Anyone who believes this doesn’t understand the concept of “free speech.” Fortunately, one of the purposes of a liberal arts education is to teach students what…oh. Right.
There is no way, I have suggested, that the actions and rhetoric from the protesters at the University at Missouri clamoring for “safety” and an end to incidents of upsetting speech have any place to go except campus censorship by force. To the extent that the African- American students’ conduct has wider aspirations that extend beyond the campus to U.S. society, they threaten free speech, communication and thought in our society as well. Of course, it must have these aspirations: college is supposed to prepare one for the real world, not to render you more vulnerable to its challenges.
Since the defining character of progressive rhetoric in 2015 is double-talk and ambiguity (for example, “immigration reform,” which really means “no illegal immigration enforcement,” or “mass incarceration,” which means “blaming criminal activity on laws and law enforcement rather than too many people choosing to break laws”), it has been hard to get an explicit statement out of sympathizers that confirm my conclusion. Their intent has been clear, as in the episodes where journalists have been muscled away from “safe” places. Others have interpreted the students’ complaints and demands to require censorship by threat of sanctions, as shown by the Mizzou police e-mail telling students to report “hateful or hurtful speech or actions” and their perpetrators, laying the foundation for an elite, racially-based group of campus inquisitors who have the power to define the hate and haters and send them to a metaphorical stake. The students’ words, however, have remained oblique.
Fortunately, here comes Mizzou student body VP Brenda Smith-Lezama to clarify. She was talking to MSNBC about the declared “safe spaces”—which means, for those who need another translation, this means “places on campus where the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply”—and spat out this:
“I personally am tired of hearing that First Amendment rights protect students when they are creating a hostile and unsafe learning environment for myself and for other students here. I think that it’s important for us to create that distinction and create a space where we can all learn from one another and start to create a place of healing rather than a place where we are experiencing a lot of hate like we have in the past.”
Fortunately, Brookings Institute (That’s the liberal one, remember) Senior Fellow Jonathan Rauch, and the author of “Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought”, had just offered the rebuttal to Smith-Lezama confused view of education in an op-ed the day before. He wrote in part…
But if students feel the modern university’s job is to create a “place of comfort” rather than an “intellectual space,” that is hardly all their fault. Many parents of my generation make it their business to spare their children any exposure to upset and risk. Then kids and parents alike are wooed by colleges that promise idyllic experiences at very steep prices.
Yale, for example, markets its residential colleges as “little paradises.” No wonder if some students expect college to provide shelter from intellectual and interpersonal storms.
And no wonder the movement for trigger warnings and safe spaces is gaining traction at colleges around the country. Trigger warnings supposedly help students cope with (or avoid) exposure to upsetting ideas and images; their other purpose, I and many other free-speech advocates believe, is to chill the presentation of controversial material. Either way, they seek to make higher education emotionally safer by making it less intellectually dangerous….
The trouble is that intellectually safe places are finishing schools, not universities. They can confer connections, polish and useful skills, but they will not educate, because to educate is to inflict and to endure criticism, which is not comfortable….So it is only fair to warn students and their parents that higher education is not a Disney cruise. Tell them in advance so they can prepare. Not, however, with multiple trigger warnings festooning syllabi. One will suffice:
“Warning:Although this university values and encourages civil expression and respectful personal behavior, you may at any moment, and without further notice, encounter ideas, expressions and images that are mistaken, upsetting, dangerous, prejudiced, insulting or deeply offensive. We call this education.”
Bravo.
I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I didn’t try.
[By the way, Kaboom!* Yale actually advertises itself as full of “little paradises”?]
_______________________
* A Kaboom indicates that a story or statement is so outrageously wrong that it caused my head to explode. This explosion occurred yesterdat when I read Ruach’s piece. It’s cleaned up now.
Ethics Alarms 
I wonder if these events would incite an embrace of full-blown racism against black people. After all, if people perceive black people as a threat to their civil rights, does that not mean that the mere presence of black people would constitute a hostile learning environment.
