University of Chicago’s Letter Restricts Academic Speech
September 6, 2016
Two weeks ago, the University of Chicago embroiled itself in controversy by sending a letter to incoming freshmen stating that the university did not support trigger warnings or safe spaces on campus. The letter reignited a national debate about political correctness and free speech. While discussion has centered on students, what has often been neglected is how this letter imposes the administration’s will on professors. In an effort to preserve “academic freedom” by discouraging trigger warnings and safe spaces, the school has actually limited the control of its professors over their own classrooms.
Many NYU students have encountered trigger warnings in their classrooms and syllabi before. These trigger warnings generally do not ban material outright. Instead, they warn students who have had traumatic experiences that the content may be disturbing. Trigger warnings are the beginning, not the end, to academic discussion. They serve to add another perspective to class analysis and help traumatized students work around material they may find troubling. Kate Manne, an assistant professor of philosophy at Cornell University, criticized UChicago’s stance by noting that in her class, students “will often thank me, not just for providing trigger warnings but for bringing up subjects they want to discuss because they’ve been there.”
Trigger warnings are part of an ongoing conversation about the evolving relationship between students, instructors and academic material. UChicago, ironically, attempted to save academic speech by limiting the speech of faculty. If administrators at UChicago truly felt professors opposed to trigger warnings were experiencing backlash from the community, they could have taken a different approach; the letter could have been an affirmation of an individual professor’s right to decide how to run his or her classroom, to include or exclude trigger warnings as they see fit. Instead, administrators undermined instructors who employ trigger warnings by stating that the university does not back their teaching styles and implying that such methods hinder learning.
A discussion of trigger warnings should take place in a classroom between professors and students — like all other academic quandaries — not in an administration board meeting. Universities are meant to be bastions of free speech, where multiple perspectives are not merely allowed but encouraged. Some instructors believe trigger warnings are a form of analysis, a way to broach a difficult subject with a class and allow students with traumatic experiences to participate; others view them as unnecessary or even dangerous by coddling students in false consensus. A diversity of perspectives on trigger warnings should be supported as conducive to a healthy intellectual environment. By supporting one side of the debate and delegitimizing the other, the UChicago administration is negating the very lesson it seeks to purvey: “The members of our community must have the freedom to espouse and explore a wide range of ideas.”
Opinions expressed on the editorial pages are not necessarily those of WSN, and our publication of opinions is not an endorsement of them.
A version of this article appeared in the Tuesday, September 6 print edition. Email Abraham Gross at [email protected].
Brian Huffman • Sep 8, 2016 at 4:18 pm
So if discouraging professors from restricting ideas by using trigger warnings is restricting academic speech, is discouraging Nazi’s from book burning also restricting speech? Isn’t this whole article restricting academic speech by advocating for the elimination of Chicago’s discouraging of professors from restricting ideas? Is an anti-anti-anti-speech article anti-speech? What a mess.
Also, the letter is not addressed to the faculty, but to incoming students. It says nothing about the faculty being discouraged from doing anything. In fact it says that the faculty is encouraged to say whatever they hell they want to say. That, “Members of our community are encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn without fear of censorship.” Is that too clear for you?
Elizabeth Brody • Sep 8, 2016 at 12:36 pm
Btw, the first comment in this thread is hate speech.
Elizabeth Brody • Sep 8, 2016 at 12:35 pm
If permitted, I’d also like to add that the potential for abuse of trigger warnings has already taken place elsewhere in the country. University of Chicago has witnessed schools actually developing or requested to develop ever growing budgeted infrastructure triggered by the needs of the triggered to seek safe-space rehabilitation as well as formal adjudication for alleged transgressions.
In other words, UC knows it won’t just exist in the manner you portray it here, Mr. Gross, but like a hydra it has the potential to grow and spread.
Of course, that is my opinion, sir.
Elizabeth Brody • Sep 8, 2016 at 12:21 pm
Having been an educator at one point and worked as a lawyer in various environments, and too, as a first wave feminist, I disagree with this viewpoint for more than one reason.
If any student attending any particular college suffers from genuine Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to the degree that actual written or spoken words or phrases actually trigger traumatic memories, then that particular person should immediately seek therapy. There are several good therapies for PTSD that are well known and accepted. To deny this fact or to directly or indirectly discourage anyone from acquiring the relief they need is both inhumane and selfish.
Any human being, student or not, who suffers PTSD to this degree, will not only be potentially triggered by college speech or text, but by everything else: film, tv, speech on the street, written words in non-college texts, and so forth. Their life would be a living hell of anxiety, which in turn creates other psychological issues.
It’s been my experience so far, however, that “trigger words” have extended in definition to become virtually anything that might be disliked at any given time by the hypothetically trigger-able, i.e., by anyone who might choose to become “offended” or “triggered” by any particular manifestation of speech. Under these circumstances, the potential for lists of trigger words and phrases is practically limitless. Wasn’t it an UNC recently where an administration member actually suggested “I like your shoes” as a possible trigger phrase microaggression?
In summary, any person suffering PTSD needs help, but any person desiring to curb speech for their own reasons and apply their strictures on the social world around them, IMO, is a narcissist at the very least.
And one last thing. No student will be able to graduate and expect the non-academic world to cater to their need for trigger word warnings and safe spaces. The organizational environments of America and the world are ill-prepared to staff their office divisions with safe space counselors hired to soothe the feelings of the triggered.
Thai Ngao • Sep 8, 2016 at 9:43 am
This dumb ass Abraham Gross does not understand what free speech is. Please tell him to read the first amendment again.