University students are crying out to be swaddled in the cotton wool of trigger warnings and safe spaces, a worrying new survey has found.
Fragile youths also said they love no-platform policies, newspaper bans and knocking down statues to shelter them from controversial or unpleasant ideas.
The sky-high levels of support for thought-policing emerged from a survey of just over 1,000 students in the UK.
However, its findings are also likely to be broadly applicable in the US, where safe space culture originated.
48% of all students surveyed agreed that all universities should have safe space policies to police debate, with only 20% opposing the idea. Women favored safe spaces by a considerable margin.
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The survey, conducted by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) also showed that students are terrified of being triggered, with 68% backing their use.
Such policies are already having absurd results. A student in Edinburgh was almost ejected from a debate for raising her hand in violation of the safe space policy.
And trigger warning culture has permeated as far as Oxford University law lectures – which students have the option to skip if they find the crimes up for discussion “distressing”.
Support for knocking down memorials to controversial donors – epitomized in the Oxford campaign to knock down a statue of Cecil Rhodes – was also supported by more than half of students.
Confusingly, the survey found most students pay lip service to free speech – with 60% agreeing universities “should never” limit it.
But in practice many of them turned on a dime to support censorious policies in practice.
Our new report, out now, on students' views of gender segregation, tabloids, UKIP, safe spaces, trigger warnings etc https://t.co/jUQ6prkhyp
— HEPI (@HEPI_news) May 22, 2016
76% said they are in favor of the NUS’s “No Platform” policy, which is meant to ban fascists and racists but has sprawled to include feminist academics, gay rights campaigners and critics of Shariah law.
Almost 40% said that tabloid newspapers should be banned from sale on campus because they have been deemed “sexist”.
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Nick Hillman, who wrote the report, said the results expose a contradiction whereby, for students, “appears to be a way of protecting liberalism”.
He added: “These are inherently complicated issues but the pendulum may have swung too far away from favoring free speech.
“The soft support for freedom on campus challenges many of the core tenets of academia, such as the view that universities should sometimes be challenging, even difficult, places. Where else is there the time, resources and knowledge to discuss the issues facing the world?
“Higher education institutions should redouble their efforts to discuss the challenges, threats and limits to free speech with their students. Otherwise, no one can guarantee that higher education will continue to offer a space in which good ideas defeat weak ones through open debate.”
