Crescat scientia; vita excolatur: U of C tells students where they can stick their safe spaces

It's that time of year, when helicopter parents alight on college campuses to deposit their precious snowflakes into a carefully-structured-and-scripted environment free of critical thinking, analytical debate, and intellectual rigour.  (Judging from my local state school, sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll are apparently still okay, though.)  Institutions around the country have bent over backwards to enact speech codes in response to student demands to ensure that their college education is free of any words and ideas that might hurt their widdle feelings and/or make them feel 'uncomfortable'.  So, it was a pleasant surprise this morning to see that, in a move sure to get the knickers of every SJW in a twist, the University of Chicago sent the following letter to incoming freshmen.  Go ahead and read the whole thing.  I'll wait.

Click photo to enlarge to readable size.  Or
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Take particular note of this:

"You will find that we expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion, and even disagreement.  At times this may challenge you and even cause discomfort."

And this:

"Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called “trigger warnings,” we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual “safe spaces” where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own."

The letter links to a report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression, which includes this statement:

“It is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.  Although the University greatly values civility, and although all members of the University community share in the responsibility for maintaining a climate of mutual respect, concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.”  (Emphasis added.)

Speech codes, in case you haven't been following the reductio ad absurdum of academic censorship, and their bastard offspring, trigger warnings and safe spaces, restrict speech that would be protected by the First Amendment outside of campus.  Public colleges and universities are prohibited from enacting unconstitutional restrictions on campus speech, although many of them remain blissfully oblivious to their illegality and do so anyway.  Private schools are free to do as they choose, although, as institutions of higher education, they have an inherent obligation to embrace and encourage the free exchange of ideas.

It should be prima facie obvious that all of these forms of censorship are antithetical to a free society, let alone a place of higher learning.  Speech control is tantamount to thought control.  The belief that these protections are warranted follows, in some cases, from a viewpoint that college isn't the real world:  College students may no longer be caterpillars but they are not yet butterflies and they need protection in this delicate chrysalis stage in order to be able to eventually spread their wings.  It's true that college is a unique transitional stage but fashioning it into a solipsistic cocoon is hardly preparation for the real world.  If students are so sensitive that they cannot learn outside of a safe space replete with trigger warnings and stripped of all inadvertent microaggressions, what the hell are they going to do when they graduate?

Even scarier, in other cases, justification for campus censorship lies in a fundamental lack of understanding of the value of free speech and the dangers of viewpoint discrimination.  We all agree that racism is wrong, the thinking goes, and racial minorities have suffered long enough, so by prohibiting any expression that may be interpreted as racist, whether intended that way or not, we are simply ensuring that minority students are shielded from any vestiges of racism that remain in the unenlightened.  We are taking our duty to provide education seriously: We are teaching students what they are allowed to think, just like in the USSR, Maoist China, and madrassas.  Oh, wait….. 

You thought schools were supposed to teach students how to think not what to think?  Yeah, you are a little behind the times.  Wake up and smell the Fair Trade decaf and don't be late for your course on how The Vagina Monologues is insensitive to transgender women.

So, seeing U of C buck the trend and stand up for free expression on college campuses made my day.  Hell, it might even have restored my faith in humanity.  But let's not get carried away – we still have to get through the election.

If you don’t want to be judged, why are you posting on the Internet?

**NO NEGATIVE COMMENTS**

NO JUDGING!!!

IF U GONNA JUDGE ME, KEEP UR THOUGHTS TO URSELF!!!

I am increasingly seeing these phrases, or some variation thereof, attached to posts on the Web.  So, I have to ask:  What part of public forum, potentially viewable by anyone in the world, don’t these posters understand?  If you post something that anyone can read and respond to, you don’t get to dictate the response.  If, for example, you post in a breastfeeding Yahoo! Group that you are planning to wean at two weeks because you just don’t want to be bothered and formula is easier, how can you expect a global group of militant breastfeeders not to excoriate you?  I have seen such a post, with “no judging, just supportive & positive comments” stuck onto the end.

