It would be fine, if their actions were limited to this because they are free to not listen and learn. What is disturbing is they think they have some right to take away the right of others to listen and learn.
And the irony here is they think they are being tolerant by doing this. So, yes, they are not worthy of an elite education because they do not even know what the word tolerant means. Someone needs to teach them that tolerant does not mean “in agreement with.”
My grandmother used to tell me- you know when someone’s threatened or their argument is weak when they start to name call …
It is interesting to me that one side here has resorted to calling black or minority students with fears about racist speakers “whack jobs” and “losers” rather than accept their viewpoint is their lived experience…
I hope these derogatory terms aren’t de-riguer at U Chicago in the fall I hope this isnt what U chicago is going for in its letter bc that will shut down civil discourse between minority groups and others
nm
I am interested too.
However, there are many venues* to seek out advocates of discredited ideas/theories without necessitating the conferring of unmerited legitimacy and which would result from a college/university inviting such folks to speak at an institutional gathering. There’s a saying about appropriate time and place and imo…a college/university mindful of its intellectual reputation and institutional gravitas is not the right venue for such advocates.
It’d be no different imo if say…UChicago or another college decided to invite an advocate to seriously argue why the moon is made of green cheese and there’s a worldwide conspiracy from the dairy farmers’ lobby to deny that “fact”.
@runswimyoga I think your son at Penn and those freshmen at Chicago will find most students and faculty to be very accepting. And, if the students can remain calm and polite, civil discourse will flourish. Let us know in a year or so if I am wrong. You seem to be pre-disposed to assuming that everything is biased against black or minority students. Try not to be too judgmental of colleges, students, and faculty before your son experiences his campus himself. Hopefully you can both approach college with an open mind and not look for chances to create controversy where none exists. And, please recognize that the needs and opinions of one particular individual or group should not dictate how everyone else must think or act, which speakers may or may not come to campus, etc.
You have just proved why UChicago sent out the letter - to avoid ideas such as yours infiltrating the intellectual environment.
Do you not see the glaring inconsistency in your own post? You give yourself the right to call someone a “racist”; However, someone cannot call the accuser a “whack job” or "loser’ in return if he thinks the racist charge is false and unsubstantiated? Therefore, name-calling is OK for thee, but not for others. Got it.
Additionally, just because someone is Black, minority, or some other supposed marginalized group does not mean his viewpoint automatically has merit or intellectual structure/substance worthy of acceptance. The viewpoint has a chance to be whacky or substantive, as anyone else’s. No special color-coded favors here.
More importantly, accepting weak, unsupported, or off-the-wall viewpoints/opinions as valid and worthy of discussion is not the hallmark of a college education. The hallmark of college is to learn to recognize such viewpoints for what they are and to intellectually dismiss them and to focus on discussing constructive viewpoints that have concrete arguments behind them, not just opinions.
What UChicago is saying is that do not expect automatic acceptance of your ideas just because you say them, expect to be challenged. And it is possible that you may be ignored/not taken seriously because intellectually no one need to debate an ignorant point/argument, regardless of your skin color or self-identified marginalization status.
Has nothing to do with my post.
I never said the people in my posts were being derelict in their jobs or distracting others from their jobs. What I said is they refuse to personally practice something that was against their religion, and that was known upfront and ahead of time.
What you cite is workplace disruption which is a behavioral issue, not a religious belief issue. I never said that the rules of the workplace and the duties of your job did not have to be performed and followed.
“It is interesting to me that one side here has resorted to calling black or minority students with fears about racist speakers “whack jobs” and “losers” rather than accept their viewpoint is their lived experience…”
Any person who seriously thinks this letter is a dog whistle to white supremacists or that there is a strong likelihood that David Duke will be invited to be the next commencement speaker is a whack job, IMO. The color of their skin matters not at all in that judgment.
Can you possibly think of people as people, not just white people vs black people? Can you possibly agree that some white people say stupid things and some black people say stupid things too, instead of assuming that if a black person says something it’s automatically full of truth?
@cobrat It’s much more interesting to meet someone live and be able to ask questions, rather than just rely on the media and google for everything. I would seriously not advocate a KKK or similar speaker on campus myself, but speakers with a different world view from yours can be curiously entertaining.
I’ll state up front that if I were a Harvard Law student, I would not like to have a class that covered rape law and was taught by Jeannie Suk Gersen.
The reason is this article by her, which appeared in the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/st-pauls-school-and-a-new-definition-of-rape
Based on all of the material that I have read about the St. Paul’s case, I think that Suk Gersen’s writing shows a considerable lack of sensitivity toward the young woman involved in that case, who is still a minor.
I don’t doubt that Suk Gersen (and Hanna) can run rhetorical rings around me. I’m a scientist, and not a lawyer. But it seems to me that Suk Gersen is being deliberately provocative in another article that has already been excerpted on this thread: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trouble-teaching-rape-law
I think that rape law could be covered in a class by a faculty member who understands the potential sensitivity of the topic, and who is prepared to deal with the situation in a helpful way, if a student who had PTSD following rape suffered from a bad reaction in the class.
With regard to trigger warnings in general, if a student signs up for “Strange Medieval Torture Devices,” the student probably has an idea of what the course is likely to contain. On the other hand, if a student signs up for “History of Britain, 1066-1471,” and the professor is going to include a long module on strange medieval torture devices, I really don’t think that a trigger warning would be out of place.
I fully support free speech. But I don’t think that giving students a “heads up” that they may find certain material troubling is an infringement on free speech. I would be interested in the rationale that suggests otherwise, if a poster disagrees.
“Neo-nazis, hate groups, and reactionaries everywhere celebrate. These are pretty much the only people who benefit from students not being allowed to protest speakers.”
