Pete Grieve of the University of Chicago student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon:
Incoming first-years received a letter from the College today making clear that the University of Chicago does not condone safe spaces or trigger warnings.
“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,” reads the letter from Dean of Students Jay Ellison.
In May, Student Government (SG) passed on an opportunity to reaffirm the University’s commitment to free speech when members voted to indefinitely table a resolution that would have condemned any student who “obstructs or disrupts” free speech.
The resolution, which was presented to SG by the president of the College Republicans club, second-year Matthew Foldi, came in the wake of three high-profile incidents in which speakers invited to campus were shut down or interrupted by protesters.
Mr. Grieve cites three specific high-profile incidents at U of C that led to this decision and the letter from Dean of Students Jay Ellison.
In February, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez had to leave the Institute of Politics (IOP) after she was confronted by Black Lives Matter protesters in the audience who held up signs started chanting.
The next day, the University of Chicago Police Department had to end an event with Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist and critic of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement, after protesters disrupted his speech.
Then in April members of the Armenian Students Association interrupted an event with a scholar who they say denies the Armenian Genocide. Again, we don’t want to run long, but we could be more explicit about what happened.
As you might guess, the comment section for Mr. Grieve’s post at the Maroon overfloweth with right-wing trolls.
However, as a gay black man, I agree with the decision of the University, to an extent.
On the surface, one could well imagine that I would find the idea of “safe spaces” quite attractive; indeed, I have been in “safe spaces” frequently and, to some degree, I do participate in “safe spaces”
But in my experiences in most (if not all) of these “safe spaces,” I have not found my own dissenting views to be welcome.
Additionally, I have found that those participating with me within a designated “safe space” occasionally feel free to make many assumptions about who I am and, more importantly, who I should be.
And among those “safe spaces,” I would include online blogs. When it comes to online blogs, I don’t mind, of course, adhering to various Terms of Service (TOS), obviously.
I simply don’t believe that anything like a “safe space” truly exists and even if it did, mine is not a temperament suited for those venues.
I am much more amenable to the idea of “trigger warnings,” however. You never know what traumas another person has lived through. My personal sense of it is that “trigger warnings” are a bit overused, though.
Please note Dean Ellison’s disclaimer in the letter that, ““Freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to harass or threaten others.”