Again, they serve the same purpose - to set guidelines of expectations of behavior etc. I never said they were identical.
Stating you are a business owner and educator does not mean jack, as that says nothing explanatory. Thus, it would be much more useful if you explain why the function of the two handbooks are not the same? Specifically, why the dean should not be making sure students understand the behavioral expectations which they should abide by at his college?
You start: Why are you talking about the UChicago student manual (to which I’ve helpfully linked) when it has no official connection to the dean’s letter?
For what it’s worth, I just attended a UChicago info session yesterday, and the question came up of why the letter was sent out. The response from the admissions counselor was that this letter and the book meant to introduce UChicago’s philosophy, which would be discussed in the week long orientation. It was not explicitly meant for public release, although I think the net benefit to the public disclosure has been positive.
I think the analogy to an employee handbook is a fair one. Take it conceptually and don’t get hung up on the fact that students aren’t employees. Either way, they are both very important constituencies.
U of Chicago certainly has a database of alumni they could have emailed the letter to if the goal had been “grandstanding for SQW alumni.” They know how to issue press releases as well. They have social media. I really dislike it when we can’t just take things at face value - they felt the need to state / restate their philosophy to new students, and so here it is.
From last year’s U of C faculty statement on free speech (emphasis mine):
Of course, the ideas of different members of the University community will often and quite naturally conflict. But it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. Although the University greatly values civility, and although all members of the University community share in the responsibility for maintaining a climate of mutual respect, concerns about civility and mutual respect 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.
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/free-speech-campus-report-university-faculty-committee
Of all the possible interpretations of this letter, I think “UChicago doesn’t want students with a passion for social justice” is one of the least likely. The college wants students interested in helping the disadvantaged, but not those who’ll try to shut down any opposing viewpoint. Social justice and an aversion to free speech are anything but synonymous.
The letter was sent to enrolling students, not applicants. It became public, but the university doesn’t seem to have made an effort to make that happen. If they had wanted to communicate their message to applicants, they could have found a more efficient way to do it.
I have to say that some of you being reduced to denigrating Dr. King and playing fast and lose with his ideas and actions in an effort to support the current tactics of protesters on campus is shocking. It also speaks to the merit of the position being advocated, imho.
I have never understood the modern conceit that there can be no admission of fault by anyone who is a fellow traveler. I don’t know if that is born of a sensitivity to the fact that the modern left is a disparate confederation of specific groups, and you never know who you will alienate by objecting to the tactics of particular individuals, or if it is just as simple as a modern interpretation of Reagan’s “thou shall not speak ill of another Republican”
For me, what is so disappointing about the Dean’s letter is the failure to present even a hint of an argument as to why “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” are a threat to “freedom of inquiry and expression.”
I happen to believe that they aren’t in any way - obviously, not everyone agrees with that position, and that’s fine. However, the Dean (and those who support his position) really need to articulate EXACTLY how these practices actually impede intellectual freedom. It is just taken as self-evident in the letter, and by many people in this thread. Frankly, it’s intellectually lazy to present these issues in this way - basically, the argument has been reduced to a conflict about a totally hazy and abstract concept of “political correctness gone mad,” and everyone is lining up in their standard starting positions in the endless culture war debate. Frankly, it’s just dumb, and even if I agreed with the position the Dean has staked out, I would find the letter laughable coming from a seasoned university administrator because it doesn’t engage with any of the real issues involved. It’s essentially clickbait, and unworthy of a great educational institution.
The argument here is no better - 38 pages, 569 posts - and I haven’t seen one person articulate the actual threat that “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” represent to free and open intellectual inquiry in a university setting. It’s basically just become yet another “SJW versus SQW square-off” - and almost all of the argument on the SQW side consists of cherry-picked anecdotes and stereotyping. What I don’t see is anyone doing the Dean’s homework for him - presenting an actual argument that explains how TW/SS (as actually implemented on actual campuses, not in some imaginary dystopia) constrain intellectual debate and the free exchange of ideas in any meaningful way.
Take it as a challenge, if you want to.
(The other issue discussed in the letter concerns protests about campus speakers, and as I understand it, that is directly tied up in recent events at the University, involving conflict between this Dean specifically and student leaders. The issue is more nuanced than the TW/SS issues, and actually does have a bearing on the issue of free and open intellectual debate. Personally, I don’t think the Dean did his argument any favors by conflating this all together in this letter, and I have real problems with how he presented the campus speaker issue as well, but that doesn’t really have any direct bearing on the TW/SS discussion.)
Personally, I would think that enclosing a 100 page monograph on academic freedom together with a link to dozens of source items with his letter would be considered more than a “hint”, but to each his own I guess 
For the hundredth time, any faculty member at UChicago is free to give as many trigger warnings as they want. There are and will continue to be “safe spaces” (in its original, narrower meaning) at UChicago.