Hardly. The list of invited speakers who were disinvited from speaking on campuses due to protests is long and distinguished. Condoleeza Rice was mentioned up thread, but there are lot more besides that. Below is partial list of prominent people who in the last 15 years were disinvited to speak due to protests from people who didn’t like their views and sought to silence them.
Some of the protests came from the right and some came from the left, but the feature they share in common is that they all happened on US college campuses. This is the kind of avoidance of upsetting intellectual discourse that I view the Chicago letter as a welcome blow against.
The Disinvited
Henry Kissinger
Laura Bush
Michael Moore (twice)
George W. Bush
Ellen Goodman
Vicente Fox
Geraldo Rivera
Alice Walker
Narendra Modi
Scott Brown
Peter Thiel
George Will
Pat Buchanan
Larry Summers
Ann Coulter (twice)
Desmond Tutu
James Franco
Eric Cantor
Bristol Palin
Christine Lagarde
…the list goes on and on.
You can read the comprehensive list and get more details here:
https://www.thefire.org/resources/disinvitation-database/
I have no problem with groups having physical “safe spaces” on campus - ethnic groups, feminists, LGBT, or whatever, but the idea of avoiding tough or challenging topics and discussions in the classroom and silencing those who espouse ideas you don’t like or who might say things that hurt your feelings is contrary to the open inquiry and free speech that are cornerstones of higher education.
To take the discussion away from a case where a woman is the victim: Suppose that a student signs up for “Psychology 101” at his university. The student is one of Jerry Sandusky’s victims. The professor has invited a representative of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (don’t bother googling it, it’s real) to speak to the class. It’s not on the syllabus. Is a “heads up” trigger warning inappropriate in this case? Is this fair game for an examination question? Does the answer change if the professor actually knows of the experience of the student?
I have been trying to think about the big picture here.
Yelling and name calling are free speech. However, we don’t like it when students do such things. We call those students names. Kids copy what we model. Even though I support free speech, it seems better to me to label behavior rather than individuals. I just don’t like name calling, even if it is free speech. I admit it’s a personal prejudice.
eta: also, in my opinion, it is presumptuous behavior to tell someone sending a gay child off to college how to feel about that experience, unless you have done it yourself.
This is fantastic and should be required reading for participants in this thread:
@runswimyoga said:
Wow, the second time Charles Murray has been brought up just this afternoon.
As I responded to Nick, after Murray published the highly controversial book The Bell Curve, it was surely tempting for people to find problems with his data, or his analysis techniques. Yet 52 contemporary experts on intelligence defended his work as being “mainstream science” on the topic. In contrast, his best known critic, Stephen Jay Gould, was found guilty of academic fraud in trying to refute him.
But perhaps you are actually an expert in sociology and statistics and have a better understanding of this topic than those 52 scientists that supported Murrary. If so, please enlighten us with the mistakes that Murray made in his analysis.
Short of that, Murray is absolutely the type of person that I hope UChicago brings to campus. He brings up uncomfortable issues, and only by acknowledging the uncomfortable issues can progress be made on them.
However, not when they are disruptive. And stopping a speaker from speaking freely is disruptive. And not when it is disrupting students, who are minding their own business, from studying, such as the nonsense we saw in the Dartmouth library.
Actually, I have a couple of questions that were raised by the beginning of Suk Gersen’s article:
“Imagine a medical student who is training to be a surgeon but who fears that he’ll become distressed if he sees or handles blood. What should his instructors do? Criminal-law teachers face a similar question with law students who are afraid to study rape law.”
First set of questions: The statement refers to “criminal-law teachers.” I think this refers to professors who teach criminal law, and not necessarily to professors who are teaching students who plan to become criminal lawyers. I am not sure what courses are required for all law students. If a student plans to practice corporate law or international law, rather than criminal law, will the student be required to take a course that covers rape law? Don’t all law students take a course in criminal procedure? Is there something that is peculiar about rape law that cannot be understood without its being “taught,” if a student has learned (more or less) about how the law and criminal procedure work in general? Is it impossible to pass the bar exam while just skipping questions about rape law? Even if there are essay questions related to rape law, can’t the prospective lawyer just re-take the bar exam?
Secondly: What is the supposed parallelism between “a medical student who is training to be a surgeon but who fears that he’ll become distressed if he sees or handles blood” and a student who is studying to be an anti-trust lawyer who is concerned about becoming distressed if rape law is discussed in an insensitive manner?
Is there some type of surgery that a student who is preparing to be a surgeon, but who thinks that he will be distressed by seeing blood could perform without seeing blood? Like, zero blood? I can’t think of any off-hand. How did this student do well enough on the MCAT to get into medical school (since, frankly, he seems kind of out of it to me)? How did the interview go?
I would just like to note for the record the more I think about this, the prouder I am of my son. He was president of his college’s College Democrats and had a cordial working relationship with his counterpart in College Republicans; in fact, they would congratulate one another on successful events, etc. He was additionally a member of another political organization which brought speakers to campus to debate various issues and he moderated on occasion. Amazingly enough, they were able to have civilized debates and learn from one another, instead of this paranoid mentality that free speech and debate might lead to burning crosses on campus.
Shame on all of those who can’t handle dissenting opinions without crying that you need to be protected from them and all you can handle is an echo chamber. I disagree with the poster awctnb on a lot of things but I’m not afraid to go toe to toe with him and express opinions and I suspect he feels the same way about me.
It is also presumptuous behavior to tell others what the gay child is saying should be accepted, even if what is being said is only opinion or a possibly jaded interpretation of an experience, and is not a real argument to be debated.
Maybe there should be a college class that teaches the difference between opinions, experiences, and arguments. It is clear students (and many adults as well) are thinking these are all the same things and conflate one with the other; they are not the same, as they are very different constructs.