Yep. That’s why UChicago is going to spend lots of time during orientation week and the semester teachin’ the kids up about why free expression is so vital to an academic institution and a free society 
There’s also the idea that older adults or those who have attained a college or moreso…a graduate education should be held to a higher standard on the basis of their greater life experience due to older age and/or higher degree of education than undergrads/younger folks.
And then continue with its existing policy of content warnings and safe spaces 
Exactly, which is why the critics’ reliance on breathless exaggeration, slippery slope hypotheticals, and wild extrapolation is so delectable.
“Breathless exaggeration and slippery slope hypotheticals” like …
- So U of Chicago is abolishing the Japanese Student Association (and similar organizations)?
- So U of Chicago will turn a blind eye to harassment of gay students?
- What if U of Chicago brings a speaker who says that the moon is made of green cheese? Huh? HUH?
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Yep. They've adopted my position in its entirety. Too bad not everyone can be so enlightened, but just give it time ... just give it time :)
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I think that most of us agree that there are certain views that have been so roundly and universally discredited and/or rejected that there simply isn’t any intellectual value to airing them - i.e, the moon is made of green cheese, or, more to the point “slavery is good,” or “gay people should be executed.” There is no mainstream, serious group of people in this country who believes in any of these positions. The lunatic fringe has the right to state their opinions publicly, but I don’t think a college – or any group affiliated with a college – should be obliged or permitted to give them a platform in the name of academic freedom.
The thing is, we have to be really, really careful about what we define as “roundly and universally discredited.” I sincerely hope that we reach a point at which arguing that gay couples shouldn’t be entitled to civil marriage is considered as backwards as we currently consider opposition to interracial marriage. But in a nation in which, until recently, most states banned gay marriage, a significant minority of the country remains opposed to it, and candidates of one of the two major political parties routinely call for a reversal of the decision permitting it, the fact remains that this is still a topic of active debate. A college should not, therefore, be preventing groups from inviting speakers opposed to gay marriage, or sanctioning professors who oppose it (especially if that opposition is distinct from their academic lives).
I have great compassion for gay students who would, understandably, be upset by the presence of these figures on campus. I also believe that campus groups designed to offer support to LGBT students can define different parameters of “roundly and universally discredited” within their group; I think it is fair to say that an LGBT student center is not the place for debating gay marriage, or offering religious arguments for why it is best for LGBT Christians to remain celibate (even if this argument comes from an LGBT Christian). I also don’t think anything in the UChicago letter implies that the LGBT student group should be forced to do this, any more than the campus Hillel should be forced to hold a discussion of whether or not Jesus is the messiah. Even though their day-to-day operations might include plenty of intellectual content, neither the Hillel nor the LGBT center are primarily intellectual spaces, and, as I see it, are pretty clearly not included in the statement that the university as a whole doesn’t support 'intellectual safe spaces."
However, even the real hurt done to certain students by the expression of certain opinions can’t justify closing off discussion of topical positions that still hold significant numbers of adherents. The fight against these ideas still has to be won, and the way to do that is through more speech, not silence. Extending restrictions on speech that could forseeably cause immediate physical harm to speech that might cause a far more subjective and difficult-to-measure emotional harm is a very dangerous precedent indeed, and that is what SOME – not all – of the students protesting speakers and editorials seem to want.
This thread would not be permitted in an environment with safe spaces. As much as I agree with the UofC position and disagree with the rest of opinions expressed here it would not matter if the conversation were not to be heard. I am not “traumatized” by reading opinions opposed to mine despite any background of mine that might predispose me. If I were traumatized, then perhaps I should be moderated out of the discourse as generally unfit for duty.
Sure it would–just not within one of those safe spaces.
I saw runswimyoga’s last post after I posted, and wanted to offer a response in the form of an incident that actually happened in a class I was teaching this summer. Apologies in advance for length.
The course was a survey on early American poetry. A student questioned why there was only one African-American poet (Phillis Wheatley) on the syllabus, which made Wheatley a “token” representative of her race.
