U of Chicago: No safe spaces, ‘trigger warnings’

In a letter to new students obtained by the Chicago Maroon, Dean of Students John Ellison outlines the school’s stance on speech on campus, writing that while civility is encouraged, topics shouldn’t be considered off-limits exclusively because they may cause “discomfort” for some students.

Once here will you discover that one of the University of Chicago’s defining characteristic is our commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression. But the institution expects members of its community “to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion and even disagreement”.

To others, safe spaces are “the live-action version” of the trigger warning, with its own negative implications. Less than 8 percent of the more than 31,000 people who applied to enter the class of 2020 were accepted by the school, according to The Chicago Maroon.

And so now we have this move from University of Chicago, first reported by the campus paper the Chicago Maroonand picked up approvingly by Fox News and a round of right-wing blogs.

One of the law school courses I teach at George Mason University is Constitutional Law II, which focuses on the Fourteenth Amendment and its history. “I personally identify as a queer student – when I go to my advisers’ offices, are they still going to be trained in the same way?”

But some students at the school aren’t happy about the stance, implying it opens the door for overt racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination behind the premise of free speech. Despite the letter and the increased protests on campus, The University of Chicago still has the highest rating of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which assesses the free speech policies of American universities.

Harassment or threats will not be tolerated, the letter makes clear.

I frequently make a point of citing the tuition at colleges and universities where thought police control the minds of students, hopefully inspiring parents to not flush their money down such rat holes.

As the letter prompted firestorm, reaction has been mixed.

Many remain today as refuges for like-minded people, where they don’t have to explain or defend their politics, beliefs or practices.

The result was that students turned on the professor and his wife, effectively ousting them from the Yale campus (where they didn’t just teach, but lived) and denounced them as racists.

Another saw the letter this way: “We don’t care if you’ve seen your own friend murdered, been the victim of assault, or experienced any sort of crippling traumatic event in your life”. Far more disturbing was the acceptance of the idea that differing opinions could even cause harm and required safe retreats for students where they could be shielded from concepts which conflicted with their established world view.