It seems to me that a majority of people- lots of editorials and online commentaries- support our Dean’s Letter of welcome and intellectual freedom to the new students. It is interesting that those supporters are a bipartisan crowd, full of right-wing “live free or die” types, and fierce liberals like me who think that progressive ideas will live and flourish, while regressive, hateful or just frikkin wrong ideas will die in the bright light of the open debate called for in the letter. The irony of the right-wing support of this letter should not go unnoticed. Even if many campuses (most of them diverse and with generally left-leaning faculty) adopt a similar policy, it is unlikely to provide any kind of increased haven for the bigotry and misogyny now eating up our political right. Get those ideas out in the open though, the letter suggests to me, and lets see how they fare! The support from the left (including my own support of this free and open discourse ideal) may be similarly unfruitful; open debate will probably not result in significant liberal wins in the contest of ideas. However we have been seeing the needle move lately and we should keep having these conversations because free discussion is so much better than closing down points of view.
Most of the opposition to the letter comes from valid concerns over support for students who are vulnerable in some way (victims of abuse, violence, PTSD, other mental health issues), that might be negatively impacted by the absence of trigger warnings and safe spaces. These issues are critical- students must be safe and feel safe, both physically and intellectually, in order to effectively learn. A key point that is being missed by many is that the University of Chicago, despite the letter, is not restricting any of these things- freedom of speech, remember. Chicago faculty members have complete freedom to warn students about upcoming material, and many of us do. I applaud the University for not requiring warnings (how do you legislate all the potential triggers?), but I will still prepare my Anatomy students before I show the video of a man with his chest cracked open undergoing open-heart surgery, and I will provide a detailed alert system and escape route before I pull back the sheet on the dissected human cadaver. I expect many of my colleagues will similarly help their students deal with material that might be shocking or distressful- it is appropriately up to us and our students to decide. The same applies to safe spaces- I agree with our Dean that restricting debate in class or in University activities to a certain range of topics, to keep everybody feeling comfy with the ideas, is generally not a good idea. But we can do it if we want- discussions of war, genocide, assault, racial tensions- you name it - can be structured however the faculty member and their students decide to proceed. In addition, there are lots of organizations allowing students to aggregate with friends and like-minded individuals, and there are extensive counseling services that provide safe spaces of many kinds.
Concerns about student support mechanisms, which I think have improved greatly in recent years at Chicago (and information on which is always supplied to students), should not get in the way of supporting our excellent campus policy on free expression and rigorous debate. It certainly should not result in the kind of shrill and fatuous condemnation of our campus culture written by Kevin Gannon @TheTattoedProf who claims that student protest will not be permitted (incorrect- student right to protest is fiercely defended), that the letter forces students into a predetermined path, eliminating student agency (no, wrong again, it does the opposite), and that the letter is not about academic freedom, but about exerting faculty power over the students (OMG, can you please come down from there?) Despite these tortuous mental gymnastics based on factual errors and misunderstanding, and apparent underestimation of the intellects of our new students, Gannon comes around at the end to say “If we really value academic freedom, then we need to model that with and for our students. Ableism, misogyny, racism, elitism, and intellectual sloppiness deserve to be called out. That’s not a threat, that’s our students doing what they’re supposed to as engaged citizens of an academic community.” Precisely! Wait, where did that come from? Oh right, it came from our Dean of Students letter to our first year students. May the best ideas win, through freedom of speech and open rigorous debate.