I happen to know quite a bit about early African-American writing, and gave what I think was an entirely appropriate response stating, essentially, that there were very, very few published African-American poets during the period that our class covered, Wheatley being by far the most prominent. I added that the second half of the American poetry sequence included many more African-American poets.
A second student chimed in with “I don’t think we should be putting writers on a syllabus simply because of their race anyway.”
My response to this was “Generally, we don’t, but as we’ve discussed [and we had], many of the writers in this course were chosen partially because of their historical value. Pre-1830s America had some quite skilled poets, but few who would be considered “major” writers if we were judging them purely on artistic achievement. This is true of Phillis Wheatley, but it is also equally true of Anne Bradstreet and Philip Freneau – neither of whom were slaves for whom English was a second language, as Wheatley was.”
I think I handled the incident well.That being said, I can certainly see how the one African-American student in the class (who was not the student who raised the initial question, by the way), would have felt uncomfortable and even hurt by what had happened.
First of all, based on the general context of the discussion up until that point, I think student two, even more than student one, had an agenda. It would not be an unreasonable extrapolation to guess that she is probably not a huge fan of affirmative action, and inclined to be suspicious of changes to the canon that could possible be construed as “politically correct.” All of these positions might be not only distasteful, but personally upsetting to a student who knows that her accomplishments are liable to be questioned by people like her classmate.
Second of all, while I don’t think there was anything particularly wrong with the syllabus as it was, I could certainly see an intellectual argument for including at least one poem by a different African-American poet; the other poet I have in mind, George Moses Horton, while far from a household name, is not necessarily more obscure than some of the other poets on the syllabus. Had I designed the syllabus (I hadn’t; it was a standard syllabus used across the sections of this course), I might have included him – but then, I would also guess that whoever designed the syllabus probably has less of a background in early African-American literature than I do, and more of a background in Puritan and early Republican poetry.
In any case, a student could find grounds to disagree with my defense of the course. I think my statement on the relative place of Wheatley in the canon is pretty mainstream, but I can also see a student upset at the implication that Wheatley isn’t valued purely for poetic merit – even though I think that anger would come from an ahistorical and ill-founded place. A student might even object at my willingness to entertain student 2’s question without more vociferously shutting her down.
The point is, the result of this class discussion might well be that a minority student was hurt. At the same time, I don’t think anything particularly inappropriate was said, including the charged comment about race as a factor in syllabus design. While I wasn’t thrilled with the comment, once the question of representation had been raised, the comment became relevant. Had she begun to derail the discussion with comments on racial preference and the canon wars, I would have cut her off. As it is, though, what she said was germane to the discussion – and potentially hurtful.
What do others think should happen in this kind of scenario?
I’m sorry to see your withdrawl @runswimyoga Your posts have been calm and insightful and have actually caused me to temper my position.
Upon reflection, I really don’t have any objection to voluntary TW/SS so long as SS is not exclusionary – i.e. I don’t think straights should be barred from LGBT SS/clubs/meetings and whites should not be barred from racial SS/clubs/meetings. The converse would be abhorrent. Rules for polite discourse are fine.
My main axe in this debate is that there should still be wide latitude for free speech even if that speech is offensive, satirical, or politically-incorrect. This is not a theoretical stance because I have seen such speech being suppressed for years.
In my days at Yale 30 years ago, I can think of at least four occasions where my friends’ writings, drawings, or costumes (definitely offensive and/or satirical) were brought to, or very close to disciplinary action. None of this expression was inciting-to-violence or harassment of an individual, though some certainly spat in the face of the predominant PC norms. I think this speech must be protected. It appears Yale has not advanced much since those days (President’s letter and the screaming Yale woman re. Halloween costumes.)
Like most of you here, I try my best to raise my kids to be strong in the face of disturbing speech, empathetic to those who are different, and to embrace a good debate.
I wonder how people feel about views that I assume most people here do not believe, but are still held by large portions of the population. Things like, the Earth revolves around the Sun, that vaccines cause autism, or that our president is not a Christian.
Bring it on. Show your proof. All of those things are easily debunked with facts.
(Though I hear your greater point and it’s a good one.)
Apprentice prof, thank you for your example as well.