I think it is profoundly damaging to race relations, and virtually guaranteed to harm racial trust in the US disastrously.
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit runs the John Gabriel tweet below from 2014 almost weekly now. I can’t blame him, but it makes me ill. Of all the many ways that Barack Obama has been a human and national tragedy for the nation, this is the most undeniable—and the others are pretty undeniable too. I really didn’t want to believe that our first black president would abuse his influence and good will for this.
It was never this bad under Clinton- and it was during his administration that Justice settled an anti a discrimination suit against the BATF.
Go read the full piece. I loved the last sentence in particular. That piece is way more positive than I expected.
Google up Modern Educayshun, a short film by Neel Kolhatkar.
Why Google when you can link!
I love taking the piss outta Social Justice.
HT, thank you for finding that. Powerful. And, sadly, possible.
I remember a discussion Jon Stewart had towards the end of W’s second term, he was asked something about whether it would be harder to attack Obama were he to win, and his answer was (And I’m pulling this from memory, so it isn’t a perfect quote.) “Harder? Maybe. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Really, should we be basing elections on whether it’s easier to make fun of the people in office? I don’t mock the people involved so much as the absurdity of the system. Will the next administration be less absurd? It’s going to be hard to top this one.”
There was probably an element of partisanship in there just because of who Jon Stewart is and the soup he swims in, but…. That was kind of profound. As much as these snowflakes have adverse effects on society in general, and we need to address the damage they do, if there’s a silver lining, it’s that the satire almost writes itself… and they hate being laughed at.
I hate leaving quotes hanging, this was the transcript from CNN’s “Crossfire”, and it was actually at the end of W’s first term.
BEGALA: Which candidate do you suppose would provide you better material if he won?
STEWART: Mr. T. I think he’d be the funniest. I don’t…
(LAUGHTER)
BEGALA: Don’t you have a stake in it that way, as not just a citizen, but as a professional comic?
(CROSSTALK)
STEWART: Right, which I hold to be much more important than as a citizen.
BEGALA: Well, there you go.
(LAUGHTER)
BEGALA: But who would you provide you better material, do you suppose?
STEWART: I don’t really know. That’s kind of not how we look at it. We look at, the absurdity of the system provides us the most material. And that is best served by sort of the theater of it all, you know, which, by the way, thank you both, because it’s been helpful.
(LAUGHTER)
CARLSON: But, if Kerry gets elected, is it going to — you have said you’re voting for him. You obviously support him. It’s clear. Will it be harder for you to mock his administration if he becomes president?
STEWART: No. Why would it be harder?
CARLSON: Because you support…
(CROSSTALK)
STEWART: The only way it would be harder is if his administration is less absurd than this one. So, in that case, if it’s less absurd, then, yes, I think it would be harder. But, I mean, it would be hard to top this group, quite frankly.
(LAUGHTER)
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
STEWART: In terms of absurdity and their world matching up to the one that — you know, it was interesting. President Bush was saying, John Kerry’s rhetoric doesn’t match his record.
These satiric British film shorts seem to be going viral, Humble. That particular one, however, is downright scary. It’s just a short step from what already exists in British schools and is likewise as scary as an updated “1984”.
“I feel that restrictive legislation on academic freedom is forever a thing of the past, that . . . [we] . . .may now address one another in an atmosphere of mutual respect and of a common quest for truth.
~John Scopes, 1965 (Reflections on the “Monkey Trial” of 1925)
The words missing from the ellipsis are “Religion and Science.” I altered this so as not to confuse any current college students who would not understand the import or know the source of the original words which transliterate to “we,” specifically, racially, Black and White. Science won. So much for trial outcomes.
While not everything is done on principle, I’m comforted Senior Fellow Jonathan Rauch is still in possession of his.
An update:
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/furious-conservatives-demand-arrest-of-mizzou-student-president-over-false-kkk-claims/