"Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her.
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This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion."
Anyway this is ridiculous. The idea that a law class, better yet, a law student would skip over rape law is insane, unfortunately people do get raped.
If someone is offended by the simple usage of a word in a professional setting then its clear that they need to seek professional help and may suffer from something, whether it be PTSD, depression etc.
Words that may be found offensive, esp in something like law are vital to the comprehension and learning experience of the students. I hope this isn’t something that catches on
Whether the students like it or not, these potentially offensive words and their meanings do exist. They’ll have to be exposed to it sooner or later; better sooner than later.
While I can understand the motivations behind some of this political correctness, it’s gone too far. People can find a way to be offended by pretty much anything these days. Dealing with these things used to just be part of growing up.
There’s an excellent article written by a professor that’s called something like “I’m afraid of my students” and she talks about how sensitive people have become. You can no longer talk about anything in the classroom that challenges people’s ideas because they will get offended. Its quite sad.
This has been a discussion in higher education for a good while—if you go to the Chronicle of Higher Education and search for “trigger warnings” (the most recent buzzword for the phenomenon) you’ll find more than you’d ever care to read on it. However, the whole issue goes back to when I was in college (late 80s/early 90s) at least and probably earlier, and so it amuses me that The Atlantic presents it as something new and shocking about the current generation.
Or maybe not—bashing whichever age cohort is in their teens and twenties at the moment seems to be the way of these puff pop-culture pieces, so I suppose it makes sense on those grounds.
‘The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable.’
If a prof in an ideas-oriented class doesn’t challenge the beliefs of students and make them uncomfortable, it’s a second-class education.
Some of the incidents described in the article are truly beyond incredible…
@guineagirl96 Could that essay be the one entitled “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” referenced in the above article?
@Roger_Dooley I really hope that this article is drawing on some of the most extreme examples of this trend. When administrators of a school system like the UCs are taking action on the matter, however, that suggests this is either a new normal or at the very least a movement with the support of a certain subset of college students.
IMO the premise is well-intentioned but misplaced. Bad things do happen to people, and we should help them heal from those things. Part of that healing starts with open dialogue.
Instead of trying to keep everything away from touching a crack in an egg, fix the crack. You can’t trigger-warn forever- life doesn’t.
I’m not sure I will be able to express what I mean because I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but I will try.
It seems to me that the root of this issue is the inability of these students to differentiate the representation of reality through labels (vocabulary) from reality itself. I have to think that this is a psychological impairment that requires therapy of some kind. Between this kind of tyrannical speech control, trigger warnings (which overlap heavily with this area), and the new lists of words that are considered offensive and un-PC such as were recently submitted (and thank God rejected for now) to the administration at the University of New Hampshire http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/editorial-america-yes-beautiful-article-1.2308588 , there is a very dangerous trend worming its way into institutions of higher education in this country. I don’t know if the students are just bored with a lack of a war to protest or if this really is the natural result of the kind of coddling and sense of victimization they have been taught by a misguided subset of the generation preceding them, but if they are successful we will have about 100 words we are all allowed to use, and book-burning of all those “trigger-filled” works that exist won’t be far behind.
This is not just Orwellian, it is positively incomprehensible that 1) anyone could even think this way; and 2) that any responsible educator would take it remotely seriously.
I think they have good intentions but they’re going to the extreme. We can’t ignore those words and situations, especially in an academic and professional environment that is dedicated to learning. If they want to spread awareness and fix these problems, then the only way to do so is to talk about it instead of ignoring it. Now, if they had been protesting tasteless things like rape jokes, then I would unconditionally support the movement.
@moscott I personally see no issue in removing gender labels from toys. Why should dolls be girl things while superhero figurines are boy things, when both kinds of toys are essentially the same little plastic people? It is the same concept as removing gender stereotypes from careers, which I am sure many of us agree with. IMO the Target situation is a completely different conversation from the one presented by the OP.