What’s to stop the first student from penning a dozen op-eds that the English dept at XYZ U is racist and she feels marginalized that her race is only token-ly represented and she demands that there be black poetry professors hired (never mind whether any unemployed ones exist or are interested in applying there) and mandatory classes for all focusing on early American black poetry, even if it’s the expert opinion of those in the field that there aren’t enough to make it worthwhile or that it’s not the best use of time? Because that is the stuff that goes on, nowadays.
Btw I just googled Phillis Wheatley and her story is fascinating. On my list of things to learn more about! Thanks!
I really need a safe space where People Who LIKE Hypotheticals can congregate among like-minded folk, free of mockery.
Apprentice prof – I might have talked a bit more about canon construction generally (manuscript vs print, what remains, who writes syllabi and how) as well as about 18th c. African-American writing more generally (e.g. other genres – petitions, autobiographical narratives, sermons), but I think you handled it well. IME (white prof in a different field who has taught a variety of courses that include AA-authored texts – sometimes a few, sometimes about half the syllabus, sometimes the whole syllabus, depending on period and topic), students ask these kinds of questions to keep you thinking and to hear your reasoning, as well as out of general curiosity. To my knowledge (which, of course is a real limit), I haven’t had a student get offended/hurt when I’ve produced answers that suggest the question is a real/valid one and that I’ve thought/continue to think about it. Because I’ve always had more control over the course than it sounds like you do when I’ve been asked such questions, I’ve also had the option of talking about the issue in lecture and/or letting a highly motivated student write a paper that pursues the question in more depth – e.g. read Horton and make the case for his inclusion in the syllabus.
As for student #2, and here’s one of the reasons to talk about canon construction, “hey, the other poems/poets aren’t here based solely on literary merit either” strikes me as a useful/accurate/responsive approach and one that should satisfy both a student who would make that kind of comment and students who would roll their eyes at such a comment. My take is that it’s almost always better to supply the missing info/correct the mistaken assumption than to shut the questioner down in cases like this. And such an approach also enabled you to redirect the discussion from affirmative action to a topic more relevant to a course in EA poetry.
Long story short, I think good teaching (including but not limited to good modeling of what intellectual inquiry should look like), is the best way to approach most of these problems. In one sense, that should align me with the more speech/talk it through position that U of C administrators represent themselves as championing. But what gives me pause is the modeling part. There’s a we’re here to rock your world – but don’t you try to rock ours subtext. Or, in their vocabulary, we’re unsettling (and that educational); you’re disruptive (and that’s grounds for disciplinary action).
I think/hope/believe that the faculty is different – my kid’s in the Class of 2020.
@runswimyoga said:
Nobody here is saying that the pain is not real, and they should not be heard. The question is whether the affected group can solely define the remaining discussion.
Here is a similar example that explains my point. My wife’s first cousin was born with a condition that is usually fatal by age 13. He is now in his 40s, so he is one of the oldest living survivors, worldwide. To say that health and health care costs dominate family discussions is an understatement. Their costs have been borne by the extended family since his birth, until the family moved to Canada and started to receive benefits there. They make a strong example for why universal health care is needed.
But it would be a huge mistake to let this family, or another like it, dictate health care policy. Since they don’t pay any health care costs themselves, they would automatically choose the most expensive treatment regardless of its efficacy relative to a much less expensive treatment.
The key is to strike the right balance. Listen to what they have to say, and let society as a whole make the decision.
“Nobody here is saying that the pain is not real, and they should not be heard. The question is whether the affected group can solely define the remaining discussion.”
Well said. There seems to be an undercurrent of “well, you’ve been privileged because you’re (white, straight, etc.) and I haven’t been; so now you owe me whatever I think should be done on X issue as some sort of reparations.”
Interesting take on how the UChicago letter could have been worded
instead of
These two posts also explore the concept of safe spaces being used as “shields” vs “swords”
https://popehat.com/2015/11/09/safe-spaces-as-shield-safe-spaces-as-sword/
https://popehat.com/2015/11/10/safe-spaces-as-shield-safe-spaces-as-sword-part-ii/