This trend of demanding only positive, nonjudgmental comments is alarming and says a lot about how our society values self-esteem over truth, and feelings over facts.  As an adjunct professor, I teach a basic course in civil liberties in which we spend considerable time parsing out the rights contained in the First Amendment.  I always ask the class if there are any forms of speech that are not protected.  A few students are usually familiar with slander, libel, threats, and obscenity, but, without fail, every class there is always at least one student who asserts that speech that is mean or hurts someone’s feelings is not protected speech.  When I explain to them that, whilst saying mean things that hurt someone’s feelings might indicate that you aren’t a very nice person, it won’t get you arrested, they are always surprised.  Inevitably someone brings up whatever story has been in the media recently about a professional athlete being fined for using a racial epithet or an employee fired for saying on Facebook that his boss is a jerk.  At this point I explain the difference between public and private entities, and how private companies are not bound by the First Amendment.  It is obvious that this topic is confusing to people.  Speech rights prevent the government from censoring the marketplace of ideas but they only apply to the government, not private companies or individuals.  Protection from official government censorship is not the same as the complete absence of consequences.  Just because you can’t be thrown in jail or fined for saying something, doesn’t mean that others can’t respond and retaliate.  You can call someone a bitch, and they can call you an asshole right back.  You can’t insult someone in their own home and claim free speech rights when they show you the door.

By the same token, you own your little piece of Internet real estate and you are at perfect liberty to delete any comments for any reason on your blog or Facebook page or in groups you moderate.   If you only want positive comments on your blog posts or Facebook wall, that is your prerogative.  My argument is not with the right to delete comments with which you disagree but with the choice to do so.  By entertaining only viewpoints with which you agree, that validate your behavior and opinions, you are myopically limiting your perspective.

That is not to say you have to let every trollish post remain.  Posts that insult without making a counterargument or that are clearly posted by trolls who are only trying to sow discord rather than stimulate genuine debate, are no more than spam and should be treated as such.  But deleting posts that challenge your position is a sign of weakness.  Do you, on some level, know that your opinion won’t stand up to a factual challenge?  Are you looking for support because you realise, on some level, that what you are doing is wrong?  As an intactivist, I see anti-circ comments deleted all the time by posters who have mutilated their child and don’t want to be told that they made an uninformed decision.  Mutilators don’t want to be confronted with the facts that prove the harm they have done to their own child.  They want to do the Internet equivalent of covering their ears and shouting, “LALALALA! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

A closely related phenomenon is the tendency of posters to state that you must respect their opinion.  Even if you disagree, the thinking goes, you have an obligation to respect their views and, by extension, them.  (“You may not want to circumcise your son but I did and you have to respect my choice.  My son, my choice.  You have no right to judge me…” and similar nauseating bullshit.)  I cannot fathom where this idea that opposing viewpoints, and the people who hold them, somehow deserve respect comes from.  Is it related to the fact that we are supposed to debate our opponents in a civil fashion, avoiding ad hominem attacks?  But that doesn’t imply respecting the person or their views.  Is it somehow an outgrowth of freedom of conscience – i.e., because you can believe whatever you damn well please, every opinion is somehow equally worthy of respect?  But that doesn’t make sense either.  It is a mystery where this misguided idea comes from, but it is nearly ubiquitous.  This despite the fact that it doesn’t stand up to even the slightest challenge.  If someone holds the view that women should be subservient to men, or that the clitorises of girls should be removed at birth so the women will not enjoy sex and so not be inclined to cheat on their assigned husbands, I have not the remotest shred of respect for those views nor the people who hold such views.  None.  Whatsoever.  Zero respect.  Less than zero, if that is possible.  Could you respect a misogynist?  A racist?  Someone who thinks the earth is 6,000 years old?  Someone who firmly believes that a 9 year old girl should be forced to carry her rapist’s baby to term?  Can you now see how absurd the idea that you should respect opposing viewpoints is?

All of this nonsense about respecting people’s opinions and not judging them implies that all choices are equal: “Hey, you may make different choices or hold different views, but it’s a free country.  I am free to make my own individual choices and you cannot judge them or criticize them….”  Wait a minute—what was that last bit?  I can’t judge you or criticize you?  Um, why the hell not?  Free speech does not exempt you from criticism.  You have free speech to put your views out there, but so do I, to condemn your views or judge them or refute them, as I see fit.