Regardless of the arguments pro and con, ultimately this is a statement of the core values at UChicago by the administration and faculty. UChicago holds free expression as one of its core values. Lots of other colleges and people do not. For example, you can find Bible colleges that do not believe in free discussion of homosexuality or evolution. I think they’re idiots and I would never pay for my kids to attend such “universities”, but those are their values - however, they’re not UChicago’s and people should know that before deciding to attend.
A large part of the problem is that people are inserting themselves into a communication between the Dean and the incoming freshmen. As usual, most of the people pontificating have no context or background to constructively do so.
@NickFlynn, I think you’ve articulated exactly what I feel/ think about the Dean’s “welcoming” letter. It feels like he opted to used a blunt instrument when a scalpel was needed.
@tonymom posted Yale’s letter to incoming students. I think it it an excellent letter.
http://president.yale.edu/speeches-writings/speeches/countering-false-narratives
Yale’s president makes so many good points and I like his examples too. I don’t know what to highlight.
I guess I will post this…
Couldn’t be prouder of the choice our son made. Way to go UChicago!
Do you think in this day and age with social media and the internet that any school thinks what it does stays in-house? The school knew prospective students would learn of its policy, not necessarily directly, but they would learn about it.
This is the one thing when the internet came about we changed in my company handbook was to teach employees, especially the customer service reps that anything you write or send by electronic means outside of the company intranet is to be considered public information. One should also consider a hardcopy letter as defacto electronic as well because it can be easily scanned and electronically distributed to millions. Very different than a conversation and when faxes were to inconvenient to distribute widely.
Anyway, visiting students touring and visiting campus talk to other students and to think that future applicants would not be exposed to this philosophy before applying is wishful thinking.
This is why I think this is an astute observation:
Implicitly, I do believe UChicago got a better result than it expected.
(Emphasis mine)
@awcntdb & @marvin100: Actually, you’re both right (and wrong) about student handbooks.
Depending on the general policies of the institution, the student handbook (or whatever it’s called at that institution) may or may not have the same weight as an employee handbook in terms of standards of behavior and such. I’ve worked at an institution where it clearly did, one where it clearly didn’t, and one where it’s quite underdefined.
(No idea which group Chicago falls into. If pressed to give a guess, though, I’d venture that, like what I think are most colleges, it’s in the last group.)
Nick Flynn in post #570 makes a good point, in my opinion.
It is quite clear how “dis-inviting” speakers (or never inviting them to begin with, for fear of protests) stifles free speech and is antithetical to the core values of many universities. It is also clear that forbidding discussion of unpopular ideas in class is repression of free speech. No problem with any of that.
At the moment, I do not have time to read a 100-page monograph on academic freedom, to see how the philosophical discussion of trigger warnings is related to a threat to free speech. So I need to rely on someone who has read it to articulate for me why trigger warnings, specifically, are not well-aligned with the free-speech values of the University of Chicago. Since individual professors can offer them, is it thought that giving a trigger warning is protected by free speech, but Chicago just doesn’t like it? Do they really mean that students do not have justifiable grounds for complaint, if they are not offered a trigger warning in a class where they would have benefited from having one? Or something else?
Therefore, to you, being a vehement SJW automatically means disruption of the learning environment at a school, being rude to speakers and students who disagree with you, reducing the quality of others’ education by limiting discourse/debate, and having the school pay for a place where you can retreat to safely after you cause your damage. That is a very limiting and somewhat negative view of SJWs imho.
Even if I disagree with some SJWs philosophies, I support their right to promote what they believe, but not a right to stifle promotion of what others believe. In your eyes, I may be naive in having this view, but so be it.
I think the letter could have been written more artfully. However, I thought it was fairly clear that the dean’s reference to SPs and TWs was in response to how those terms have become used by students at campuses across the country to silence the speech of others. Yes, a professor issuing a trigger warning before a particular class lecture is not problematic. But that is not what the letter was speaking to. What the dean sought to make clear (in my opinion) was that neither professors nor students on campus should feel disinclined to present their own thoughts, or invite someone on campus, where those thoughts or that speaker may be distasteful to the views of others.
I didn’t see it so much as a warning to students, but as a promise. We promise you an intellectual environment that allows for the free exchange of ideas. We promise our faculty that they are safe to allow spirited dialogue and to stake out controversial positions. Of course, if that is not the climate in which a student wants to study, he/she could take the letter as an invitation to rethink his/her college choice.
We cannot shield ourselves and others from all discomforts of life. Nor should we. If a particular student has endured a specific traumatic event and chooses to ask a professor for a trigger warning and the professor agrees to accommodate that choice, that may be the right choice for a given situation. Encouraging people to share their discomfort (where relevant and possible for the student) and creating a classroom and campus environment in which students feel safe to so should be the better goal. If we all hunker down and avoid conversations and experiences that make us uncomfortable, how will we ever change societal behavior enough to reduce the occurrence of the trigger in the first place?
Never inviting speakers in the first place is very interesting to me in regards to free speech.
Actual disinviting is rare.
I was curious about the costs of bringing in speakers…
Of course it varies…
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-commencement-speaker-costs-20160520-story.html