Social justice warriors at the University of Chicago and across the Internet are awash in despair after the school’s dean declared in a letter to incoming freshmen that the college would not support “safe spaces” or “trigger warnings” to protect delicate feelings.
The letter detailed the administration’s stance on academic and intellectual freedom, noting that a university is a place of discovery, not retreat. But that hasn’t stopped supporters of safe spaces from asking for a safe space from the letter itself!
The missive was, of course, hurtful to those students’ fragile sensibilities, and they immediately wailed to any friendly audience that would have them that the dean was exposing them not just to new ideas, but (clearly) to rampant sexual assault, racism and systematic oppression. The need their safe spaces! How else will their feeble constitutions survive?
One student told DNA Info that the administration was asking students to “check their compassion and their experiences at the door.” Another, the head of the campus sexual assault survivors network, said that this was simply the latest failure by the college to cater to interest groups.
“The administration has a huge problem with transparency, and they have been slow to address issues related to sexual violence, disability injustice, police discrimination and many more,” she said.
Vox posted an op-ed accusing the college of “exercising power” over its students, calling trigger warnings “pedagogical imperatives.” The piece also defended students who shouted down or ousted controversial speakers from other campuses, saying that they “challenge” academic professors and “hold us accountable” for their institutional biases.
The New Republic whined that the University of Chicago was “attacking academic freedom” by telling students to think more critically about shutting down speakers and shutting off conversation.
Some students, and former students, took to Twitter to complain.
Technically, the First Amendment protects the right to be offensive, but according to Ms. Kendall, UChicago is simply a hotbed of oppression.
The letter from the dean, the school has now repeatedly reiterated, is not an outright ban on safe spaces or trigger warnings. Professors are still free to give a heads-up to their students, and the more delicate students are still free to gather in out-of-the-way places for crafts time, while other, more intellectually mature students discuss controversial topics.
But that didn’t stop students on Twitter mistaking the dean’s position on “trigger warnings” as a ban. They launched into social media diatribes about the importance of warning people that they might encounter uncomfortable situations and ideas.
Others just went on a tangential attack, critiquing the school’s traditional approach to economics…
…the school’s reluctance to alter its policy on investigating incidents of sexual assault at the request of radical campus feminists….
…and some just seemed to miss the point altogether.
Given the situation at Mizzou, it’s likely social justice warriors are right about one thing: that UChicago is looking for a good public relations angle on the ongoing battle for control of college campuses. The school caters mostly to students looking to study economics and the sciences—and people in those programs might not be as interested in the University of Chicago if they think its a political battleground.
The university is making sure that social justice warriors don’t end up ruining the school’s bottom line—something likely important to a school that has historically been home to some of the world’s most notable economists.