@hebegebe, I agree with you!
@pittsburghscribe -I’m saying (again and again!) that this letter is little more than toothless grandstanding and has not a single iota of impact on UChi’s actual policies, which continue to allow for content warnings, safe spaces, and student-led direct action, no matter how much or how little this dean respects such matters.
(But since you asked, I do support the validity of content warnings, safe spaces, and student-led direct action and I find the battery of journalistic and popular condemnation of today’s college students as coddled or oversensitive to be disingenuous, uninformed, and backward.)
And I absolutely believe “students should be able to demand that certain content be labeled and certain speakers be disinvited,” but that has nothing to do with mandatory content warnings and everything to do with students expecting more from their educators.
"And I absolutely believe “students should be able to demand that certain content be labeled and certain speakers be disinvited,”
On what grounds? David Duke I get. Condoleeza Rice I don’t. But there has to be more of a principle than simply “isn’t liberal enough for my taste.”
@hebegebe Some of the cities and states with strict gun laws have the worst murder rates by gun. Don’t kid yourself. I am no fan of guns, but I would not pick a college based on gun laws in a state. If anything, I would look more closely at the homicide rates in that area. Based on a quick, random google search, see the cities with the most homicides by gun per 100,000 people in 2012 below:
Detroit. Chicago. Baltimore. Cleveland. Oakland. New Orleans. Philadelphia. Memphis. Kansas City. Milwaukee. Tulsa.
But, even with this data, I would still consider sending a kid to Penn or Tulane or the Univ of Chicago. You can’t protect kids from everything everywhere.
Ironically, two Ithaca College kids were stabbed at 2am today - on the Cornell campus - and I believe that one died. I don’t know the details yet, but who would think that would happen in rural NY?
Also ironically, I feel safer in South Carolina, where I live now, than I did in the major metro areas where I have lived in the past, even though the gun laws are probably more lax here.
I think that’s a first, @dstark.
On the grounds of free speech. Students have a right to issue demands and protest speakers. Whether those speakers are disinvited (or never invited in the first place) is another matter, of course. @Pizzagirl
@hebegebe, might be. 
@marvin100 - I agree with that. But these demands shouldn’t be met for the same reason.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, I’m not sure that we are better off when people keep their offensive thoughts and opinions to themselves. Our current political campaign has brought a lot of racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic people out of the darkness. Although I personally find their beliefs abhorrent, I wonder if at least there’s some good in knowing what lies in the hearts of many of our fellow citizens. We can’t address what is left unsaid. Having said that, I’m not sure of this. It may be that if these opinions remain silent, they will be less likely to spread and will die out more quickly. Something I’ve been wondering about lately.
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
This is probably restating the obvious, but:
I think virtually every one of us would stipulate that it is a good and common practice when professors giving a heads-up that a lecture or reading assignment contains material that some people could reasonably find offensive. Has been common for years, long before the term TW.
Further, probably no one objects to the formation of a club for [select ethnicity or gender/sexuality identity of your choice]. The problem some of us recognize is when free speech is stifled under the pretense of TW or SS. And it does happen.
I think the screaming Yale woman wanted the university to be a Safe Space free of offensive Halloween costumes. I personally think she was in the wrong.
Univ. of Chicago’s LGBT Safe Space webpage, https://lgbtq.uchicago.edu/page/safe-space, asserts some students miss days of class out of feeling unsafe. I think this is an overreaction, and any student who truly feels unsafe in a modern university classroom (this is not about guns or threats of physical violence which are addressed in different ways) then such a student isn’t ready for college or living in a city or working in a workplace. And I also doubt a colorful sticker on a classroom door materially changes the “safety” within that classroom. Professors who want to show the sticker on their office doors…wonderful.
Perhaps the worst logical extension of the ‘Safe Space’ concept is described here: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/aeman-ansari/ethnic-safe-spaces_b_6897176.html The Racialized Student Collective at Ryerson College did not allow white students into their meetings because…Safe Space!
I believe the UC letter is just a warning shot that the University will not consider rules that would limit free speech, free expression, and free assembly in the name of SS.
While that’s the case, that doesn’t necessarily mean colleges/universities…especially private ones are obligated to give everyone a platform to speak…and the conferring of greater legitimacy speaking at a university…especially an elite one confers on the speaker even with the obligatory disclaimers of non-endorsements.
Should university admins or fringe groups be allowed to invite speakers who say…seriously advocate the moon is made of green cheese and scientists, astronauts who’ve been on the moon, etc who dispute otherwise using moon rocks are doing so because they are in a conspiracy with the international dairy lobby without protest/pushback from university constituents. How about someone who seriously claims Lysenkoism or Creationism/Intelligent Design is legitimate science and anti-Soviet/pro-Western or anti-Christian propaganda respectively are real reasons behind the discrediting of those forms of pseudoscience?
Especially faculty/students who may be concerned at how this could negatively impact the intellectual reputation/institutional gravitas of their institution?
That’s not to say I’m for the “suppression” of such speakers of discredited theories/pseudoscience…just that if universities mindful of their intellectual reputation and institutional gravitas may not find it prudent to confer greater legitimacy on such speakers and in turn…tarnish their own in the process by providing them a platform to speak at a university function.
