the letter from the Dean of Students at The College was accompanied by a presumably recommended reading (because UChicago…), a copy of a slim 97 page book titled “Academic Freedom and the Modern University/The Experience of the University of Chicago” authored by John Boyer, the longtime Dean of The College. Book was first published 14 years ago and reissued for “a new generation of students in the College, as well as for our alumni and parents.”
Perhaps we are being naive but DD who received the letter and the book, as well as myself (her parent and alumna), felt that the letter and the book were indeed meant for the Class of 2020 and those with particular interest in the Class of 2020. It does not read to me as meant for wider consumption.
I would also add that DD has been overall quite pleased with the largely substantive discussion that ensued among the members of Class of 2020 on their Facebook page.
BTW, the part I particularly appreciated was the “we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial.”
“Yes,faculty can be intimidated into giving tenure to a colleague . Remember, when one Prof. at Dartmouth was denied tenure in English (she barely published), and organized undergrads to support her “to increase diversity of the English department”? (Disclaimer: still, she was denied tenure.”
In other words, it did not work.
So citing an example of how faculty were NOT intimidated into giving tenure does not prove this:
“Yes,faculty can be intimidated into giving tenure to a colleague”
I stand by my statement. You dont know how it works. And apparently neither did the idiot from Dartmouth who self- sabotaged herself from ever getting tenure at ANY college.
I have a son who is a student in the class of 2020 - (not at Chicago) who just got back from a 4 day SJW pre-orientation program… he told me that a safe space was defined in the workshop as something like this -
"When you are a minority on campus and your particular group has been subjected to (hateful) rhetoric or oppression its important to have a spot on campus where you and your group can go and be amongst people where you won’t be judged or subjected to an antagonism… where you don’t have to be on guard…
These safe places started out with religious group centers like Hillel or Catholic Services (bc those groups were minorities subjected to animosity in their days) … now they have come to encompass Black student groups, Gay students centers, Muslim student groups,… etc Its important bc it IS hard to be a minority and still feel accepted… "
These safe spaces on campus don’t have anything to do with actual classrooms…
Also I am all for free speech on campus- have all the hate speakers you want…
but in the classroom, as a mother of a gay son (who has had to grow alligator skin) there is a line that needs to be drawn between soliciting viewpoints and preaching hate… I cannot tell you how many times in classrooms he has been told he is a faggot that god hates/ he should basically die so society doesn’t have to suffer from his existence… at some point in a classroom where you are a captive audience there is a line …
Yes! U of Chicago is doing the right thing. Universities are about ideas (as long as they are legal). All legal ideas are then subjected to debate. I am a liberal, and I want to hear (and possibly appreciate) the arguments from conservatives.
I hope everyone read the letter from the Dean. It also says “freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to harass or threaten others”. I think some people do not see the difference between these two.
Freedom of expression means that students can (lawfully) protest too. However, as we learn in high school civics, “your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”. Protest that prevents others from expressing their own ideas or opinions isn’t consistent with the fundamental purposes of a university.
I think it is a good thing that Chicago is making it very clear how they stand. That way students who don't like it can just apply somewhere else. I hope other universities join them. As I said before, perhaps we need to have "adult" universities for adults who want the opportunity to decide for themselves which ideas they will listen to, and "baby" universities for babies.
Chicago is known for its very unusual admissions essay questions. In that spirit, maybe some of you who believe that there are some (legal, etc.) ideas that should be silenced would answer this hypothetical essay question:
I am curious how many people will be able to list some.