A casual friend has a daughter who’s a freshman at an elite-ish liberal arts school in the northeast. Her first month on campus, she was walking by a construction site and a few of the guys start a cat-calling thing (kind of a “hey, baby, looking good today!” kind of thing…just guys being jerky). She really freaked. Went to the campus security offices, filed a complaint, Then she and her mom got madder and madder because nothing was being done about what had happened (it was a one-time thing…she avoided that street in the future). Things got worse and worse and worse…she stopped going to class…and finally ended up dropping out spring semester all-together. Maybe the kid was just really fragile before all of this happened but heavens…there are much bigger things in the world than being wolf-whistled while walking down a street.
Back when I was still noticed on the street (aging changes that I’d just laugh at the guys…it disarmed them…and defused the tension…
It has gotten ridiculous, as liberal as I am, this has gotten to the point of being out there in granola-head la la land, the kind of stuff they parody on the tv show “Portlandia”. It is one thing to try and provide a safe space for kids, a place where students are not supposed to make other deliberately feel uncomfortable or bullied. There is a difference between someone getting in someone’s face and calling them a racial epithet or referring to their orientation or whatnot, and someone being uncomfortable with words or concepts in the classroom. Does that mean in a history class you shouldn’t show images of the death camps because there are Jewish students or students of German descent who would be upset by it? Does that mean that a teacher shouldn’t talk about the gay rights movement because born again Christian students thinks it means God is gonna hit the classroom with lightening, or shouldn’t talk about Jim Crowe and lynchings because students from the south would feel it was castigating them?
I have been around this before, I belonged for a time to a church that was very liberal and welcoming, and tried to be inclusive and so forth, but you saw the same thing there. I remember being in a leadership meeting in winter, and someone mentioned that the roads were treacherous, that there was a lot of black ice, and having this granola head lecture the person about how that is racist (really? It refers to the fact that the ice is indistinguishable from the road surface, which happens to be black in color)…or having someone in a work meeting telling us using terms like “slave process” or “slave processor” was hurtful, when it is a standard technical term.
I am glad that consciousness has been raised about things, about trying to make the college environment not hostile, to get rid of some of the crap that was around when I went to school in the dark ages, but this has gone too far, it is like someone wrote a bot to wipe out offensive words and ideas and forgot to program in concepts of context and intent.
“Dear Target, I am offended by the color blue. I demand that Target discontinue carrying blue colored clothing and household items. Blue makes me feel sad and is oppressive to all people like me who get the blues from blue. By selling blue items, Target discriminates against me and perpetuates stereotyping of the blue-phobic with all of the offensive blue-y-ness everywhere in the store. Oh sure, Target executives pretend that everything is okay with all those maddening red and white circles but it’s all just another form of blue trickery. I don’t want my children and grandchildren to carry the enormous burden of bluefensiveness by patronizing such a clearly thoughtless retailer. This outrageous behavior in marketing must stop.”
I think it has something to do with glorifying victim hood. Victims get the press, they get the money, they get the sympathy etc. Oppressors are bad, evil, excoriated. Then there are the advocates. These are people who stand up for the “victims”. It makes them feel important and useful. In today’s world with instant media it is too easy to be an advocate for a victim before you even understand who you are advocating for. Most people would consider cat calling boorish behavior and worthy of ridicule. Most wouldn’t call for some higher authority to solve the problem. The young lady and her mother have made themselves victims and want the advocates to fight for them. Anymore nearly everyone can call themselves a victim for some reason. We have established a set Oppressors (corporations, governments, unions (to some), the media, anyone who disagrees with you) and created a hypersensitive environment that the advocates in the media are always on call to exploit (I think of the Rolling Stone debacle at UVA). This is the environment that many students have been brought up in. They have been taught to be a victim or advocate for them. Who in their right mind would want to identify with an “oppressor” unless you want a job.
I’ll just note that this isn’t a “liberal” thing—note the existence of websites designed to “unmask” the liberal lean of professors, and the horror at such stories.
That said, I repeat my earlier statement that this isn’t anything new, no matter what a number of recent articles on the issue claim.
I’d just laugh at the guys…it disarmed them…and defused the tension…