And constituents within the university…especially faculty and students have the same free speech right to protest such speakers and get the university to reconsider inviting them.
@hebegebe I agree with you also. I think it may be a first too!!!
Sure, and they’re taken on a case-by-case basis, as I’m sure we both agree they should be.
After reading lots of posts in this thread, I think it’s clear that many people are confused about exactly what it means when someone from outside is “invited” to speak at a university. It’s also clear to me that some people do not understand the different roles that universities play.
First, they play a role similar to a “town forum”. This is their “hosting” role, where they simply serve as a convenient gathering place for people to hear and exchange ideas. Students groups, professors, etc. can invite speakers to campus. Group A can invite Democrats, group B can invite Republicans, Professor X can invite . These invitations are not extended by the university, and it is not correct to suggest that the university is in any way endorsing the speaker’s views. This is how most speakers are brought in. Of course anyone can protest a speaker, but in this case trying to force a group to disinvite a speaker or forcing the speech to be shut down would interfere with free expression.
The second case is when the university (or a senior administrator) extends an official invitation to speak on behalf of the university or is officially honoring someone. A commencement speaker might be an example. In this case, I think it is perfectly legitimate for a group to protest to get the invitation rescinded. This is no longer a pure free expression issue (though there are certainly free expression concerns) since the university is acting as a corporate body. Students have a right to make their opinions known about how the university is acting.
I know this might seem like splitting hairs to people outside of academia, but the distinction is important. Students and professors should be able to bring in lots of speakers–sometimes diametrically opposed speakers–without having their right to do so infringed upon or having to get official endorsement from the university (as long as they fill out the proper forms, etc.) In the case where a professor invites a speaker to campus, issues of academic freedom are often also involved.
The university has a role in protecting their right to bring in speakers, and this is part of the context behind the Dean’s letter. The letter says that UChicago will protect these rights.
Several posts here have completely confused the two issues, and a few posts analyzing disinvitations have gotten this analysis totally backwards (IMNSHO).
It’s not surprising that there are confused posters who try to argue that a speaker on campus means that the university is “lending legitimacy” to the speakers’ views.
We’ve discussed this alread–while these invitations are not endorsements, they do have a legitimizing effect. Again, as I mentioned before, I know from experience–I’ve spoken at colleges and promptly added the experience to my cv.
Additionally, you elide the jump from protest/pressure to “force,” and I’m not sure that’s quite fair to do. Protest, pressure are exercises of free speech. Force, of course, would be something else, but has that actually happened?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/09/us/university-of-chicago-protests-tyler-kissinger.html?_r=0
They almost expelled the student body president in June for opening doors for protesters and expelled a bunch of students in 69. UC does not seem as liberal as people seem to want to believe.
I was doing some research. I found out some interesting things that may or may not play into the motivation for the Presidents letter. UChicago is heavily in debt. They are so much in debt their credit rating has been downgraded. They have asked each department to cut their budget by 8 per cent
https://chicagomaroon.com/2016/06/07/budget-cuts-prompt-layoffs-in-the-humanities/
The graduate students at UChicago have been given the right to form a union. Previously the contingent faculty were organizing
http://seiu73.org/2016/08/23/6493/.
The non tenured faculty at U Chicago state that they make less than an elementary school teacher. They get paid 5,000 per course
In 2013 the President of U Chicago who sent out the letter made almost 3.5 million dollars. The University of Chicago interestingly recently criticized the unions.
The Daily Beast tied this all together into one simple analysis
"By coincidence, the U Chicago dean’s letter came out the same week that the National Labor Relations Board ruled that teaching and research assistants, who work for years as barely-paid serfs, and who until now have frequently been banned from organizing a union, are entitled to do so. The University of Chicago sent out another letter, this time to all faculty and graduate students, alleging (with no evidence, since none exists) that such a union could “be detrimental to students’ education and preparation for future careers.”
That kind of issue points toward the real crises affecting American higher education, issues that have nothing to do with Halloween costumes and everything to do with decreases in state funding, increases in corporate funding, the demise of tenure, and outrageous spirals of indebtedness and even poverty among academics. Funny, Dean Ellison didn’t provide any trigger warnings for those"
"That’s why it’s clear that this letter’s true audience was not the students to which it was addressed, but the alumni who can now read it on the right-wing blogosphere. (Interestingly, the site to which the letter referred its readers, freexpression.uchicago.edu, was down when I checked it today.) After all, for every one Amherst alumnus dismayed at the renunciation of Lord Jeffrey Amherst (who advocated the genocide of Native Americans by spreading smallpox among them), there are hundreds of conservative Chicago alumni. This, after all, is where neo-conservatism was born.
This letter, in other words, was a prime example of virtue signaling, which is when a person makes a statement merely to burnish their credentials within an ideological community. Look at me, the letter says, I oppose political correctness. And that’s pretty much all it says."
Two times at UChicago this calendar year.
You are right there is a difference between protesting and “forcing”. I think my post is clear about this.
You should read the background here. In my opinion, this is a different issue. I do think expulsion would too harsh a penalty, but they did not do so.